On Friday 9th December, you are invited to the world premiere of four wonderful silent movies, filmed in 1919 by the St. Clare's Film Company and inspired by World War One.
Here, we can see a few sneak preview shots of the filming in process. We do hope you will be able to join us at 9am for this special event!
Our Silent Movies project is well underway! We have written our storylines, planned each scene and been on a location scout to take pictures of the settings for each scene.
Last week, we started rehearsals. We love Drama in St. Clare's!
This week, we started our new topic: World War One. We have found out about the long-term and short-term causes of the Great War and we wrote newspaper articles about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
We also enjoyed starting our new class book; 'The Silver Donkey'. We have read the first four chapters and everyone has written some marvellous description, letters and predictions this week. Well done!
We enjoyed imagining what the characters might say at one point in the story- after a very unusual discovery...
Take a look at these questions we wanted to ask the soldier, and some of our fantastic fronted adverbials. Remember to click on the pictures to make them larger and easier to read:
Next week, we'll be focusing on Remembrance, as we know that Friday is the 11th November; Remembrance Day. In preparation, we made these beautiful pieces of Remembrance art in our house teams, then combined them to make one striking piece to show the damaged battlefields and the poppies growing amongst the devastation:
Congratulations St. Clare's Class on a fantastic assembly! It was 'out of this world...!'
You all performed brilliantly today and we were very proud of you! We had lots of lovely comments from children, visitors and the other teachers; they all thought it was an excellent assembly and they were very impressed by your acting talents. Well done!
Thank you to all of the parents and carers who came to support the children. We hope you enjoyed it!
We will see you all next week, ready for our big adventure...
Our topic 'Kings and Knights' has been great fun; it culminated with our reenactment of The Battle of Hastings on Thursday! We have been learning about Edward the Confessor and last week we found out about what happened when he died without an heir. Learning about the Battle of Stamford Bridge was interesting and ended with Harold having to march his army back down 187 miles in a hurry, when he heard that William was attacking from the south.
On Thursday, we picked up the story with Harold's Saxon army arriving in Hastings exhausted from battle and two long marches, carrying all of their kit and weapons. They were clever and took the high ground and built a shield wall to protect themselves.
William's Norman army arrived and kept charging up the hill towards the shield wall for six hours. For six hours it looked like the Saxons were going to win.
At one point, a Norman soldier announced that William had died (he was wrong!). What did William shout to rally his troops?
But soon, a few foolish Saxon soldiers made a fatal decision. (What did we decide 'fatal' meant?) When the Normans were retreating from one of their unsuccessful charges, a few soldiers decided to chase them. This meant there was a gap in the shield wall and the Normans took their chance! They turned around and charged back. Their cavalry (what did this mean?) and archers were better trained than the Saxons and soon destroyed the Saxon army.
Finally, one of the archers took aim at Harold and (if we believe the Bayeux Tapestry) he was shot in the eye!
William was eventually crowned King!
After our reenactment of the battle, we used toy knights, which were kindly brought in by Finn, to act out the battle again.
Once the events of the battle were firmly set in our minds, we worked in our house teams to write a timeline of the battle.
We identified three main reasons for William's Normans winning the Battle of Hastings. What were the three reasons?
Watch this fantastic animation of the Bayeux Tapestry. It tells the story of the Battle of Hastings, using the Bayeux Tapestry. But remember, the tapestry is not really animated! It is a tapestry/ weaving- like the Lady of Shalott made in her tower!
On Friday after play, when we returned to our classroom, it had turned into the Western Front at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
The platoon of St. Clare were met by Field Marshall Parrott and Lieutenant Cook who gave strict orders for their expectations of bravery and conduct on the battle field. Following a uniform inspection and orders for the men to face death as a glorious sacrifice for King and country, we entered the trenches. It was dark on the Western Front and the sounds of heavy artillery boomed around us. We had to crawl through the tunnels and trenches to keep our heads below the parapet, to avoid the enemy sniper fire.
Following a period of quiet reflection in the trenches and time for the men to write letters home, we heard the barrage end and knew it was time for us to go over the top.
Sadly, this was not the battle to end the war, as we had initially believed and the enemy had known we were coming. The barrage had not been as successful as we had thought and we suffered heavy casualties.
After participating in the Battle of the Somme for ourselves, we took some time to look at some real footage from the battle and learned about the tactics and errors of the Allied Forces. We compared the trenches and artillery of the Allies and Central Powers. We were lucky to have Abel from Year 6 to help Mrs Parrott to teach about the Battle of the Somme, as he is a real military expert!
Source: Honourable Artillery Company
On Friday afternoon, we were very fortunate to have a talk from Mr. Conlon, a real soldier! He told us about life in the modern army and about the importance of peace. He shared with us information about what his regiment did in World War One and showed us some photographs of his own army experiences.
Our production of The Selfish Giant will be performed on Tuesday at 9:30am for the school and at 7:00pm for your families and friends.
Remember that on Tuesday you will need to arrive at school between 6:15 and 6:30pm, in time to get changed and ready for the performance at 7:00pm. Make sure that you have something to eat before returning to school. Your parents, carers and families will go straight to the hall to get their seats and you will come into class.
We are all very excited- the rehearsals have been going brilliantly and
we are sure that the play is going to be a huge success.
Today, we held the auditions for our Easter Play! We were blown away by the talent we saw today- everyone put in so much effort and performed wonderfully! Well done. At the end of the day today, we told you which part you would be playing and handed out the scripts.
Over half term, we would like you to learn your lines. Make sure you know the lines you will be speaking, and also the words to the songs- we will be teaching you the music in the first week back.
