Welcome to Owls!

Academic Year 2023-2024

Super Swimmers

Remember that in terms 3, 4 and 5 (January -  June) Owls will be swimming on Thursdays. Remember to send your children with swimming costumes on and a bag with their towel and underwear.

Thank you, enjoy your swim!

We are all scientists!

In Owls we are all Scientists. We have been working hard to understand how things work and ask as many questions as possible along the way.

We are finding the value in curiosity! In this Science lesson we were predicting and testing the strength of magnets. Seeing which magnets could support the weight of the most paper clips.

The children are enjoying this topic, with lots of hands-on lessons involving experiments and investigations.

Extreme Earth

Through our topic this term, we will be thinking about many forms of extreme weather. With one being volcanoes. We will be researching and creating our very own volcanoes. Here is our first model, a simple 3D paper volcano. We will be using a range of materials and even causing our own eruptions!

French Numbers

This term we have started strong with our French, recapping for the year 4's and for the first time, the year 3's are learning numbers in French.

Starting off up to 10, pretty soon we should be on the way to numbers up to 100!

Here we are trying to match numbers to their French words in a memory game.

DT Day

For this DT day we had to work in groups to design, make and test a vehicle on wheels. We had to make a vehicle that would travel the furthest when dropped down a ramp.

We then had a chance to make improvements and have a second chance to beat our distance!

Term 1 and 2

Welcome back to this new year in Owls class. This year we have a mix of year 3 and 4 children. In Owls you will find Mr Quant teaching everyday with the help of Mrs Turner.

This term we have PE twice a week on Mondays and Wednesday with Mr Mooney, remember to keep your PE kit in school all week and have any earings out on those days.

Academic Year 2022-2023

Term 2

Veni, Vidi, Vici

This term in Owls, our PE days are on Wednesday and Friday. Please keep your PE kit in school at all times and include a warmer pair of trousers/jogging bottoms and a jacket/hoodie. 

Homework is handed out each Thursday and includes an English task, Maths task and Spellings to practise. Please hand homework back in the following Tuesday so that it can be marked and new homework set. Please also read as much as possible at home, write each evening, when you read, in your home reading record including which page you read up to. In Owls we also aim to have each child read with an adult across each week to ensure that their reading ability continues to improve and their home books are a suitable level. Please ensure your reading record is handed in on a Tuesday alongside your homework. At the end of each term we have a reading reward for those that show consistent effort, reading each week at home.

Term 1

Stone Age to Iron Age

Welcome back to a wonderful first term in Owls.

Please click below to find an averview of the topics that we have been learning about in each lesson. You will see a few highlights of some of our most memorable lessons below.

Also find below our parent's meet and greet powerpoint. This gives key information about the expectations in Owls including homework, behaviour and PE days.

This year our team includes Mr. Quant and Mrs. Laud teaching the class, Mrs. Turner as class TA and Mr. Mooney as our specialist PE teacher.

Teamwork

Across term 1, not only have we been focussing on our core lessons, we have also learned through exploration and experience. Below you can see our learning through exploration. We were set a challenge to build the tallest tower out of just paper. This task tested many skills including: teamwork, problem solving, design, testing and evaluation as well as mathematical accuracy and measurement. Can you spot your tower? The children all had a great time working together to ddesign, create, test, evaluate and then re-design their towers.

French Board Games!

This term the children of Owls have enjoyed weekly French lessons in what they like to call 'French Fridays.'

One particular highlight can be seen below, where we played a board game in small groups entirely in French! They had the task of counting, recognising colours, recognising and saying foods in French as well as using French greetings.

It's Rhyme Time!

We are always looking into new ways to help us learn. There is key research that shows that children can remember facts more effectively if they are attached to songs, actions or rhymes.

In Owls we have begun to learn some of the trickiest times tables, the ones that many children tend to forget, by using a rhyme for each number sentence. Look below to see the most common times tables that children find trickiest, we revise three cards each week!

Academic Year 2021-2022

Academic Year 2020-21

This term Owls have all returned to school eager and ready to learn.

I have been so impressed with their resilience this term and many have expressed just how happy they are to be back in the classroom learning with their friends. Thank you to all of the children in Owls for their determination and willingness to learn this term, it has been such a joy to have them back together.

Below is just a selection of some of the lessons we have completed this term. Have a great Easter holiday, I look forward to seeing you again in 2 weeks.

Mr. Quant  

Signing Songs

This term we have been very lucky to have a new music teacher come into school to help us with music. You will remember him from your home learning videos.

Below is a selection of the signing songs we have been learning.

Fantastic French

This term we have boosted our French knowledge. Through weekly lessons we have been learning to say different family members in French as well as creating our own family tree to help us. We have tried a range of greetings and are gettinh mush better at answering our register in French each morning.

