Y3B Learning about photosynthesis

In this week's science lesson 3B have been learning about what plants need for photosynthesis to occur. We decided that plants need water, nutrients, light, carbon dioxide and chlorophyll (that makes the leaves green!) We were fantastic scientists and made predictions about which of these two plants would grow taller. We all predicted that the plant on the left would grow higher as none of the leaves had been pulled off. Therefore, there is still chlorophyll in the leaves and the plant should be able to photosynthesise!

Chinese New Year in Reception

This week in Reception we have been celebrating and learning about Chinese New Year. We have learnt the story of the animals and how it is celebrated in China. We have looked at China on the world map, role played the story, used the role play corner to hold our own celebrations and been exploring noodles with our senses. We have also been very crafty and made lanterns, dragons and cards that we then wrote to someone special. What a busy week! 

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Open Day

I've just been sent information about this amazing open day being organised by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra:

Lighthouse and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra are excited to open their doors for a Musical Open Day for young and old on Sunday 12 April, 11AM - 4.30PM!

Get up close and personal with a big venue and the World’s Favourite Orchestra, ask questions you have always wanted to ask, try out instruments, hear the BSO and its ensembles in performance and rehearsal... there is plenty to see and even more to try out for the whole family! 

It looks like an amazing day for our budding musicians! Click here for more information and the online registration form.

Later this term Year 5 will be taking part in a workshop with players from the BSO.... watch this space for more information...

Accident Prevention!

Yesterday, Year 5 had some visitors from the NHS. They came in to talk to Year 5 about road safety. They took part in several activities, including how they can be harmed if they are hit by a car, what they can wear to make them more visible (high visible jackets), and also how drivers can help too (watch out for pedestrians and other cars/vehicles). Great fun was had by all of Year 5 and we now know how to keep ourselves safe! Thank you to our visitors.

Year 4 Presents: THE IRON MAN

This term Year 4 will be studying "The Iron Man" by Ted Hughes through a Power of Reading. To get the ball rolling we did our first reader's theater of the year. For this activity we broke up into groups of five or six, each group preparing the same extract from the text. What made each performance unique was how each group used their voices differently to tell the story. At times we read loudly, at times we read softly, and there were even some parts where we made our own sound effects!

Year 6 gadgets

For our English lesson, us year 6, have been making our own cool gadgets for the book that we have been reading called Storm breaker.  Storm breaker has a character called Alex Rider, and he has been trained to be a spy for many years, but he didn't know.

This picture shows one of our gadgets that we have made.  This is a prototype gadget which is a boat.

The Codebreaker 008's creator told us "it was very easy to make and you only need a cardboard box, a pen and scissors. It is half boat and half plane and it floats and it changes into a lunch box when you fold it up. It electrocutes people by shooting sparks out of the machine guns which are hidden on the sides of this gadget" 

Year 3 Music Workshop

After the amazing musical performance that was seen by Years 1, 2, 3 and 4, Year 3 got the opportunity to look at the musical instruments in much more detail. They even got the opportunity to try out the variety of musical instruments that were on show. Each musician showed their group the different instruments and then demonstrated how to play each one. This required a lot of skill, but it was great to see so many children want to have a go! Luckily, next year when these children are in Year 4, they will get the opportunity to play a musical instrument and some of the ones they played today, might be an option for them. I'm excited to see what musical talent comes through.

Special Music Performance

Today, Years 1, 2, 3 and 4 were lucky enough to listen to beautiful musical performances by a talented group of musicians. We heard a range of musical instruments: Double Bass, Clarinet, Flute, Acoustic Guitar, Trumpet, Trumbone and even a Saxaphone! 

Each musician spoke about their instruments and played us some tunes, teaching us about the different sounds they make and how they are played.

They also played some fantastic tunes altogether as a group, we even got the opportunity to guess what the tune was. Everybody really enjoyed it...even the teachers!

Communication Week

Communication week was a success with nursery children enjoying a range of activities to help develop communication skills.  This included re-telling familiar stories, singing songs and nursery rhymes, such as 5 Little Ducks and making 'communication friendly spaces' outside where children feel more confident to talk.

We will share a new communication tip and activity to do at home monthly to help further develop your child's communication skills. Please see photo below or check out our parents' board.

