Welcome to Eddy Merckx Class

2022-2023

Our classes this academic year are named after athletes. Édouard Louis Joseph Baron Merckx 17 June 1945), better known as Eddy Merckx, is a Belgian former professional road and track bicycle racer who is among the most successful riders in the history of competitive cycling. His victories include an unequalled eleven Grand Tours (five Tours of France, five Tours of Italy, and a Tour of Spain), all five Monuments, setting the hour record, three World Championships, every major one-day race other than Paris–Tours, and extensive victories on the track.

A fab morning at the Beach Park to end our last day together! 

On Thursday 6th July, we held our own French Day. The children moved around the classes whilst each teacher did their own French speaking activity. The children practised greetings, animals, body parts, colours and food.

On Monday, we had a great opportunity to split into two group and do orienteering with a visitor in school. They created a map of the playground, identifying specific landmarks and then put their flags and stamps down in different locations and added these to their maps. Then the competition began...

We have been practising using a specific finger, on our left hand, to type specific letters on the keyboard. It is harder than it looks but the children gave it a really good go!

As we have continued our Science topic on 'Sound', this week we investigated volume and pitch with the instruments, understanding what these words meant and how we can use the instruments to demonstrate it.

Here are some examples of the children's work when writing the story of 'The Present'. We concentrated on our handwriting, including a variety of adjectives which we'd used a thesaurus to collect and including 'ly' adverbs to describe how someone is speaking or acting.

As part of National Sports Week, we children had the opportunity to complete 14 laps of the playground which is equivalent to 1 mile. The children will also have their PE lessons and cricket on Friday.

We have continued our 'Sound' science topic by investigating how sound travels by working with a partner to make our own string telephone and discussed how we manage to hear each other.

To help cool off after a very hot week indoors and out, we ended the week with a water fight. The children had a brilliant time.

We have had our class mass for the half term; the children were a credit to themselves and school in their behaviour and participation. They listened carefully, joined in with responses and acted respectfully.

In our maths work this half term, we are completing the topic of 'time'. We have spent the first couple of lessons revisiting our prior learning of o'clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to. The children worked with their partner to complete the questions and used the mini clocks to support their learning and explanation.

To begin our Science topic on Sound, we began the lesson in silence and tried to communicate with our work partner about what we could here and where in school would be the loudest and quietest places. We then conducted a sound walk around school in different areas to see what we could hear.

The children have been using thesauruses and working with a partner to up level adjectives, to find better synonyms. The children will then use these to plan out detailed, descriptive sentences for their version of the story.

In our new PSHE topic we are talking about Growing and Changing. We began with discussing what physical touch is and what is appropriate and what isn't, as well as how we deal with it if some someone is in our personal space. We role played how it may happen and how we can be assertive, yet polite.

The children have started their new computing topic of 'Touch Typing'. We began with discussing our posture when we are typing, the keyboard and how we can use different figures and then we practiced with each row - home, bottom and top.

Summer II

Today, Merckx Class had an explorer in who began our day with a whole school assembly and then we had our session with him where we used compass skills to map read and locate different places on the playground that were on the map.

The children in Merckx Class, as part of our work on Black History Month discussed what it is and why we have it. We looked at the life of Martin Luther King Jr - what he believed in, stood up for and his actions. We discussed words like protest, segregation, boycott and assassination and then linked these to MLK's life. We watched and read his 'I have a dream' speech and then the children had the opportunity to write their own 'I have a dream' speech based on a topic they wish to no longer exist, like what MLK wanted for racism.

In our RE topic this half term, we are learning about The Christian Family. As part of our work we are learning about the Sacrament of Baptism - what this means and how to live a Christian life. Some of the children, in Merckx class, who have been baptised brought in their photo and we played a game of Guess Who. We are going to continue discussing this special event as a class, what happens at baptism and those children who have been baptised to share information about their special day.

As we continue with our enhancement week, the children continued to study the art work of Vincent Van Gogh with looking at real life objects, as Van Gogh did with 'Sunflowers'.

Our children are enjoying our Read, Write Inc spelling sessions with a new spelling focus each week, using spelling and grammar vocabulary as well as working independently, as a spelling group or in partners doing dictation work.

We worked in our groups to carousal around the room to ‘up level’ a word we had thought of in our hot seating task, as the character of Robbie. We used the word wheels and thesaurus’ to find alternative synonyms which could be used in our writing.

As the children have continued their work on place value, we moved onto being able to count in 50s. We worked with a partner to do some problem solving that meant we needed to count in 50s. The children found missing numbers and used their knowledge to solve questions on money and weight.

Year 3/4 are enjoying their Science topic on Light. Today after recapping on different types of light sources, we tested different materials: wood, tin foil, paper, metal and fabric to test whether it was reflective and if so how much. We discussed the scientific terms: transparent, translucent and opaque to support our explanations and begin to link in shadows.

In today’s maths lesson we compared 3-digit numbers. We practically made the symbols of greater than, less than and equal to. We then checked we were correct by saying the number, symbol and number (246 is less than 873). We then completed some in our books using the <, > and = signs. The children grasped the concept quite quickly so we moved onto ordering 3-digit numbers. 

After role playing a character from 'Cool!' by Michael Morpurgo, we extracted key words we used when performing. We then used a thesaurus to find synonyms for each word. We discussed the meaning of each word and how some words can have more than one meaning. We each chose our favourite word which we will then use in our writing next week. 

In English, we have been thinking about the thoughts and feelings of Mum in the story. The book is written in the perspective of Robbie so we wanted to think about how Mum will be feeling during certain events that take place. We role played Mum and used key vocabulary that conveyed how Mum would be feeling. The children did remarkably well and some of them definitely deserve an Oscar for their performance! 

Today we voted for our year 3 and year 4 Values Ambassador for the school. The children wrote their own speeches to persuade the class to vote for them. The children talked about how they would be a great role model to others, help children around school and promote our values. The class then voted for one year 3 child and one year 4 child. We have counted the votes and will find out who is elected next week during assembly!

On Friday, we gathered in the school hall to listen to the year 6 children give their speeches on why we should vote for them to become head boy and head girl. We then voted for who we would like to become the next St Mary's Head Boy and Head Girl. We will find out the results next week. A huge well done to all the year 6 children. You all gave excellent speeches and we are all very proud of you. Good luck!

Today in PE with Coach Jake, the children were practising their chest and bounce passes. They worked in teams to pass the ball and then played a mini game of netball. 

We have been exploring 2-digit and 3-digit numbers in maths this week. We have learnt the value of the digits in a number and began to partition the numbers and show what each digit represents. 

Our book for English this half term is 'Cool!' by Michael Morpurgo. We began by predicting what we thought the story would be about from the front cover. We then began reading the book. We listened to Miss Charnley, Mrs Sewell, Mrs Griffin and each other read parts of the first chapter. We discussed the authors use of punctuation and vocabulary choice, picking words for our WOW chart that we wanted to know the meaning of. We then completed comprehension questions based on what we had read so far. 

Today in maths, we have been identifying the place value in two digit numbers. 

Today in English we began looking at diary entries. We read a text and had to guess and then explain which genre we thought it was. We then had to read different diary extracts and guess who the author was. We highlighted key words and phrases that helped us to find out which traditional tale character each diary extract was written by. 

Today we have been remembering all the qualities that made Queen Elizabeth a fantastic Queen that was loved and adored by everyone. We discussed what great things she had accomplished in her life and that she will be missed by all. The children wrote their own letters to Queen Elizabeth which we hope she reads in heaven.