This term we have also re-capped animals in French to be sure we remembered our learning from home. This ended in a tense game of French Animal BINGO!

Finally, we thought about the sounds that we can hear in French words and how the French alphabet is different to the English alphabet.

Keep up this great French learning Owls.

You have been 'tres bien.'

This term Owls have continued to show a great level of perseverance and maturity in the way that they have approached their learning.

Their 'can-do' attitude has been amazing to see and they have been willing to face every challenge that they have been given. Many of the children in Owls are also keen to receive challenge, asking for more complex work and enjoying the challenge it brings.

I hope that this love of learning will continue to flourish and I will do my very best to ensure that Owls remain keen learners.

Have a lovely Christmas break and appreciate everyone you are able to see this Christmas and keep those who you can't see in your hearts.

Mr. Quant 

Countdown to Christmas

As we near Christmas Owls have been enjoying lots of Christmas themed activities.

Although a little different this year we have been able to do lots of activities that we usually do at Christmas, just in slightly different ways.

Our final week brought about Carol singing, with a virtual joint song between all of the classes. We enjoyed watching a virtual pantomime with a tasty ice-cream interval and we must congratulate Wrens for their amazing performance in their recorded Nativity, watched in each classroom.

We also took part in a virtual Christingle with Mrs. Clifton after all making our own Christingles this year too.

Christmas also brought us a delicious Christmas dinner in the hall with crackers, music and party hats and to round off the year we finished with a selection of party games in our classroom to some of our favourite Christmas songs!

Christmas Carols

Click the link below to see our selection of favourite Christmas Carols and songs. Enjoy!

Fantastic French!

This term Owls have been working hard to increase their French vocabulary.

Through paired work this term they have been able to count to 10 in French as well as begin to have a 'back -and-forth' conversatuion in French. Ask your child to see if they remember how to greet you in French!

More Maps!

with our map work complete we were tasked this week with remembering the format of an aerial map.

We designed our very own golf course for Mr. Mooney to set up in our PE lesson. Using our maps we were able to make a variety of golf courses to play our rounds of golf on.

Welcome back to what has been a very strange year indeed!

I would first like to say how proud I am of the children of Owls and how well they have adapted to the changes in routine in school this year. Without fuss, they have taken well to the changes in place and have shown a great level of maturity and understanding for the changes we have had to make and the reasons behind them.

Above all it has been so lovely to see so many smiles in school and hear so much laughter. The children have expressed how much they have enjoyed being back and how much fun they have had so far. 

In Owls we aim to not only stay safe but learn to the best of our abilities and above promote happiness.

Thank you for a great first term. Please enjoy reading about some of the activities we have enjoyed this term.

Mr. Quant 

Outdoor Learning

We began the term with some lovely weather, which meant lots of outdoor lessons.

This included Maths and English as well as many curriculum lessons too!

Rock Hunt!

This term our topic has crossed many different lessons.

We began with a rock hunt, looking closely with magnifying glasses at rocks around us and noticing tiny details. This helped us to realise that every rock is different. It also raised lots of questions about them. We created a bank of questions that we aim to answer over the year.

DT Day

This year DT day involved making the strongest bridge possible with just five pieces of paper!

Owls children came up with some amazing and varied designs. Once they had designed and made their first bridge in pairs they had to test to see how many cubes the bridge would hold.

After their initial test they had a second chance to improve their bridge designs. All children managed to improve their bridges, maing them hold more cubes than on their first attempt!

There was some outstanding teamwork and some very interesting designs. Browse the gallery below to see some our our bridge builders at work.

Cave Paintings

As part of our Stone age topic, Owls have been thinking about how cave painting were made.

We have recreated our own cave art pieces using different materials including chalks and powder paints. We even embodies cave dwelling people by attempting to create our art vertically, on the 'ceiling' of our caves.

Check out our finished cave of paintings below!

Macmillan Coffee Fundraiser

As part of our efforts to raise money for charity, we had a non-uniform day for Macmillan.

In Owls we also decorated cakes, carefully creating our own icing and decorating with sprinkles. We then met with the other classes over an afternoon video call to eat out creations together. 

We are proud to support charities and appreciate the work they do.

Map madness!

This term we have been working hard to increase and improve our map reading skills.

Owls particularly enjoyed one of our outdoor lessons, reading the co-ordinates on a map of the school to find a series of hidden symbols.

Ask your child what they had to do this lessons to see how they found the hidden symbols...

Jump rope for heart!

This term we also participated in Jump Rope for Heart, again raising money for charity.

Thank you to all those who sponsored children to skip! Browse the gallery below to see some of our efforts, not only did we raise money for charity but we stayed active and had fun along the way!

Amazing Author!

