Year 4/5: Quartz: Gallery
Date: 10th Feb 2026 @ 11:43am
Pancake Racing was flipping marvellous. Thanks to Mrs Priestly for organising it - we all had such a good time!
Trip to Stroud Museum in the Park
Date: 3rd Nov 2025 @ 3:07pm
What a fantastic day we had visiting Stroud Museum in the Park. As part of our topic 'The Bronze Age', we took part in a range of activities to help us understand more about this era. The children handled pre-historic tools and had to guess what they were based some clues. We went on a pre-history discovery trail around the museum and took a walk around the new 'Earth, Fire and Iron' exhibition. In the afternoon, the children used Stone Age tools to cut up vegetables; this proved to be quite a challenge for a lot of us! By far, our most memorable experience was having the opportunity to work with two blacksmiths and create our own Bronze casting to bring home. I am sure you can agree this was a super trip for all of the children (and adults)!
Date: 22nd Oct 2025 @ 10:27am
What an amazing time we all had at Hooke Court. The children immersed themselves in all the activities and they had lots of fun learning many new skills. As a team, the children constructed a rope-pull system to get medical supplies across the moat. In the evening, they had a great time singing crazy songs around a campfire. One of their favourite activities was creating beautiful magnets using delicate shells. As part of the Tribal Kingdom day the children gathered logs to build dens, became tribes for the day by choosing their own tribe leader and came up with a tribal chant. By far the most exciting experience was making rockets and blasting them up into the sky! All adults were extremely impressed with the behaviour of the children and they made us all proud!
Date: 8th Sep 2025 @ 2:36pm
On my first day with the children, we took part in a lovely team building exercise. The children were given the challenge to design a new outfit for one of their peers using only the materials provided. I was extremely proud of how the children interacted with each other. The amazing communication and team work from each group showed me that this year is going to be a wonderfully supportive year with each other. I am sure you will agree that their creations were catwalk worthy!
Date: 8th Sep 2025 @ 2:29pm
We immersed ourselves into our new English unit this week. Our book is called 'How to wash a Woolly Mammoth' so we naturally had some very muddy teddies that needed a good clean! This lesson was a great starting input into thinking about the set of instructions needed to wash a pre-historic animal. It was also great fun :)
Quartz Class trip to Pitt Rivers
Date: 30th Apr 2025 @ 10:46am
What a fascinating day we had at the Pitt Rivers Museum!
After a fun journey on the coach to Oxford, we spent time exploring the Museum of Natural History where we saw a dodo skeleton, a piece of quartz the size of a watermelon and the bones of a T-Rex. Then, we had our packed lunches before entering into the dark and mysterious world of the Pitt Rivers Museum. Here we took park in a workshop and tour of the Benin and Africa collections. We were asked to find symbols of the Oba's power which included crocodiles, leopards, weapons and thrones. The Benin bronzes, Oba heads and the history of the collection will go onto inspire our topic learning for the rest of the term.
Date: 29th Jan 2025 @ 9:08am
We had a fantastic day energising with Qi Gong; tasting the flavours of China; making paper snakes to celebrate the year of the snake; and sculpting willow lanterns with our families. Our day ended with a parade around school complete with bells to ward of any bad spirits in the year ahead.
Date: 17th Dec 2024 @ 3:29pm
What a super day we've had, crafting, writing poems, cooking festive pizza and singing out hearts out.
Merry Christmas All!
Date: 24th Oct 2024 @ 10:07am
What an amazing time we all had creating wonderful memories at Hooke Court this year. The children were fantastic!
We took part in a range of exciting activities including; bridging a very wet moat; night search and rescue; tribal kingdom day; shell craft and rocket building!
The children all enjoyed some delicious food for breakfast, lunch and tea!
We are extremely proud of all the children for embracing their time away and hope you can agree from the photos that they have had a truly memorable experience and one that they will hopefully remember and cherish for a long time 😊
Date: 15th Oct 2024 @ 4:13pm
Today we gave the final performance of our class dance based on the Trojan war story.
We began by sailing the 1,000 ships across the sea from Sparta to Troy before building the walls of Troy to protect Helen within the city. Enemy dancers performed partner sequences in slow motion and real time and then we became the mighty war horse that ultimately helped the Spartan army to win the war.
We've had a fantastic term dancing and the children should be really proud of the confidence and quality of movement that they have shown.
Fun and Fashion for our First Day Back!
Date: 3rd Sep 2024 @ 4:23pm
What a fantastic first day we've had together!
We spent the morning playing class mate bingo, starting our new class dance and making paper outfits for each other. These tasks have not only enabled us to get to know each other but they have also given us a glimpse into what a respectful, kind and fun group of children this year's class are going to be.
