Another brilliant week at Fairfield!

As we opened the first few doors on our advent calendars, our children enjoyed another brilliant week at Fairfield.

In Nursery, last week started with a challenge involving designing and making an owl. The children created some wonderful owls and demonstrated amazing perseverance. The Friendly Frogs were very excited on Thursday as Christmas arrived in the Nursery. As part of their People, Culture and Communities curriculum, the children are learning about their own family traditions and recognising and describing special times and family events. In Art, the children were busy collaging with cereal and other food! It was quite a challenge to get some of the things to stick, but the Friendly Frogs have amazing resilience! To conclude the week, the children made the most of the festive dress-up provision and paraded with magical outfits.

Our Reception friends enjoyed a lovely treat last Monday morning as they watched a wonderful pantomine performance of Hansel and Gretel- oh yes they did! As part of their learning about bears, the children watched a short David Attenborough documentary about Polar Bears. After watching this, the children wanted to draw their own. After looking at some photographs to double check what they looked like, the children got on with their beautiful drawings. In Maths, the children were looking at adding one more last week. They used coloured bears to work out their total and then had to find the correct number sentences in their books. The children worked really hard to use lots of new mathematical language such as: “add”, “equals”, “one more” and “another one”.

In Key Stage One, Year 1 have been amazing staff with their persuasive writing skills. Their ability to use full stops, capital letters, spell tricky words, use ambitious adjectives and write for different purposes is fantastic and most importantly, they love to write! In their RE lesson this week, the children talked about special foods eaten at Christmas- they then decorated a Christmas biscuit to take home and enjoy. In PE, amazing bowling and batting skills were on display last week as the children continued with their study of cricket. It’s clear from the children’s happy faces how much they are enjoying this unit of study. In Maths, Year 1's new topic is money; the children explored different coins and talked about the value of each coin as part of their learning last week. In addition, the children have enjoyed their Christmas Shop last week; they have reinforced their understanding of the value of coins to buy Christmas items.

In Year 2 last week, the children were continuing with their work based on the book ‘The Princess and the White Bear King’. The children used a range of punctuation and on Thursday, Year 2 developed their sentences further by using similes. In Spelling, the children were working on spellings that end with -il. Meanwhile, their reading groups started exciting new group books and the children are loving their new class stories about an emperor penguin! In Maths, Year 2 have been engaging in Active Maths lessons and completing challenges that build on their addition and subtraction skills. In RE, the pupils were learning about important beliefs in Buddhism. In Geography, the children have been learning all about compasses and how they can use a compass to develop their map reading skills. In PE, it was time for another Clip and Climb session on Wednesday- the children have developed in confidence and have transformed into more skillful climbers. The children also enjoyed a gymnastics lesson, working on their happy cat and angry cat poses. In Computing, the children have been practising changing from lower case to capital letters, making spaces with the spacebar, changing the size and colour of the text- reinforcing some key skills from Year 1. In D&T, there were smiles on every child's face last Friday afternoon as the children enjoyed learning about food hygiene and making their very own cereal pots, which they designed the previous week.

Last Thursday afternoon, Benedetti Foundation Music Workshop came into school to work with our Key Stage One pupils. Within the engaging workshop, they talked about the pulse and the rhythm of music and practised a new song with actions.

In Key Stage Two, in PSHE, Year 3 covered the topic of ‘change’ last week, which is such an important area to discuss. Every one of us is different in how we approach or are able to cope with change and Year 3 discussed how different changes can have an impact on our lives. On Friday, in Maths, both classes worked together during their Active Maths session. The children were looking at the 24-hour clock last week. Within this activity, each pupil each had a time, either in the 12/24 hour clock. They had to find their partner, who had the time matching theirs, by either hopping or jumping as a way of movement. On Tuesday, Year 3 had an amazing STEM opportunity and had a live zoom with The3Engineers. As a school, we joined 45 other schools on the Zoom; the children were introduced to Helen Heggie, CBeebies Consultant and the STEM Ambassador Hub lead for Lancashire and Cumbria learnt about what it is like to be an Engineer, why Science and Maths are really important in the world and how our pupils can make a difference. The children also got to meet ‘The3Engineers’ who read their first story in their book series “The Adventures of Scout” called ‘Stop Dropping Litter’. We have kindly been gifted three books, two are in Year 3 and the other is in the STEM lab. At the end of the session, the children were able to ask the engineers questions and find out more about how Engineers and Scientists are helping us protect our Environment.

In Year 4, Storytime at 1pm is a part of the day all of our pupils look forward to, and Year 4's delivery of new texts couldn’t have come at a better time last week as they had completed ‘Gangsta Granny’ and had a class vote on which new text they'd begin next! In PSHE, Year 4 were thinking about good and bad secrets last week. There were many really interesting discussions going on as they looked at a scenario and decided whether the secret should be shared or not- linking to our Safeguarding Curriculum. Meanwhile, in PE, the children enjoyed an afternoon of hockey, with a specialist coach. The children are progressing well with their topic of study in PE this half-term.

In Upper Key Stage Two, Year 5 were potion making in Science on Thursday and testing whether different substances were acid, alkali or neutral using a homemade PH indicator. The children worked very carefully using syringes to measure equal amounts of liquid for fair testing. On Tuesday afternoon, in History, Year 5 were learning about Anglo-Saxon laws and punishment. The children looked at the punishment an Anglo-Saxon would receive compared to someone today. Then, their very own “jury” decided on the best punishment- all of this learning took place in our outdoor classroom, in a practical session to help bring the content to life!

In Year 6, in Computing, the children were working collaboratively online using Google slides. They were working in groups to create a presentation on different countries and they produced fabulous work to share. As part of their current topic of study on the 'Art of Anatomy', Year 6 have been producing some very impressive work in their sketch books, including using artist mannequins to aid their sketching of the human body. Great work Year 6!

Finally, as ever, we had a very busy Celebration Assembly on Friday afternoon where we awarded lots of certificates to pupils who had participated in Cockermouth community projects, this included rewards from the Mayor for runners-up and winners of his Christmas Card Competition and an overall winner of the Rotary Club's Poetry Competition for 2022- we have such talented pupils!