Remember, the script may not include lots of lines for you, as there are 60 children in Year 4 and everyone needed a part to play! However, there will be lots of extra acting, singing and dancing, as you will see when we start to rehearse. The script does not include all of the things that will happen in the play! You will have lots of opportunities to show off your wonderful talents!
On Wednesday, a strange notice appeared at school:
We were all rather confused... what might have happened? After some discussion, we decided that it must have been something awful. Our suggestions included: man-eating Hula Hoops, someone turning into a Hula Hoop from eating too many, aliens invading in Hula Hoop packets and Hula Hoops starting a war in London!
It was clear that we had to do something about this situation, so we wrote letters to Mrs Day, our new headteacher. We had to tell her what had happened and explain why Hula Hoops had to be banned! Here are some fantastic examples. Click the pictures to make them larger and easier to read:
Today we saw the fantastic production of 1001 Nights at The Unicorn Theatre. What was your favourite part of the play?
Take a look at these videos- the first is a trailer for the show- what do you notice that is different from the version of the play we saw today?
This video is a very interesting behind-the-scenes interview with the 3 actors and some of the crew members that make the play so wonderful. Watch and listen carefully!
I hope you are all as excited as I am about our trip to the Unicorn Theatre tomorrow. We're going to see a fabulous play called '1001 Nights'.
Source: Unicorn Theatre
Remember- you must bring a packed lunch. Before you leave for school in the morning, remember to put on some sun cream. We might be standing in the sun when we are waiting for buses and walking to and from the theatre.
It's going to be great fun- I'm looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow!
Well done St. George's Class for another fantastic assembly! It was our last assembly as a class and I think it was wonderful- you all performed so well. All the adults at school were very impressed with your acting, recycled fashion and super ICT work. Very well done!
Here is the video that we showed during the assembly today. We made this video as part of our work on green screen filming. The children recorded, acted and chose the backgrounds- they are all iPad film making experts now!
I'll add some more of our green screen movies this weekend, keep your eyes peeled...
Today we worked with Mrs Cook to read the story of Medusa, then make these terrifying masks! Don't look directly into our eyes... we might turn you into stone!
Yesterday, a terrible crime occurred at St. Anthony's School; right in the middle of our classroom! While we were out at play, one of the Angry Birds was MURDERED in our classroom!
Luckily, there were 24 of the country's finest detectives on hand to investigate the crimescene. We used magnifying glasses to look closely at all of the evidence, then interviewed a number of eye witnesses around the school. Fortunately, they were able to provide us with some very useful evidence, which helped with our examination of the case. We gathered our evidence and considered who our main suspects were.
We decided that the evidence pointed towards the pigs being responsible for the evil murder of Jay the blue bird. Each Police Detective then wrote a formal report about the crime and their evidence, suggesting what to do next and where we might find the key suspect.
Some examples of these reports will be up on the blog at the weekend, after the forensic investigations are completed.
This week we have been investigating the war between the birds and the pigs. We wrote letters of complaint to the council from King Pig- he was fed up of having his neighbourhood destroyed by the birds! Following this, we held a court case to decide who was at fault in this long-standing conflict. The court report will be on the blog soon!
Today we decided to help the pigs by being architects and designing Angry Bird-proof shelters for them. Take a look through the slides below to see how we thought we could protect the pigs from attack.
Well done St. George's Class! Our assembly this morning was fantastic! Everyone enjoyed watching it- we had lots of lovely comments from the other children, teachers and families. Well done for learning those lines and performing so confidently!
Thank you to all the friends and family members who came along to watch and support the children.
Well, what a busy week it has been in St. George's Class!
Yesterday, the children performed their excellent assembly and everyone enjoyed watching them- we had lots of lovely comments from the other children, teachers and families. Well done for learning those lines and performing so confidently!
After our assembly, we went to the Horniman Museum. We enjoyed a hands-on workshop, looking at puppets from around the world.
We also loved the Amazon Adventure exhibition. We saw many dangerous creatures that live in the Amazon River, felt an electric eel's zap, tried to lift an anaconda and even had a dance on an Amazonian dance floor!
Source: Horniman Museum
After school, many of the children and families from St. George's Class came along to the launch night of the exhibition featuring our spectacular rhino. It was lots of fun- the gallery was an exciting room full of super artwork by children from schools across Southwark. Keep your eyes peeled to see if we feature in any of our local newspapers!
Well done St. George's Class for a busy and productive week- have a well-deserved rest this weekend.
On Friday (28th) at 9am, St. George's Class will be performing their final class assembly! Please do come along and watch!
The theme of our assembly is 'Believe in Yourself'. We will be singing a song called 'Believe in Yourself' from Sesame Street. I have found a few videos of some famous singers performing this song- which one do you prefer? Remember to practise the song at home so it's perfect for next week.
Show your parents- they will recognise these singers!
This one doesn't have an interesting video, but you can hear the version of the song that we will be using:
Remember to bring in your costumes for the assembly on Wednesday (remember to read your letter carefully). Go over your lines and your song this weekend!
This week is ONE WORLD WEEK at school. Each class is learning about a different country and the children will be visiting each classroom to learn about the country they are studying and get a stamp in their special passport. We will be taking lots of photos to share on the blog.
In St. George's Class we are learning about Russia. We will be finding out all about Russia for the next month. So far, we have used ICT to research and complete a fact file about Russia, we have been reading and writing about the traditional Russian tale 'Firebird' and painted a mural of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.
During our first week of learning about 'Firebird' we have read some of the story, performed some drama, listened to Stravinsky's 'Dance of the Firebird', watched a ballerina perform the Firebird's dance, then made up dances of our own to the music. We used the description of the Firebird in the story to draw some images of what we thought the Firebird looked like.
Here is a video of a short section of the Firebird ballet:
We will be starting a new page on the blog about Russia- take a look at the page tabs at the top of the blog!
