Y5 Curriculum Day – Earth Day

Today Y5 celebrated Earth Day. We were tasked to look at the issue of ‘littering’ and how this impacted on the Earth. We decided to go on a litter pick around the school grounds. Due to the amount of litter found the children felt compelled to do more so they decided to write letters to their local MP raising this issue within their community. In the afternoon Y5 met up with their Y2 buddies class and helped them complete their ‘No – Mow May’ posters. Calling upon the school and all garden owners and green space managers not to mow during May – liberating their lawns and providing a space for nature.

Y5 Who Let the Gods Out

As part of our Ancient Greek topic Y5 have been reading the book ‘Who Let the Gods Out’ by Maz Evans. As a focus in English we have written a newspaper report, the Daily Argus, about the escape of Prisoner Forty-Two from underneath Stonehenge. The children have really enjoyed interviewing some of the characters and quoting these in their reports. Unsurprisingly, the character Mrs Porshly-Plum was a year group favourite.

F1 Jaguar Club

The three teams have been working each week after school preparing for the F1 Jaguar reginal finals. The children had to design, make, assemble, test and race their cars at the reginal heats. They also had to prepare a presentation about their work. In order to gain sponsorship the children wrote to local businesses and were then able to buy their own merchandise with their very own logo’s on.

All three teams did exceptionally well. Winning awards across all categories. Two of our teams were extremely successful and are heading to the National championships in Leeds!

Y5 Ancient Greek Day

To launch our new history topic, Ancient Greeks. Y5 had a day of cooking. We prepared and cooked Melomakarona (which are Greek honey-spice cookies), chicken kebabs with roasted vegetables and tzatziki dip and a Greek salad. The children worked tirelessly in the kitchen all morning to prepare this wonderous feast. In the afternoon we wrote up our recipes with a detailed method including modal and imperative verbs.

Finally, once all the work was done we sat down and ate all of the wonderful food that was prepared.

Local Author Visit

To mark the end of world book week, Miss Hicks organised for local author, Nigel Lungenmuss-Ward, to join our school for the day. He visited all of the classrooms today, to read his story and inspire others to write their own book. Nigel’s books: Freddie’s Impossible Dream and What’s That? were illustrated by his son Robbie, who was 8 years-old when he drew the pictures for their first book. The books are about the power of imagination, chasing your dreams and never giving up.

A big thank you to Nigel Lungenmuss-Ward for joining us. You can find out more about his books on his website: www.thatbookguy.co.uk/books

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

This week, Year 6 started their English unit based on the graphic novel, ‘The Arrival’ by Shaun Tan. A graphic novel is a story without words and it can still be just as powerful and detailed. We discussed how every illustration is included for a reason and that if you look very closely you gather a huge amount of information from a single image.

‘The Arrival’ is a migrant story. A man leaves his wife and child in a poor town, hoping for better opportunities in an unfamiliar country on the other side of the sea. He eventually finds himself in a mysterious city of different traditions, strange animals, unusual drifting objects and foreign languages. With only a suitcase and a little money, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of employment. He is helped along the way by supportive strangers, each carrying the weight of their own past: stories of struggle and survival in a world of upheaval and hope.

Our Topic this term is ‘Tolerance’ and already Year 6 have been able to identify some of the key themes of the book as respect, diversity and multiculturalism. We look forward to seeing the work that the children will produce based on this powerful story.

Animal Footprints

Year 1 found a box in their classroom. There were animal footprints around the box! We realised that they were the footprints of an elephant, a camel, a lion and a frog. A message on the box said that the box had come from the zoo. Inside the box, there was a book called ‘Dear Zoo’. We figured out that the zoo had tried to send us some pets. We talked about whether or not an elephant, camel, lion and frog would make a good pet