I reflect on this year with a blend of joy and nostalgia. This final term with your incredible children has been a journey of exploration, creativity, and growth.

Language

A focus of our language learning this term revolved around the enchanting world of poetry. Students delved into various forms, including haiku, nonsense, descriptive, and concrete poetry. This exploration was not just an exercise in language arts but a doorway to understanding deeper concepts. Each poetic form brought out unique aspects of expression, with haiku teaching brevity and the power of nature, nonsense poetry unlocking the fun in language, descriptive poetry enhancing observation skills, and concrete poetry merging visual art with the written word.

Unit of Inquiry

Linking seamlessly with our language lessons was our unit of inquiry, centred around the idea that people use nature as a source of creative inspiration. This unit saw our students engage deeply with the natural world, exploring how it fuels creativity. They used their newfound knowledge of poetry to express nature's influence, weaving words that painted pictures of the environment around us. Their understanding of the creative process was enhanced as they observed how nature could spark ideas, leading to beautiful, tangible outcomes. To connect this learning with the real world, students have been creating products inspired by nature to sell at the Arty Market, combining their learning from our language unit and our unit of inquiry.

Mathematics

Our mathematics sessions this term have been hands-on, lively and, again, linked to our broader unit of inquiry, as students learnt about symmetry and pattern and the mathematics that exists in nature. We ventured into the world of fractions and decimals, understanding equivalence, tenths, and hundredths. Students visualised these abstract concepts using concrete materials, linking them to real-world applications. Their enthusiasm peaked when we incorporated art into math, inspired by Ed Emberley's illustrations. These sessions demonstrated how mathematics is not just numbers and operations but a language that describes our world in beautiful patterns and relationships.

James Clapham