So nice to see you all!

Hello Cheetahs!

I just wanted to say a massive well done to you all on your marvelous performance of The Lion King!  My family and I were so impressed by your very first performance on Tuesday- you did a fantastic job capturing each character's personality!  The songs you sang gave me goosebumps.  I hope you all enjoyed the acting as much as the audience enjoyed watching you at work.

It also looked like you had a superb time on Sports Day!  Thank you for cheering on our little boy on his very first Sports Day race- he could hardly wait to get going!  It was so great to see you all having so much fun and getting some good exercise at the same time- I hope you continue to enjoy using the track right up until the last day of school.  One of my favourite things I witnessed on Friday was how supportive all of the teams were of their teammates.  That was some admirable sportsmanship cheering each other on all afternoon and it makes me smile!  Of course, I also thoroughly enjoyed the Dad's race...  as my very own Mr. Pell crashed over the finish line! 

All in all, it was so nice to see you all having such a great time as the school year draws to a close!  Keep smiling & be the best friends you can be!

-Mrs. Pell

¡Adios Cheetahs!

Cheetahs, I can't believe my last day with you has come to an end!  We have been having a marvellous year, and because of you, I really don't want to go!  I hope you thoroughly enjoy your last half term of the year.  Work hard, play safely, be kind to each other!

I will be coming in to visit with Baby Pell as soon as we can.  I'd love to watch your big Lion King performance, and hopefully Baby Pell is agreeable to this (otherwise I'll have to watch the DVD).  Work hard on your lines and your songs & dances! You'll be great!

Thank you for all of the well wishes and for all of your hard work this year!  Year 4's, you will be missed as you move up to the top of the school (but I'll see you eventually for our Spanish & DT classes).  And Year 3's, I will see you a little later into your 4th year!  Be sure to teach our new Year 3's how to make our classroom so wonderful.

Goodbye for now Cheetahs!  Have a very happy summer!

-Mrs. Pell

Wallace and Gromit's Cracking Contraptions!

This week in Cheetahs Class, we have been creating explanations for some of Wallace's incredible inventions: the autochef, snoozatron and the 525 crackervac!  The children thought very carefully about what they needed to include in their explanations and devised a success criteria to follow.  The children then worked in small groups to prepare a presentation, giving a verbal explanation of how/why the machine worked.  We then used the Ipads to record these...

Success Criteria

1. Clear title of what is being explained

2. Opening statement to introduce the process

3. clear steps to show how or why something occurs

4. In order of events

5. Conjunctions used to link steps e.g After that, finally

6. Specific, technical vocabulary used

How did they do?  

Next week, the children will become inventors themselves - designing their own contraptions, creating blueprints and writing clear explanations!

A Marvellous Month of Maths!

Check out our Mathematical Magicians in Cheetahs class over the last month!  And this is just what they have been achieving on a Thursday and Friday!  Wowee!

Alfie can translate co-ordinates!

Connor has really advanced his time telling skills!

Ethan even amazed himself with his awesome area knowledge!

Gracie knows her fractions vocabulary!

And Gracie has a great sense of spacial awareness!

Mellissa is highly skilled at solving advanced co-ordinates problems!

Taylor can show all of his working out to solve perimeter problems!

Well done Cheetahs, you've really impressed me this month!  Keep up the hard work!
-Mrs. Pell

Splashing Around!

Cheetahs' Class had their first swimming session last week and impressed everyone with their talents!  All the children demonstrated that they could climb in and out of the pool safely and everyone was able to put their face in the water and blow bubbles - this might sound like an easy thing to do but is all part of building up your confidence in the water and is the first step in becoming a competent, skilled swimmer.

Mrs Mutimer (the swimming instructor) was thrilled with all the children and commented on how smiley and well-mannered the children of Catfield always are - well done Cheetahs!

Home Learning

I was absolutely blown away by the home learning tasks that were handed in after the Easter break - they were amazing!  As a class, we looked at everyone's books, sharing in each other's successes, which the children really enjoyed.  Afterwards each child chose his/her favourite piece to have photocopied and added to the home learning display board in the classroom - please feel free to come in and take a look!