This term we have been very lucky to have communicated with an author. Luke Temple prepared a block of work for owls based around his book: Felix Dashwood and the Mutating Mansion. The children really enjoyed reading the book and breaking down the features that were used in each chapter. We then created our own chapter of the book and collected them together into our own version of the story.

If you have purchased to book through school don't give away the ending! We will revisit the book at the end of the year and discover what happens next.

Watch the video below to see our author answer some of the questions that the children of Owls asked him.

Academic Year 2019-20

Hive Game Friday

Time for our last Hive Game Friday, make it a great one! have fun and the best of luck! :) 17/07/20

Round 1 (Hard) Code: 756869

Round 2 (Extreme) Code: 610465

Learning Packs

Please find below learning packs for Owls children during the school closure period.

Please work through the packs in order. A new one will be added at the start of each week.

For any questions or support, please do not hesitate to contact Mr Smith at: owls@sutton-st-james.lincs.sch.uk

White Rose Input

If you want extra input for the maths set in the learning packs, then follow the link below to access free method videos. The link will take you to a page to access all year groups, choose your child's year group and then find the week we are working at. I will update every week which one we are using.

This week we are working from Summer Term: Week 4.

https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/

Spelling and Maths Shed

Morning there folks! Really wish we could see each other the start of this term but we will do the best with what we have.

Just an update to say from now on, Maths Shed and Spelling shed will have weekly targets of 15 games. That is still 3 games minimum a day. Depending on subject matter they may be daily targets again but for now, weekly ones seem more efficient. Have fun and speak to you all soon! 

Mr Smith 😁

Term 3

Once again we had an action packed term once we got back after the Christmas holidays. We started our new topic subject which was all to do with Ancient Egypt. 

Maths

We have learned so much in Maths this last term, we enhanced our knowledge on graphs, angles and our basic four operation. We then culminated our skills into a super treasure hunt around the school. We used our skills in following grid references and turning in angles to solve the riddles and find the secret treasure inside the long hidden tomb of the Pharaoh Richardsofuful!

English

With our topic related to ancient Egypt, our main focus this term was to write a formal letter of complaint to Pharaoh Rameses II, for his horrible treatment of the Hebrew slaves. We used the brilliant musical film Prince of Egypt as our inspiration. We advanced our sentence skills with conjunctions to extend them and we used that to do the very best in our letters. The letters of complaint were full of high level vocabulary, conjunctions and reasonable points of argument.

History

We learned a huge amount about the ancient Egyptians this term for our topic. We learned the basics of making the famed pyramids, the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb and we wrote messages in hieroglyphics. We finished our term of history a talent show where the children showcased their talents as the ancient Egyptian Gods and Goddesses.

R.E.

We focussed our learning on Judaism this term. We learned about the importance of Jerusalem and the Western wall. We learned about specific items and areas of a Synagogue and important festivals such as Passover.

Term 2

We returned after a short break ready to get right back onto our learning and to have more fun doing so.

Maths

This term, we learned more about division, multiplication. We also moved onto statistics and 3d shapes. We had a fun lesson where we put together various 3d shapes based on net designs. This helped improve our understanding of 3d shapes and we then identified how many faces, edges and vertices those shapes had. 

D.T.

We returned to volcanoes for our D.T. task. We worked in pairs to build our very own volcanoes out of using paper mache. We then painted those volcanoes to help make them look realistic. We utilised our knowledge on what volcanoes normally look like and our team work skills to create a brilliant and accurate model. 

Trip to Peterborough

As part of our learning in R.E. we were very fortunate to go to a Hindu temple to experience another type of religious service. We got to witness a morning prayer service and was able to look around at all the beautiful statues that represented the various Gods and Goddesses. The children learned a lot from the volunteers at the temple. After that excitement, it was followed by even more as we went to visit the main library. Again the children learned more about the building and how to find and loan books. They were very enthusiastic and many even wanted to become members of the library to borrow books. The children especially enjoyed the super challenging library treasure hunt that Mr Richardson had put together for them.

Art

In art, we learned about the talented artist Archimboldo. He was unique as he painted portraits of people using fruits, vegetables and other objects related to the seasons to create his subject's face and shoulders. This was a fun challenge for the children who had to really think what type of objects they would need to create a sketch of their partner in this particular style. They had to make sure it was detailed enough so we could tell what they had used. We had some fantastic results!

Term 1

D.T. Day

For our D.T. challenge day, our school had to build their own boats which would then have to hold as many cubes as possible in water. We had basic materials to use such as paper, tape and string. There were a lot of various designs that were put to the test. In the end, we had a winner whose boat held a whopping 124 cubes! What a great and challenging day.

Science

In science this term, we learned about kinetic forces. We particularly looked at how friction works. We learned what friction means and then we put it into practice with a fun experiment. Using our knowledge, we predicted what items on a ramp would cause the most friction and the least, then we placed the ramp at certain angles and pushed a toy tractor down the ramps, we recorded the height of the ramps when the tractor began to roll down. We then compared the results to our predictions.

