Stroud Valley Community School

Uh oh! There’s a DEMON TEACHER in your classroom! Whatever you do, don’t open the door!!
Well, what do you think the children of Quartz class did? Yes, you are right they opened the door!! Inside, they found a very angry, wild and frustrated teacher. Each table completed an activity to try and cheer the teacher up. Finally, the last table saw the mess on the floor and quickly sorted it out which seemed to make the teacher return to her normal self.
This was our English ‘hook’ lesson to introduce Tom Fletcher’s interactive books series.

As part of our PSHE lessons this term, we have been talking about the ‘positives’ and how it is often hard to think and say all the positive aspects about ourselves. To help us with this, we created our own ‘positivity jars’. Using glass paints, we decorated them using colours, patterns and pictures that make us feel happy. Inside our jars, are lots and lots of positive statements all about ourselves. So when we are feeling a little low or just need a reminder of how wonderful we are, we can open up our jars, sit and read them.

We had a great day, dressing up in red and taking part in a range of activities to support Comic Relief. As a class, we listened to some great jokes and even enjoyed a delicious cake thanks to GW’s mum for baking them for us. We also enjoyed some ‘red nose and spoon’ races!

What a messy day we’ve had!

It’s been brilliant to get back together and we’re really proud of how well Quartz settled back together as a team. We built giant cardboard sculptures, painted a class mural and enjoyed some wet and wild obstacle courses.

It’s been a busy week so far, with lots of sculpting, printing, drawing and bird feeding happening.

To celebrate the end of the first week back together, we incorporated baking into our maths lesson. Just look at our yummy creations!

On Wednesday, we took time to stop, think and reflect about all the men, woman and animals who have lost their lives serving their country. The children produced some amazing artwork to create a couple of remembrance displays.

We had great fun today, creating our own World Book Day characters using potatoes. Can you guess who they are?

Thank you for everybody who made a rubbing and collage bird for art club.

The range of textures, colours and snipping is wonderful and I can’t wait to add them to our whole school display.

Don’t worry if you haven’t made yours yet- visit our school YouTube channel to watch Mrs Jowers’ tutorial and then make a bird of your own to post in our school letter box.

This morning we set off down to Capel’s Mill to begin our canal walk. We walked all the way to Wallbridge Basin, where the Thames and Severn Canal meets the Stroudwater Canal.

Can you remember the place and meanings of these canal terms?
**wharf
basin
lock
water level
goods
barge
fish pass
narrow boat
towpath**

Quartz are in the process of writing and publishing our own story books. We look forward to sharing these in the coming weeks but in the meantime, here we are making print blocks which will be used for printing designs on our books’ front and back covers.

With parents’ evening approaching, we thought it would be lovely for you to see what your children have been up to. We may not be able to meet face to face but both myself and Mrs Jowers look forward to talking with you all over the phone both Tuesday and Wednesday. I hope you are as proud of your children as we are. They have settled in quickly and are already producing wonderful pieces of work.

To celebrate ‘World Maths Day’ we took part in a range of activities. Have a look at our photos to see just how much fun we had!

Inspired by our class book “A River” by Mark Martin, we have published our own concertina books.

We wrote about a journey along the Stroud canals and then made multi-media illustrations using pastels, inks, collage and tape. We also designed and printed our front and back covers.

Here are the beautiful results!

This term, the children have carried out a range of experiments looking at materials and their properties; thermal conductors and insulators; electrical conductors and insulators; dissolving and irreversible changes. The children are beginning to use scientific vocabulary to explain their results. It has been a great topic for us to get into this term. Just have a look at how busy we have been and how much fun we have had learning all about materials.

Over the last few weeks, we have been looking at the digestive system. We also looked at the functions of all the basic parts of the digestive system in humans. To consolidate our learning, we took part in an extremely fun yet messy experiment. This experiment showed us just what goes on inside our bodies.