Welcome to our July 2017 Manor Road Round-up!

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1 Welcome to our July 2017 Manor Road Round-up! Welcome to our final Round Up for this year! Every year we seem to arrive at the summer holidays in a flash! This term has been another busy one. We started off with everybody working together to plant all the wonderful donations we received from you on our plant day. Our grounds look really fantastic this year and the children have loved being involved in helping out with the gardening. We have been on several visits and had visitors in school too. These have included visits to Cuerden Valley, Martin Mere and Walton-le-Dale High School. Our Year 4 children won the award for the best school for the second year running when they visited St. Michael s earlier this half term. Our Choir have also been very active, taking part in two public performances and representing our school extremely well in both. We have also been extremely successful in our sporting competitions over the term. For the first time ever we were chosen to represent Chorley at the Youth Games in Blackpool! At this event our school came 4 th out of all the schools in Lancashire Orienteering! The Summer Fair was a great success with the Year 6 children doing a brilliant job of planning, marketing and running their stalls. The children were extremely responsible and a pleasure to work with! This term we have three members of staff leaving us. Mrs Lucas is off to explore the world, Miss Shaw takes up a position in a school in Aintree and Mrs Russell is taking up a position teaching French in local primary schools. We would like to thank all of them for their hard work and commitment to Manor Road. We hope that you all have a fantastic summer. We wish all our Year 6 children all the best at High School and look forward to seeing our new starters and everyone else again in September. Happy holidays!! Summer term is always very exciting when you are just 4 or 5 years old! The term began with some lovely weather and we definitely made the most of it and got stuck in with some great gardening. Thanks to all the lovely donations, we were able to plant beautiful flowers all over our school grounds. It still makes us smile thinking of our hard work. We have been busy writing stories this term you may have seen some snippets of our writing in the windows of our classroom. We are becoming great story tellers and authors, with wonderful illustrations to match. In Science this term, we have learnt all about the human body. We were able to draw some diagrams and label parts of the body with organs. We even made a playdoh skeleton! Following our scientific interests, we looked at the life cycle of a plant, how it grows and how we can help it. As the new reception children for 2017 began their taster sessions, we have all had a turn being extra teaching assistants! It really helps the teachers to have so many sensible helpers to show the new children what to do in class and around school. We have been working very hard trying our hand at the Year 1 Maths and it s safe to say that we re almost there! It has been a very busy term and we are all definitely ready for a holiday but we can t wait to see what Year 1 will bring!

2 This term our Reception children have carried on joining in with all the lovely activities that their friends in Ash Class have experienced. One of these has been the introduction of Maths No Problem taster sessions, preparing them for Year 1. We have really enjoyed being all grown up and talking about numbers with our friends. For Year 1, our themes have been The Great Outdoors and Robots. The Great Outdoors started with a treasure hunt around the school grounds. We found all sorts of weird and wonderful things, but weren t quite sure what they were all made of, so decided to learn all about different materials. We observed them closely, compared them and tested them for things like strength and flexibility. We found out that material isn t just cloth and that some materials are natural, whereas others are man-made. All of this helped us in DT to make brilliant boats that were waterproof, using willow as a frame. In Geography, we looked at features of the local area and of our school. We used Digimaps and created our own maps. We used our maps and what we had learned to write some fantastic information posters which were given to the new parents of children starting school in September. Our theme Robots began with the story of The Lone Robot. We watched a short animation and eventually wrote our own books based on the story. It was great fun making the front covers look like robots too! In Science, we found out how we are very different to robots. We have explored our senses with Mrs Armitage and were all very brave when we had a blindfolded food-tasting session. We have sung some lovely songs in Music with Mrs Mason and Miss Read too! Phew! We need a holiday now! What another busy term we have had! In the first half of the term, we worked really hard for our SATs and everyone was proud of how we persevered. For our Science topics, we produced some excellent group work while learning about food chains and life cycles (with some help from a rather plump tadpole called Henry). We also investigated how seeds germinate and tested our theories by growing grass seed under different conditions. This half term we have enjoyed flooding the classroom by testing how different materials could fill a hole in a bucket or not! Also this term we have designed and made puppets in our Design Technology lessons, many of us acquiring new sewing skills. In the last few weeks, we have been finding out about seaside resorts in England, discovering how they began in Victorian times and how they have evolved. We then went on to make fantastic PowerPoint presentations advertising the attractions of various resorts, which some of us chose to to our friends and relatives. We have also produced some stunning seaside artwork. In Maths, we have been working with money and getting to grips with bar modelling. Our writing skills have shone in our Mr Man stories, where we have written in the style of Roger Hargreaves and created some very interesting and entertaining characters. We have also had great fun with nonsense poetry and tongue twisters. Now we are enjoying all our Health & Fitness Week activites and looking forward to a relaxing summer break and a new start in Year 3!