Welcome back Cheetahs' class!

We have had a fantastic start to the week, with everyone working incredibly hard.


In Maths this week we have been thinking more about equivalent fractions; learning how to recognise and show fractions that have the same value and how to write these.


If you want to do some more work on fractions at home then have a look at the games on the following website: http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Flash.aspx?f=Fractionsv7.


In English this week, we have started work on a new book called 'Until I met Dudley'. This is a fantastic book if you want to find out more about how everyday things really work.

Roger McGough's witty text offers many weird and wonderful explanations of how various household appliances work which are then followed by the actual facts, as explained by Dudley the dog.

Children began thinking about the purpose of an explanation text and what the key features are in preparation for writing their own over the coming weeks.

What a wonderful end to the Spring Term!

Cheetahs, it's been quite a busy half-term in our class with so many wonderful events and special dates to mark! 

For the 100th Day of School, you made a superb display of 100 things you like about your school, which I very much enjoyed reading!  I was so impressed with the work you did on your chosen task for 100 Things That Make Me Happy.  You all have so many wonderful things going on in your lives!  Some of you were even able to find the good in feeling under-the-weather by thinking of things that make you happy even when you're stuck at home with a bug!  What an excellent perspective on life!

I've been thoroughly impressed with what our first 2 DT groups have produced with our new project:  Designing a new cereal!  I think we've got some students with a real knack for marketing at our school!  Thank you parents for all of the boxes you've brought it, the children have really been enjoying using their imaginations to create a new, tempting brand of cereal.  As always, I can't wait to see what they come up with next!

We had loads of fun on World Book Day and the Cheetahs looked incredible!  Every single one of us was dressed up (some of us had to dial down the craziness of the outfit for parent's evening thereafter)!  Thank you for all of your creativity and enthusiasm!  I hope you enjoy reading the Book Report Dice that the children made that day all about their favourite books!  They did a stunning job!

I heard great things about the Children's Sing to Sign event and hope it inspires the children to try to learn some more sign language and share it with us at school.

I hope all of the Mums in our class enjoyed your Mother's Day letters!  The children worked on their writing in paragraphs & challenging themselves to use a varied amount of punctuation (to earn a higher Kung-Fu Punctuation belt on our class display).  They thought really carefully about special memories they have with you and about how lucky they are to have you- they even made me well up!
We had a most enjoyable Science Federation Day over at Sutton school as well!  From making rocket mice, to bug hunting, to creative bean growing, to bottle rockets and a special scientific presentation- we were both enlightened and worn out by the time we got back to Catfield!  I wonder if anyone else has looked into purchasing "rainbow glasses"?  That was incredible!

Our Red Nose day dress-down was quite a big success as well- our Cheetahs love getting into the spirit of things!  Thank you for all of your donations for the charity!

I hope that the children shared the story of their Healthy Eating Theatre assembly with you.  It was quite the comedic show!  Can any of you remember the 5 food groups that were discussed?  Great job on the surveys about your most recent visits to a local doctor's surgery, hospital and or dentist!  They hope to make your next visit even more pleasant from reading all of your feedback about the activities in the waiting room and so on!

The children have been learning about the names of body parts and how to describe when something is wrong in Spanish & I've been most impressed with their improved pronunciations!  In Maths on Thurs/Fridays we have wrapped up our unit on measures and are now revisiting telling the time.  Do practice reading those clocks at home, especially analogue ones!  Parents, you can test your children's skills by asking them to tell you the time, then tell you what the time will be in 45 minutes, for example.  You could even quiz them on their knowledge of the 24 hour clock!  No time like the present!

A very big well done to Karla & Jack for their fantastic Reading test results in Year 3!
And another big well done to  Isabella, Grace, Connor, Alfie & Archie for their high achievements on their Year 4 Reading test! 

As you can see, we have been EXTREMELY busy in year 3/4 this half term!  I hope that everyone enjoys a well deserved break over Easter!  Play safely & enjoy the great outdoors Cheetahs!

-Mrs. Pell