Year 4 have been working incredibly hard since returning from the Christmas break. This week, we have been creating adverts. We began by learning the features of persuasive adverts using FREDEPTORS; which is a tool to help us remember what we need to include. There are things like repetition, emotive language, exaggeration and the power of three. In pairs, pupils were asked to design their own product and then produce a paper advertisement using some features from FREDEPTORS. They then worked together to produce a television advert to try to sell us their product. They were all phenomenal and very persuasive! Later on in the week, we linked this work to our class text, ‘Danny Champion Of The World’ when the children created adverts using PowerPoint to try to persuade their audience to buy Danny’s caravan. Well done Year 4!

To bring a superb mathematical conclusion to the end of last term, we launched an exciting inter-class maths competition on Sumdog during the last fortnight of school in December and the first week of the holidays. The children were incredibly competitive and fully engaged throughout! We are proud to announce the winning classes: 1st place – Year 3 AH, 2nd place – Year 1 JB, and 3rd place – Year 5 IP. As well as sharpening their maths skills, the competition created a wonderfully positive and enthusiastic atmosphere.

Well done to everyone who took part!

We’re excited to see our pupils building confidence and speed with Sumdog and Times Table Rock Stars—two fantastic platforms for boosting maths fluency in a fun and engaging way! A huge congratulations to Alek M and Muawiyah, who have achieved the incredible Rock Hero status on Times Table Rock Stars. This means they can answer questions in under one second—what an amazing achievement!

Muawiyah’s top tip for others: “Think quick! Practising makes you used to the questions.” Gabe adds that it helps to “block out distractions—practice until you don’t even have to think.” And Omar’s advice? “If you play every day, you’ll get faster and faster.”

Meanwhile, Year 1 and Year 2 have been enjoying an internal Sumdog competition to practise maths skills in a fun way. At the time of going to press, Emily N was in the lead—well done, Emily!

Keep practising, everyone—your next milestone could be just around the corner!

Our recent Maths Investigation Day was a fantastic opportunity for pupils to develop reasoning skills, collaborate with peers, and make connections to global topics—all while having fun! Reception explored creative ways to make numbers 1, 2, and 3 through hands-on activities like Beanbag Hoops, Animal Families, and Dot Investigators while Year 1 explored estimation and measurement by guessing and weighing dinosaur models. Year 2 linked their global topic on bees to maths by designing bee tangrams and investigating properties of 2D shapes. Year 4 tackled the Japanese puzzle game Sudoku, applying logic and perseverance to complete grids. Year 5 and 6 worked collaboratively on challenging domino puzzles, The day was filled with curiosity, problem-solving, and confident mathematical thinking!