Our Giraffe

 

Isabella 

Half term has been a busy week for many of us.

How many of you popped in and visited our giraffe Isabella?

 I made sure I looked for us amongst the list of names! 

Can you find us?

 Her picture was the highest on the wall...I could only just reach!

 Do you think you can spot her amongst her family?  They were busy tucking into breakfast out in the field.

Did you go and see her over half term? Maybe you went at another time over the last year.  Comment below and share your visit with us.

 

Watery Experiences!

We're currently looking at poetry in our literacy lessons and are in the process of writing our own river poems!

We took part in a series of different watery experiences so we could use our senses to describe the different sights, sounds, smells, textures and feelings that would be associated with the river.

Some of the excellent words that we came up with were....

swooshing, rippling, plopping, crunching, dripping, waving, tingly, calm, soaring, moist, saturated, absorb, float, cascading, merging, whooshing, pushing, rubbing, dribble, murky, pressure, flow...

We observed how the water behaved  as we dipped our hands in.

We looked how droplets of water behave on different types of rock.

We explored the sensation of moving gravel on the river bed.

We also tested how water pours as it drops over gaps in the rocks.

We also had the chance to experience what it would be like to stand under a waterfall!

Cricket at the Ageas

After working so hard on SATs last week, Year Six had a well deserved visit to the Ageas Bowl on Monday. Our day began with a brilliant tour of the ground (despite the drizzle!).

We then took part in an art session in the brilliant Ageas classroom. As both New Zealand and Australia will be playing at the Ageas this year, we enjoyed learning about a bit more about both countries. We tried our hand at some Maori and Aboriginal art which was great fun!  

After lunch, we were lucky enough to have a cricket coaching session in Hampshire's training nets - we even kicked out some of Hampshire's players who were training there! 

Our cricket sessions in school are clearly paying off - we certainly impressed the coach!

Finally, sunshine! We ended our day watching Hampshire play Middlesex and learning some more about cricket etiquette...! A fantastic day. 

Due to all the work we have done with the Ageas Bowl, Kings Copse has achieved their gold school partnership award. Hampshire cricketer Andre Adams presented us with the award!

We will soon be offering opportunities to book tickets to an upcoming 20/20 match, so watch this space!

 

Shange Hegarty

Shane Hegarty

 

This week, new and upcoming author Shane Hegarty joined us for the afternoon.  His new book 'Darkmouth' has just been released and is a gripping tale of a boys fight to save his village despite being rubbish at being a hero!

 

THEY'RE COMING

Legends (also known as terrifying, human-eating monsters) have invaded the world.

 

But don't panic!

The last Legend Hunter - Finn - will protect us.

 

Finn: twelve years old, loves animals, not a natural fighter, but tries really, really hard, and we all know good intentions are the best weapons against a hungry minotaur, right?

 

ON SECOND THOUGHTS, PANIC

PANIC NOW.

 

 Year 4 and 5 were treated to an hour of anecdotes, tips on how to be a successful writer and snippets of the book read by Shane and Jess.  Lots of children were inspired by his visit and many of the class can now be found with their head down, buried in the pages of Darkmouth.

 

 Shane shared the actual cover of the sequel, due out August 2015, and passed it around the group.  We had seen a photo but we got to feel the texture of the cover.  Just like Darkmouth, there are sections of embossing so the scales of monsters are emphasised.

 

 Shane spent time with many children at the end of the day signing books and discussing their writing.

 

Shane Hegarty

Year 4 were very lucky to have a special visitor this week!

Shane Hegarty, author of Darkmouth, came in to visit us. We had a really interesting afternoon learning about how he writes his stories and he shared lots of brilliant excerpts from his latest book.

We were also treated to a very special secret - Shane revealed the cover of the next book in the series! Lots of the class had their books signed by Shane and are busily reading their copy.