3 In Year 3, we began the Summer Term with The Romans. Our lead subjects for this unit were Geography, History and Art. In History, we looked at the Roman invasion of Britain and how it was hugely significant in shaping the British nation. The learning with the theme focused on the settlement in Britain by Romans and the impact of British life and society that occurred as a result of this. We carried out research about the Celts and learnt that they were the people who lived in Britain before the Romans. We found out who Boudicca was and what she did that was so significant. In order to create cross-curricular links and complete our unit with an exciting an well-presented piece of work, we linked our research of the Celtic and Roman life to our English topic of Non- Chronological Reports. At the end of our Roman unit, we used the laptops in order to collect and edit pictures and created our reports on A3 paper. In Geography, we studied a region of the United Kingdom. The region we chose to base our research on was the Lake District. We studied key aspects of human and physical geography in the Lake District and considered geographical similarities and differences between the Lakes and other regions of the world or the UK. As part of this topic, we had to investigate what makes a National Park. We looked carefully at what makes each National Park special and compared a variety of parks. To complete the unit, we investigated the challenges facing the National Parks, especially the Lake District. We based their research on challenges such as tourism, climate change, habitats and communities. In Art, we spent time investigating Roman mosaics. We found pictures of the floors of Roman buildings and saw that they were often richly decorated with mosaics. In order to create our own designs, we looked into the history of mosaics, and found out that many mosaics captured scenes of history and everyday Roman life; we then designed and created our own mosaics. In the second part of the Summer Term, our theme has been How does your garden grow? The lead subject for this unit was Science. Throughout the unit we learnt how to identify, locate and describe the functions of different parts of flowering plants: roots, stem/trunk, leaves and flowers. We explored the requirements of plants for life and growth and how they vary from plant to plant. We also investigated the way in which water is transported within plants and explored the lifecycle of flowering plants, including pollination, seed formation and seed dispersal. In English, we used our knowledge of pollination in order to create explanation texts. These texts used a variety of conjunctions and include diagrams and illustrations to support our written work. We shared our texts with our peers and help one another to make improvements. We also created adventure stories based on The Magic Faraway Tree, sharing our stories in class and spending an afternoon creating targets for our next long piece of writing. We have spent the last few weeks of Maths looking at fractions, shapes and perimeter. We have completed our end of year revision activities and took our Maths No Problem test papers and did exceptionally well! All in all, we have had a hard working and enjoyable year in Year 3. All of us have worked hard and pulled together as a team, supporting one another across the curriculum. We are now looking forward to a well-earned rest!

4 Who can believe that we have reached the end of another academic year already? We have had an action packed, fun-filled term, making the most of some lovely weather whenever possible. In Science, we have been exploring our school grounds on the hunt for invertebrates in their habitats, photographing them, classifying them and even creating our own, especially adapted minibeasts. As part of Science this term, we were also lucky enough to visit St. Michael s High School for a Science Show and to compete in a Spaghetti and Marshmallow Tower Challenge! A team of our boys won with a tower measuring 71cm tall! We have had a very busy term in Maths No Problem, learning about measures, area and geometry amongst other topics. Our English this term has covered writing in role as characters from The Mousehole Cat, writing water-based Haikus, creating information texts about Egypt, and developing speech between Brer-Rabbit-style characters. Our History topic was based on Ancient Egypt and its gods and goddesses, its agriculture, lifestyle and arts. We particularly enjoyed sharing an archaeological dig and many other activities with parents on our themed afternoon. PE lessons this term have covered athletics-based activities such as javelin, triple jump and running as well as rounders skills, keeping us all fit and active. Musically speaking, we enjoyed creating our own water-cycle songs, linking percussion instruments with this Science topic. We also had a lot of fun learning a football chant song with a difference, imagining different pets as various teams! All in all, an exciting and productive term, after which we are all ready for a rest! At the start of the Summer Term, we started to explore the topic Amazon Adventure. We looked closely at the different people, animals and layers that make up the Amazon rainforest. We made moving mechanical toys linked to some of our favourite animals, thinking carefully about different cams and mechanisms to make our animals move. The final results were fantastic! Our final topic of the year has been Faster, Higher, Stronger, where we have learnt about the Ancient Greeks. We have had lots of opportunities to research famous Greeks and how they have contributed to life today, such as Greek words, the alphabet and the Olympic Games. We have enjoyed learning about the different Greek gods, in particular from Maz Evan s hilarious book Who Let the Gods Out? We even had a go at creating our own Greek gods with gods looking after games consoles, baking and teachers! Along with Year 6, we have spent many weeks practising for our production, An Inspector Calls. We worked really hard to learn our lines and the challenging songs which made sure the final shows were fantastic. Be prepared to see some of us in the West End soon! We were also fortunate to attend a high school experience day at Walton-le-Dale High School. All of the members of staff dressed as Roald Dahl characters, with pupils taking part in Open Mind, Science and DT lessons linked to Dahl s books. We unanimously agreed that using a Bunsen burner was our favourite part of the day, burning George s Marvellous Medicines to see which colour they would burn. I hope that all of Year 5 have an enjoyable and restful Summer break, ready for the challenges and surprises of Year 6 in September. I wish everybody success in the future!

