St Frideswide Primary School

Explorers reflect and review

6 February 2026 (by Beth Curtis (Beth))

Stop motion animations created by Shackleton!

As mathematicians, Shackleton have been focusing on improper fractions and mixed numbers, and using these in a range of calculations. Cook have been looking at pie charts, understanding what the segments mean, using percentages to support this, and using the information given to solve questions. Beagle have been working on filling their gaps and finishing their work on the seven times table.

As writers, Beagle have been making their matchbox diary and will be writing their own matchbox diaries next week. The children have been invited to bring in small mementos or photographs to go into (or be photocopied to go into) their own matchboxes. Shackleton and Cook have been studying the poem “Oxford” by Tom Lovatt-Williams. This poem has a huge array of descriptive language, all about familiar places. We have been using the language to develop our own descriptions, focusing on expanded noun phrases, relative clauses, and personification.

As historians and geographers, Endeavour and Endurance have been focusing on migration, in particular thinking about the responses from the resident communities to the migrant communities. We looked at case studies such as Cable Street and Notting Hill, and the ways in which the communities unified through cultural celebrations. Beagle have focused on the push and pull factors, thinking about why people move.

In Shackleton, over the last couple of weeks, we have been working on stop animation with Fiona. We looked at stop animations such as Wallace and Gromit, alongside simpler versions. We learnt lots of different art techniques to think about details in the scenes, before designing our own using a range of media, and design technology techniques, and then created our own stories, which we recorded on the ipads. Fiona said that these were absolutely fabulous!

Home work this week:

Beagle