Programming!

Year 5 have been learning how to use Scratch on the computer. They built a fan out of Lego WeDo, containing a motor so that it could move. They then got to experiment with Scratch and program their fans. Some children managed to control the speed of their fans, and even get them to turn on when a certain key was pressed. Much fun was had by all, and they are looking forward to more programming in the future. Well done Year 5!!

Statistics with Smarties,

On Wednesday, 3B worked in groups to solve a hypothesis; 'In tubes of Smarties there are always the same number of each colour'. We counted the Smarties and used a tally chart to record our results. We then drew beautiful bar charts to present our findings. At the end of the lesson we shared our results and concluded that the number of different coloured Smarties varies across the tubes! What fantastic mathematicians 3B are!

E-Safety in RS

We have been learning about how to stay safe when using the Internet. It is important to be nice to people on the computer like you would be on the playground. If something pops up on the screen that we are unsure about we know to:

Lock it, Block it, Show it, Tell it.

Year 5 Coastal Collage

Year 5 have been looking at coasts this half term. We looked at the artwork of the St Ives school of artists, including Alfred Wallis. We also looked at collage techniques, including the cut-outs of Matisse. We used these techniques and ideas to create our own coastal collages. In music we sang 'The Beach Song' to accompany our artwork.

Year 6 Make their pledges to do 'good digital deeds'.

Y3R Internet Safety Day

For e-safety day Y3R discussed the types of information that you must NEVER give out on the internet! It was great to see how aware they all were about what you can and can't do on the web. In this picture our lovely class is showing their knowledge of 'lock it, block it, show it, tell it!'

Safer Internet Day 2015

A great big thank you and well done to the Shirley Warren community for helping us to raise awareness of how to enjoy the Internet, whilst remaining safe.

For those of you who could not make it today, please click here to see our digital good deeds.

Safer Internet Day 2015 in Year 5!

In Year 5 today to celebrate Safer Internet Day we took a quiz to see if we were experts at online safety, we got 90% which is pretty good and now we have learnt where we went wrong and what should be done in that situation. We then discussed ways that they could help others understand how to be safe online. You can see the ideas in one of the photos below! Nationwide children were making Safer Internet Day promises, here are just a few of ours... *To make people aware of lock it, block it, show it, tell it! *To tell my friends not to get social media like Facebook and Twitter until they are old enough. *To make sure no one including myself tells any nasty jokes or comments to other people. *To help and tell friends how to block people online. *To help children tell an adult if they are being Cyber Bullied. We were also able to learn a song called 'Be Safe' from SingUp, which was great fun! We videoed this and it got shown in the Safer Internet Day assembly. Remember to stay safe online!!

Year 1's Internet Super heroes

In Year 1, as part of Safer Internet Day, thought about what an Internet Super hero would do to keep us safe on the Internet. We discussed different things that we can do to keep ourselves safe, and what would do we see something that we don't like. One thing we know for sure - Lock It, Block It, Show It, Tell It!

Yr3B Safer Internet Day

As today is Safer Internet Day we learnt all about being safe on the internet and more specifically on games. We know that it is important to not reveal our personal information and to not respond to messages from people we don't know. Remember: lock it, block it, show it, tell it! 

RG E-Safety

Today is E-Safety day and we have been doing lots of learning about how to stay safe on the computer. We read a story and helped Smartie the penguin make good choices while on the computer and have learnt that when online we need to remember to Lock it, Block it, Show it, Tell it. We learnt actions to go with each one and made a poster on what it means. We will put them up next to our computers to help us remember what each one means. Come and have a look at our great work! 

Y4's Food Web

This week in science, Y4 explored and considered how living things (plants, animals and humans) are interrelated.  We learned last week that food chains show the passing of energy from one living thing to another, but this week we looked at how food chains can be more complex and discussed why it is so important to take care of our resources (all that the earth provides). To better understand how a food web works we went outside and made our own.

At the end of our lesson we read "The Journey Home" by Frann Preston-Gannon and we realised that our sometimes thoughtless actions can have some very serious consequences for the other living things around us. Therefore, we should do our best to be proactive by recycling, not wasting and polluting less so that our world is a cleaner and healthier place for everyone to live in. 

