To celebrate Languages Day Y5 explored the Greek alphabet. We learnt that we use lots of Greek words in English today. Some say there are over 150,000 English words that come from Greek words! Once we learnt the Greek alphabet we used it to have fun cracking linguistic codes. When we joined up with our Y2 buddies we taught them how to write their name using the Greek alphabet and then used what we had learnt to play hangman.
Y5 were inspired by the artist Hundertwasser this half term and created pictures of nature in his style. Hundertwasser often depicted tress as lollipops and the children’s designs focused on this.
To create our pieces we used oil pastels practicing and perfecting the following different techniques: mixing and blending, stippling and cross-hatching.
Today we had a visit from Mad Scientist, Dr D.N.A. who talked to us about various inventors and different types of forces. We watched and took part in air pressure experiments using a Bernoulli balloon. We blew up a balloon with only one puff! We also watched as Dr. D.N.A controlled a huge inflatable football in the air with her industrial ‘hair dryer’! We ended our science show by learning about static electricity. We used a Van de Graaff generator to create static energy. We even managed to create sparks and pass on static electricity from one person to another!
We have had a blast for British Science Week 2023. Miss Taylor has created an amazing new display in school and the children have been finding out about chromatography, fingerprinting and magnetics in our special lunchtime science workshops!
Today for KS2 music assembly, we welcomed Norwich High School.
The children had lots of fun learning different vocal warm ups and were treated to an oboe, cello and trumpet demonstration.
What a great experience for the children!
Today, KS2 had a special visitor to show them brass instruments.
They were able to find out what makes a brass instrument different to others, how the tubing and size of instrument affects the sound and range as well as ask lots of questions!
What a brilliant opportunity!
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.
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
We sent four of our young mathematicians to represent Queen’s Hill at a county wide mathematics challenge, held at Norwich School.
Working in pairs the mathematicians worked through five problems during an eight minute period at each station. The activities involved problems such as:
Pentominoes ~ Tangrams ~ Railway timetables ~ Ordering playing cards ~ Dice ~ Mystery numbers ~ Domino jigsaw ~ Shopping lists ~ Mazes ~ Code breaking ~ Sequences ~ Broken calculators ~ Make 24 ~ Logic puzzles ~ Cross numbers.
All four of them worked extremely hard and represented Queen’s Hill with pride. They competed with courage and placed Queen’s Hill in the top 20! Even commenting that they would come back next year and compete for Y6 – we are so proud of them!
Mr. James organised a whole-school curriculum day today. It started with an assembly all about how to keep safe online, then year groups completed lessons on topics including how stop bullying online, the impact of technology on sleep and what to do if you feel like something isn’t right online. In the afternoon, our KS2 classes joined up with their buddy classes in Reception, Year 1 and 2 and helped them create safer internet day posters to put up around our school.
