After a year of learning, lockdown and laughter, the students in Hokusai wanted to share their thoughts and memories about the year.
Our start
I remember when we started year 3. We were all excited to move on with our education and experience new people and a new teacher. Our first two topics were community and the Festival of Britain, which taught us how special the school is. Although we couldn’t leave the school for any trips, we went on a tour around the building like it was a museum and found out about Peggy Angus, The Exhibition of Architecture and other cool information. We had a fantastic time learning, and we learnt about light and dark in science. We go to make shadow puppets and use torches. (Afsheen, Ahmed, Aisha, Maryan)
When we studied Stone Age-Iron Age, we made a caveman cartoon with animation and made up a new caveman song for a brave hunter who was looking for food. (Fatima)
Christmas
In maths, we used models called bar models with our maths. We used them for addition and subtraction and it was useful. At Christmas, we learnt how Christmas is celebrated in Brazil and shared it with the school. We practised a Brazilain Christmas show and recorded it for the school and our blog: Did you see it? (Aysha, Sawda, Yusuf)
Lockdown
When lockdown came, we felt a bit alone and apart, but the fact that we learned as a class online made us feel together and united. It felt as though I was in class with my classmates. Our learning continued on Chromebooks and other devices but it was important to take breaks from the screen. The lessons about the Human Body taught us about bones, muscles, nutrition and different skeletons. (Aisha, Jamila, Sadiya)
Returning to School
We were so glad to see each other again after home learning so we had a lot to say – I enjoyed being with everyone again. Our topic was the mountains and volcanoes of the world and there was new people and information to learn. I found out that Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hilary were the first recorded people to climb Mount Everest. In Art and RE we created Diwali rangoli patterns and lanterns called Diyas. (Rida)
The Summer Term
We have done a lot in the Summer term. It feels like it has gone very quickly, but it has been full of amazing surprises. We made a huge mess while baking bread, but we cleaned it up at the end. We were in groups of four taking turns with the ingredients, and we all mixed the dough. We ate the bread the next morning after the register with jam and butter, and it was scrumptious. We also got the chance to go on a top secret mission this term with the HOPE beacon and a spy called Anne. It was delivered by a secret agency, and our class named ourselves “The Stupendous Hoknets Club” for our mission. We did extremely secret activities that taught us about keeping stress down and even got to write our own profiles. I really enjoyed this year, and I hope to have fun in year 4. (Tasnim A, Tasnim R, Rida)
Favourite Moments
- Learning that gratitude is part of having a “great attitude” in P4C. (Tasnim R)
- Year 3 was so much fun and I enjoyed the final week the most. We had sports day, the summer fete and an end-of-year party. (Aysha, Myles)
- My favourite memory of the year was doing the Now Press Play activity based on the Romans. It was a fun experience that made us feel like we were really there in the Roman Empire long ago. (Aisha)
- In the summer term, I remember finding out about different tastes and doing a taste test with different flavours. (Sawda)
- Although we couldn’t go on trips outside school, we still did virtual trips. We had workshops from the London Museum and did online trips about mountains, Safety Seymour, Romans and plants. We also used our school gardens to do lessons with the gardener. (Ahmed)
- My favourite memory was the song “Dem Bones” in our topic on the human body. I loved this year. (Fatima)
And . . .
We also said “Merci” to Madame Belaloui for helping us learn French all year:
We will be in year four in September. We will miss our old teacher and teaching assistant, but we know it doesn’t have to be a sad time. The class is looking forward to joining with their new teacher and continuing to learn. (Afsheen, Aisha)