History and Geography

With our topic being linked by Extreme Earth, we connected our History and Geography with a focus on Volcanoes and the city of Pompeii in Ancient Rome. We studied what actually creates Volcanoes and how often they occur, we then learned what exactly happened on the day MT Vesuvius erupted. We used our knwoledge on how volcanoes are formed to explain the 'rumblings' of Pompeii before it was destroyed and how people may believe it was somesupernatural force without any knowledge on volcanoes or their inner workings.

Harvest Festival

Towards the end of term, the whole school celebrated Harvest time by holding a performance festival at the community centre. Our class put on a performed reading of Squeak's Harvest. A fun short story about a field mouse who moves home and finds a harvest festival where he learns the meaning of love and being thankful. We had some volunteers perform as our excellent readers while the rest of the class did amazing jobs at performing as the characters of the story.

Academic Year 2018-19

Term 2

After the October half term, we returned to school ready and excited to learn! We experienced and learned lots of new things this term, take a look below to see what we have done.

The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

On Thursday 22nd November, Owls class were lucky enough to go on an adventure all the way to Cambridge to visit the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. On this visit we learned all about the Stone Age, Iron Age and Bronze Age. The children used their senses to explore the sounds, sights and smells of the past. By handling ancient objects and using the museums multisensory bags, pupils were challenged with identifying which era certain objects were from and thought about similarities and differences between then and now.

ICT

We have been learning lots of new skills during our ICT lessons this term. We have been using the laptops to design, write and debug their very own programs. We were given challenges to design a character and make the character move from point A to B by writing an algorithm. Along the way we found some errors in our algorithms, so we paired up and assisted one another in debugging the instructions. In the end we had some fantastic characters who were completing some difficult journeys across our laptop screens, all thanks to the children's excellent algorithms!

Maths

In Maths, we have been having lots of fun during our learning. At

the start of the term we were looking at shapes, not only did we have to identify different shapes, whether they were 2D or 3D, their properties and see if we could spot any around the school, we had to make our own 3D shapes!

During the term we also had a look a measuring and comparing lots of different things such as weight, capacity and mass. We had a very practical lesson where we had to estimate then measure different amounts of liquid and the capacity of different instruments used to hold liquid. 

Anti-Bullying Week

This term saw Anti-Bullying week at school, and we were

all invited to wear odd socks (outside of our trousers). As part of an English class, Owls created an Anti-Bullying Rap. We considered and used all of the different features of a rap, each group managed to make every line rhyme! It was a very fun afternoon and it allowed us to discuss different ways that we can stop bullying, what to do and how to ensure that all children play happily every day.

Term 1

A School Day Out!

On Wednesday 19th September, Owls and Herons went on an adventure to Peterborough. We were very lucky because we got invited into both a Mosque and a Cathedral.

In the Mosque we saw a beautiful  chandelier and were taught lots of fantastic information about the Muslim religion. We discovered that they pray 5 times a day, and have 5 rules they live by, known as the 5 Pillars. When we left the Mosque we were treated to a packet of crisps and a drink to say thank you for coming, they were very yummy!

Later that day we went to the Cathedral where we stood in amazement looking up at
Tim Peake's Spacecraft show. We saw the real Soyuz spacecraft, parachute and spacesuit that he wore and used up in space. It was very exciting and we learned lots of facts!

DT Day - Let's Go Fly A Kite

We are lucky enough as a school to, each year, partake in a DT Day. The children love the DT days as it allows them to explore and be as creative as they can! This year, we made our very own kites.

We spent the morning creating and decorating our kites. Once we had done this, everyone in school went outside to the school field and flew their kite. Unfortunately some of the kite strings got very tangled, however after a quick reconstruction of the kites, they were back up and flying. It was a fantastic day, and one we will remember for a very long time!

History Adventures!

In Owls class this term, our work has been influenced by the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. We have done lots of learning, and thought a lot about how Britain changed through these different eras. During one of our lessons, we all became Neolithic hunter-gatherers and we were all SO hungry! We had to go round the school, playground and field to investigate and locate some food!  The hunter-gatherers used their tools to either catch animals or find berries or nuts. After all of this food, we we not so hungry anymore! It was a very interesting food, as we had to think about how much time, energy and planning had to go into the hunter-gatherers getting food. 

Design and Technology

Our Design and Technology lessons this term were heavily influenced by our Stone Age to Iron Age topic. We have been carefully designing, creating and decorating jewellery from these eras. We very carefully created a blue print for our

jewellery, considering the materials, size and colour scheme we were going to use. After that we created our beads using clay or pasta, we then painted the jewellery and constructed it.