KS1 Sports Solent Racket Skills Festival

Here are some of our year 2 children improving their racket skills at the festival today. They were improving their serving, eye to hand coordination and rallying. We all had great fun!

Year 2 Getting to Know 3-D Shapes

This week in Maths, Year 2 are learning about 3-D shapes and their properties!

Can you name that shape?

Sainsbury's Active Kids Vouchers

Let's collect as many as we can! Thank you. 

RG learning to use the iPads.

This week in reception we have been learning how to use the iPads. We have been choosing the app we want from the home screen and learning how to navigate around. This is going to help us with our learning next week, keep your eyes peeled for what we are up to! 

Yr3B Measuring Capacity

In maths this week, Year 3 have been learning all about capacity. On Monday, we used water and rice to estimate and measure the capacity of various containers. We also worked out how we could most accurately measure out 1 litre, using a measuring cylinder. 

Story telling!!!

This week Year Y3R were lucky enough to have some awesome stories read to us. Children got to learn about Greek mythology as well as a Japanese legend. We absolutely loved it and and the children wouldn't stop talking about it all day. Maybe they too will be able to slay a dragon if ever called upon! 

Year 3B newspaper readers!

This week in Year 3B we have been reading newspapers in guided reading. We especially liked the Frozen Fun article, which was all about an ice sculpture festival in China. It has helped us to write fantastic newspaper reports about Corky's trip to the sewers!

Maths show!

We were very lucky in Yr1F to have girls from Yr2M come and show us their Maths Show that they had been practising. It was very informative and we all learnt plenty about weight. Thanks you, we loved it!

Year 1's Goldilocks Gallery

We are reaching the end of our 'Traditional Tales' topic, and we are producing our very own 'Goldilocks Gallery'. We have chosen our best piece of writing, describing either the setting or a character from the story. We have written, edited, and improved this work, and this finished product can be found in the gallery. Come to our classrooms if you want to have a look.

Storytelling in Reception

RS had the exciting opportunity to listen to the story of The Enormous Turnip told by Chris Thomas. The children listened very carefully and enjoyed joining in.

Exploring the Different Details of Digestion in Year 4

In science we've been exploring the digestive system in humans and animals as well as looking at how different animals have different teeth to accommodate their diet. 

It was especially interesting exploring how our digestive system works. To really grasp the process we did a demonstration in class using a few household items.

First we mashed up some sugar puffs in a bowl with some water which represented our food being chewed in our mouths.  Next the food was swallowed and traveled down the oesophagus (a paper tube) to the stomach (a zip lock baggie) where it was mashed up further with some bile (soda).  Once our food was all mashed it was ready for the intestines (tights).  As the food traveled down the intestines we were able to see how the nutrients were able to be absorbed by our body.  Finally, after their long journey through our 'body' and to everyone's disgusted delight, the leftovers were discarded in the bin. 

This led into a study of herbivores, omnivores and carnivores. We learned about how some animals only eat plants (herbivores) or meat (carnivores), and that some animals eat both (omnivores).  With this knowledge we took a close look at how some animals' teeth are designed, discovering why some animals have vary large canines, while others have prominent incisors and molars.  Then of course we had some fun applying these new found facts by making our own models of different animals' teeth with modelling clay. 

Year 5 and 6 Storytelling!

Year 5 and 6 got to enjoy some fantastic storytelling from one of our Governors this afternoon. They heard 3 great stories and loved them all!

KS1 Storytelling Day

We were very lucky to have Chris Thomas come in to tell us some magical stories. We loved listening to them. We heard about an enormous turnip, a magic porridge bowl and the man building a bridge.

 

There is snow, but school is still open!

We had some lovely snow, but Tuesday 3rd February will be a normal school day. School is open!

Investigation with strawberry sauce and crackers!

Miss Hayter, who is a student teacher in year 6, explained that tectonic plates work from the mantle and the mantle is heated by the inter and outer core and that creates the mantle to become magma.

She got a lot of strawberry sauce on a plate. Then added the crackers so they stuck onto the sauce.  The paint represents the water and the land.  

The magma (strawberry sauce) made the crackers go close together when the magma goes up that can go into a volcano or mountains.  They can also separate.