Swallow News

• Tuesday 12 December 2023 Andy Goldsworthy inspired collages "Even in winter an isolated patch of snow has a special quality" - Andy Goldsworthy
• Tuesday 12 December 2023 Van Gogh Art "Great things are done by a series of small things brought together" - Vincent Van Gogh
• Wednesday 7 June 2023 Year 5 Sports Day On Wednesday, we had a fantastic time competing in a variety of events including competing as a class in the wheel relay and a 'plogging' race.
• Thursday 25 May 2023 Year 5 First Aid To conclude our PSHE topic, Being my best, Year 5 have been using the British Red Cross primary resources to learn about the importance of first aid. We have been practicing the DR ABC approach in partners to remind ourselves of what to do in an emergency.
• Thursday 4 May 2023 Designing and creating wormeries in Year 5 For Science this week, we conducted an experiment about the preferred conditions for a worm's habitat and used our data to inform our wormery designs. We then used these to create our own wormeries.
• Thursday 27 April 2023 Year 5 Shakespeare Festival 2023 On Wednesday 29th March, the children in Year 5 at both Benenden and Goudhurst & Kilndown performed an evening of Shakespeare. Benenden performed Shakespeare's comedy, The Tempest and absolutely astounded us all as they put on a show fit for Shakespeare's Globe, displaying all of our school values.
• Tuesday 25 April 2023 Uplands Primary Maths Match 2023 Six children from Swallow Class attended an exciting Maths competition hosted by Uplands Academy. They took part in a variety of tricky problem solving activities and did an amazing job!
• Thursday 2 March 2023 Swallow Class World Book Day This year, we enjoyed another fun-filled World Book Day bringing to life exciting fictional characters or cosying up with our favourite books and pyjamas. We joined lots of other schools across the country to find out 'how to be funny' with Helen Rutter and also loved taking part in a 'drop and read', where we had to stop everything and read every time we heard the reading alarm.
• Wednesday 1 March 2023 Year 5 Forest School We have enjoyed making mud cakes, building camps, orienteering and creating tree dragons at Forest School this term.
• Friday 24 February 2023 Year 5 Pancake Race To celebrate pancake day, we combined two of our favourite things: PE and eating pancakes! It was a delicious way to end the week.
• Thursday 2 February 2023 Year 5 First Shakespeare Workshop To prepare us for our performance of The Tempest at the end of the term, we had our first drama workshop with the drama team at Benenden School. We started by exploring different the different levels and facial expressions to create our opening tableaux as well as creating the soundscape for a shipwreck. Next week, we will be travelling up to Benenden School to meet our showcase team and practice voice projection techniques on the stage.
• Friday 27 January 2023 Year 5 Chinese New Year workshop A huge thank you to Benenden School for hosting a very exciting workshop to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year.
• Tuesday 24 January 2023 Year 5 endothermic reactions As a part of our irreversible changes chemistry topic, we explored endothermic reactions using bicarbonate and vinegar. We were surprised by the results when the temperature started to decrease as the reaction consumed so much energy.
• Monday 23 January 2023 Year 5 Change4Life Today, we took part in a workshop ran by Change4Life. We took part in several activities reminding us of our different food groups, exercises to keep us healthy in our daily lives but our favorite by far was the smoothie bike! We used the energy from pedaling on the bicycle to power the blender, making yummy, homemade smoothies.
• Thursday 8 December 2022 A Victorian Christmas Swallow Class loved exploring Victorian Christmas traditions at Kent Life on Thursday. We met Charles Dickens, made our own candles, found out about Christmas in the workhouse and we played with some of the toys that rich Victorians may have received from Father Christmas.
• Wednesday 7 December 2022 Year 5 shadow puppets In Science this term, we have been exploring Earth, Light & Space and as a part of this we have been looking at shadows. We have explored how the strength of the light source impacts the shadow and how the proximity of the object to the light changes the size of the shadow. To link our learning in Science to English, we have created our own shadow puppets to re-tell the story of A Christmas Carol. Can you guess who they are
• Tuesday 6 December 2022 Jingles bells We have worked really hard with Mr Reid this term to perform Jingle Bells on the trumpet. The first video shows you how much progress we've made in just a few weekly sessions. Thank you very much Mr Reid!
• Monday 14 November 2022 Swallow Class - Carol Of The Bells On Monday 14th November, the children in Year 5 joined five other schools to record the traditional Christmas carol, Carol of the Bells. At the same time, a choir in Ukraine sang the carol and both versions will be merged to create a single track to raise both money and awareness of our support.
• Wednesday 19 October 2022 Year 5 step back in time to a Victorian classroom! After lunch, we stepped back in time and entered a Victorian classroom. Miss Jackson rang the bell and we were very shocked to see that she had a cane, which we found out was a real Victorian punishment. We had our hands inspected before we entered the classroom and had to wash them in a bowl of water if they were too grubby. Once we were inside, we had to sit in neat rows as we were read out the rules. Unfortunately for the left handed children, everyone was told to write with their right hand and stand before speaking - we couldn't do this without laughing as you can see from the pictures. On our tables, we found a slate and piece of chalk for writing and an abacus to help us with our arithmetic but we had to be careful to not make any mistakes otherwise we were forced to sit in the corner wearing the Dunce cap or even worse, copy out lines!
• Friday 14 October 2022 Swallow Class Week 6 This week we have been busy both in class and out of class with a trip to the Forest on Wednesday and fantastic music performance at Benenden School on Thursday. We particularly enjoyed creating our own Hetty Feather inspired 'squirrel houses' at Forest School and loved learning about the different instruments making up a professional orchestra, our personal favourites being the crazy kazoo drummer and the Star Wars theme tune being played on the trumpet!
• Friday 7 October 2022 Year 5 Quidditch This morning, Swallow Class loved taking part in a Quidditch taster session with Premier Sports. We had our own broomsticks (hockey sticks) and were assigned a house from Harry Potter. Some of us moved so fast, you may have even thought we were actually flying!
• Thursday 6 October 2022 Swallow Class Week 5 Happy National Poetry Day! This year's theme was the environment, which inspired our own acrostic poems about nature. We also celebrated by performing a poem written by our very own Milo Pollard (Year 5 child and published poet!) about what life may be like waking up in the Victorian era as a poor child. We have loved learning more this week about the lives of Victorian children and the influential figures who helped to change them so this was a great way to share our learning!
• Thursday 29 September 2022 Swallow Class Week 4 Another busy week in Swallow Class with trips to the church for Harvest Festival and the celebration of European Languages Day 2022. We also had our first 'proper' trumpet lesson which you can watch a sneaky preview of below using the QR code.
• Friday 23 September 2022 Swallow Class Week 3 After a busy week at Bewl Water, we have enjoyed continuing to explore our first place value unit and even took our learning outside to create our own number system, just like Roman Numerals! We created our birth dates out out green leaves (1), stones (5), sticks (10) and brown leaves (50).
• Sunday 18 September 2022 Year 5 Residential Swallow class had a fantastic time during our three day residential break to Bewl Water activity centre. The children loved having the opportunity to partake in axe throwing competitions, archery, rock wall climbing, giant SUP and canoeing. What a great start to the year!