Gardening Club

Our Gardening Club continues to thrive thanks to the generous efforts of a team of committed parents.  To read more, please visit our school website:


http://www.greatgaddesden.herts.sch.uk/

Drama Workshops

This year, we are hosting half-termly drama workshops to support improvements in Writing as well as to raise the profile of 'The Arts' across the school.

The workshops have been delivered by Sophia of the Hurst Childrens' Theatre Group and have been thoroughly enjoyed by all!  The increase in confidence that we have seen has been excellent and we have seen some super improvisation skills.

In the photos below, children in Years 5 & 6 were taking on the role of annoying members of the public at a bus-stop.  It is fair to say that they really got into character!

World Book Day 2016!

Thursday 3rd March was World Book Day and children at Great Gaddesden CofE School enjoyed a host of reading based activities including:

• Dressing up as their favourite book characters.
• 'Buddy Reading'.
• A book swap.

It was great to see so many children inspired by recent texts they had read (particularly the great number of children in Years 3 & 4 who have been inspired by David Walliams' Gangsta Granny).

Sharing our Learning

This week, we had our first class assembly of the term with children in Nursery and Reception sharing a wonderful performance of the much-loved story:  We're Going on a Bear Hunt.  The performance was an excellent display of acting skills, confidence and memory (the entire story was re-told!)

Children in Nursery and Reception have been inspired by their recent trip to the theatre to see a production of 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' and I have every confidence that the performance we saw on Wednesday morning would give the production they saw at the Radlett Centre a run for its money!

Mental Maths Progress

This academic year, children have been working hard to improve their rapid recall of mental maths facts.  Each week, children in Years 2 - 6 complete as much of a times table grid as they possibly can within a 4 minute time period.  Awards are handed out for the following mile-stones:

2x, 5x and 10x tables

50% of the grid

75% of the grid and

100% of the grid

Aaron, in Year 2, has been working incredibly hard to beat his score each week and today achieved an excellent result of 72%!  All children achieving 75% or more are eligible to compete against the staff in a half-termly mental maths challenge!  Not far to go Aaron ...

Great Gaddesden's Got Talent!

Earlier this term, a suggestion was made (via the School Council's suggestion boxes) that we should host a 'Great Gaddesden's Got Talent' competition.  The School Council decided this was a great idea and over the last week auditions have been taking place at lunch-times, with Year 6 pupils as judges.  Auditions included a wide range of acts, including singing, dancing, playing musical instruments and comedy.  Huge congratulations to our seven finalists (Luke, Fallon, Maddie, Olivia, Fenella, Eleanor and Bradley) who performed in front of the whole school this morning and thoroughly impressed us with their talents.  The judges had a very difficult decision to make as the quality of the acts was incredibly high.  After some careful deliberation, they decided that Bradley was victorious with his excellent rendition of a Justin Bieber classic!

Limericks

Children in Years 3 & 4 have been learning about how to write limericks, using the rhyming pattern:
AA, BB, A.

There once was a girl called Grace,
Who took part in a sack race.
She then climbed a wall
But began to fall
And ended up breaking her face!

By Immy

There once was a boy called Fin,
Who was incredibly thin.
He found a huge rock
And put it in his sock
Then he got stuck in a bin!

By Finley

Immy and Finley have captured the humour in their limericks perfectly!  Well done to both of you.