Date: 22nd Jun 2024 @ 10:07pm
What an amazing day in the sunshine we had! We all had a great time seeing all the different animals with many of our favourites including the lions, giraffes, rhinos and the very cure binturong! We enjoyed taking a ride around the whole park on the train followed by eating a delicious ice-cream! It really was a fabulous day and a great end of year trip for us all!
Trip to M Shed Museum in Bristol
Date: 12th Mar 2024 @ 3:56pm
We had a brilliant day finding out about life in Anglo Saxon Britain. We explored replica artefacts from a Saxon home; handled grave goods from a Saxon King, warrior and farmer; and traded goods such as spices, metalwork and honey.
Quartz Class World Book Day 2024
Date: 7th Mar 2024 @ 12:28pm
What a wonderful day celebrating our love of reading we have had! All the children looked amazing, well done to them and to all the parents. We have had a lovely day taking part in 'speedy reader', a World Book Day quiz set up by Miss Nesbitt and we even attempted to learn McGrammar's 'Readers are leaders' song!
Date: 4th Dec 2023 @ 4:12pm
We had an amazing week focusing on Properties and Changes of Materials. The children could not believe that every morning we did two different experiments.
We compared materials according to their properties, we tested materials based on their thermal conductivity, and gave reasons for their use. We then thought about how and why materials dissolve, and how some form solutions and others mixtures. We were set a task to separate mixtures and solutions, after am accident had happened in a local suppermarket. On the final day we created a gas!!! By using bicarbonate of soda and vinegar we saw how these created a chemical change when they were mixed together.
Date: 22nd Nov 2023 @ 2:50pm
What a great week we have had completing an AMAZING and OUTSTANDING 11,301 'Bearpees'! We are so proud of you all. Thank you to all who sponsored the children or donated to Children in Need.
We had a great day baking and decorating 'Pudsey' biscuits (yum yum).
Date: 17th Oct 2023 @ 2:43pm
WOW! What an amazing time we all had at Hooke Court this year. The children were fantastic and made it very easy for us adults so thank you children!
The children took part in a range of wonderful activities including: bridging the moat, night search and rescue, tribal kingdom day, shell craft and rocket building!
As always, the first night resulted in many excited children taking a while to get off to sleep but come night two they were all ready for their beds after the evening activity.
We all enjoyed some delicious food for breakfast, lunch and tea!
I am sure you will agree from looking at the photos and videos that the children (and adults) had a truly memorable experience away and one that they will hopefully remember and cherish for a long time!
Date: 16th Oct 2023 @ 7:53pm
Today, we had a brilliant afternoon visiting the beautiful Slade Farm. We arrived in time for a picnic lunch and then we got busy making rafts and 3D landscapes using only natural materials. There was plenty of teamwork, problem solving and creativity all around.
Date: 29th Sep 2023 @ 12:12pm
Our new English unit is based on the book 'Stig of the Dump' by Clive King. This week we immersed ourselves into the unit through using Lego to build Stig's den, thinking about what items he would have inside. We then focused on our grammar looking at using the correct punctuation for direct speech. We had a super fun lesson where we learnt a new song to help us remember what we need to include and the week ended with us becoming Stig, engaging in a conversation between himself and Barney. This resulted in a final piece of work which showed a conversation between Sig and Barney in which the direct speech was punctuated correctly.
Date: 25th Sep 2023 @ 3:34pm
We had a bright and sunny day at Nympsfield Long Barrow. We spent the morning exploring the barrow, making observational drawings and writing poetry.
Date: 22nd Sep 2023 @ 12:29pm
This week, we introduced our new times tables boxes which are full of great activities to help us practise our mixed times tables.
Date: 22nd Sep 2023 @ 12:27pm
This week, the children have enjoyed using our wonderful reading corner to enjoy a book or two :)
Date: 19th Sep 2023 @ 4:25pm
To help us understand how bronze objects were made in the Bronze Age, we made our own plaster cast tiles. We had a fantastic time and the results were beautiful. Have a look at the photos to find out about the process we followed.
Date: 6th Sep 2023 @ 9:33pm
What a pleasure it was to welcome the new Quartz Class into their new classroom today. To help us get to know eachother a little better, we made and showcased a fabulous collection of outfits all made out of paper and tape! It was wonderful to see the creative energy and bravery that the children brought to the challenge.
Date: 15th Jun 2023 @ 12:09pm
The children and adults in Quartz class had a great afternoon trying out a range of puzzles during our Geometry session. Well done to all the children for perservering and acomlishing so many of the tricky puzzles on offer.