5 Well, who can believe a whole year has passed! Year 6 cannot believe how quickly this year has gone and we ve had a fantastic year. We ve worked really hard and once the SATs were out of the way we could have a little more fun! In English, we have been writing stories for children in Oak Class. We ve listened to what the children would like to read and included lots of illustrations and made the books as exciting as could be. Year 6 enjoyed making them and Oak Class definitely seemed to enjoy reading them. In Maths, we finished Maths No Problem and moved on to our project of Theme Park Maths. We designed a theme park whilst sticking to a budget and had to carefully decide how many major and minor rides we would include. After that, visitors were attracted to our theme parks and we had to decide how much we were going to charge as an entrance fee. Once this was decided, we then worked out how much our theme park was costing to run per day. Finally we totalled up how much money we were making each day from the gate price, cafes and shops and how much it was costing to run our theme park, working out our total profit. We definitely have some future entrepreneurs in the class and some very successful theme parks! We have also worked hard to organise and run our fantastic Summer Fair to raise money for Manor Road School. Alongside some old favourites such as tombolas and refreshments, we came up with ideas for some fabulous new stalls, including Guess the Football Badge, Crazy Sand and Pin the Quiff on Mr Brown! We informed everyone at school about our plans in an assembly and got everyone excited about visiting our fair. Thanks to all our wonderful parents for their generous donations, and then for spending lots of money at the fair, we made a fantastic profit of 1,147.85! We have spent most of the afternoons recently preparing for our end of year production and it was a huge success. We definitely have some budding West End actors and actresses in the class! Recently we have been busy preparing for the Leavers Assembly so we hope you all enjoy it! It s been a fantastic year and I hope you all have an amazing summer and a great start to high school. Good luck everyone! This term School Council and Eco Council joined forces to take on Challenge Ground Force. Team work has definitely paid off as the school is looking amazing. Herbs were gathered for the summer Fair to raise profits for the school. We took part in a national survey called What s Under Your Feet?, counting and measuring all the invertebrates we found in the soil and sent the results to British Trust for Ornithology. We cleaned up the pond area and made a cosy home for the ducks. We submitted a different take on the Clayton-le-Woods Scarecrow Festival this year with our very own Stickman and his Lady Love. We have just received notification that our entry has won a fabulous 2 nd Prize! The Eco Council have also undertaken a Switch Off Week where posters were made for each class to remind everyone to switch off electrical items when not in use. We then monitored the use of electrical items and lights in each class.

6 What a fantastic term for Music at Manor Road! The Manor Road Choir welcomed Year 3 s for the first time, with the choir exceeding 50 members! Following the Manor Road Choir s success at the Last Choir Singing competition last term, we were invited to sing at the Thwaite s Empire Theatre, as part of internationally acclaimed singer Duncan Heather s current show. The choir performed fantastically, however I think it is time for Mr Brown to hang up his wig (and terrible dancing) until next year! The choir also performed at the Lancashire Big Show, a collection of schools and music groups from across the county performing a range of specially selected pieces of music. For many of our pupils, it was their first experience of performing to a big audience, and they did a fantastic job! Back in school, pupils learning an instrument have been able to showcase their talents to a wider audience once again, with guitarists performing to the whole school during assembly time and at the recent Year 5 and 6 Picnic in the Park with other Alliance pupils. It was a fantastic opportunity to work with other pupils even if the rain tried to stop us! Year 5 and 6 pupils have been busy rehearsing for their annual production, this year entitled An Inspector Calls. With so many songs and lines to learn, the pupils were excellent, showcasing their talents to sold out audiences on both evenings. All of the pupils were brilliant singers, and some rather formidable school inspectors! You even had some of the teachers worrying! There might be an upcoming summer break, however our attention now looks towards Christmas, where we aim to make this the best music making term yet! Wow! What an amazing year we have had for sports at Manor Road. We have entered many competitions and run many clubs including gymnastics, sportshall athletics, cross country, football for both girls and boys, netball, tag rugby, dance, quad kids, Clayton Cup, Clayton & Whittle Sports, bounce-ball, zumba, street dance, tri golf, tennis and orienteering. All finished off with a chance to represent Team Chorley in the Youth Sports Games at Blackpool. We ran our own Dance Academy at school for the first time and were delighted that two of our girls were chosen to be part of the Gifted and Talented Dance Academy. We have gained a variety of bronze, silver and gold medals in cross country, quad kids, gymnastics, dance and orienteering. The support we have had from parents with organisation and transport to competitions has been amazing and we are very grateful for all your efforts. We are very lucky to have such talented children at our school and we have been proud to take them to each and every competition and festival. We have seen children take up new sports and challenges out of school, achieving medals, trophies and certificates in many different sporting activities. Swimming has been a huge success in both Year 1 and Year 5 as we have watched some scared, nervous children persevere and overcome challenges to become confident swimmers. We are delighted that we have again achieved the Sainsbury s School Games Initiative Gold Award for all our sporting endeavours.