Friday 29 March 2019

Science Week

The 11th-15th March was Science and DT week in Shirley Warren!  The theme of the week was Journeys with each year group having their own stimulus to explore.

Year R - Looked at tunnels: thinking about what makes a good one before constructing their own.
Year 1 - Looked at bridges: thinking about what materials would be best before creating their own that would have to carry the weight of a beebot.
Year 2 - Looked at static electricity and how it could transport the paper animals they made.
Year 3 - Found out about the important role bees play in pollination and then created their own digital animations to show this.
Year 4 - Investigated forces and the effect they had on the fabulous flying machines they created.  They then used iPads to create their own explanation videos.
Year 5 - Found out all about scientists that had visited space.
Year 6 - Had two mini projects of their own; 6L investigated natural disasters whilst 6W looked at the journey of diseases before creating their own viral videos.

The children thoroughly enjoyed practically investigating these areas and learnt lots during the week! Special mention needs to go to the ambassadors from each class that stood up in a special assembly at the end of the week and shared what they had been doing; they were fantastic.


If you want to find out more, why not ask your child what they discovered during this week or try and carry out your own experiment at home!





NSPCC Danceathon

We have all been dancing our socks off today to raise money for the NSPCC. Check out the moves in KS2

Lucky us!

RG would like to say a big thank you to Miss Griffiths’ auntie who donated us a lovely sofa! It has been a great addition to our reading corner already and the children are loving cosying up to read lots of stories. We have a box of books in here that the children have written themselves so we are hoping this will be a lovely incentive to develop both our reading and writing skills.

Thursday 28 March 2019

Year 6 Songwriting

Year 6 have been learning about songwriting this term and have written an origianl song. Mrs Mead is incredibly impressed with them - what do you think?

Growing Galore!

Here in Recpetion we’ve had a lovely day planting potatoes! The children carefully filled the bags with soil, planted the seed potatoes, covered in soil and watered them. Let’s hope the children remember to water them everyday and soon we will have some yummy potatoes to cook! This has inspired us to see if we can bring our broccoli plants back to life too.

Wednesday 27 March 2019

1S Using Basis shapes, balance & levels : Great Fire Of London


Dance Warm Up Ideas

We love finding fun, new ways to warm our bodies up and lubricate our joints before dance 💃🏾 : here  are some Year Ones taking turns in leading a warm up session before our ‘Great Fire Of London’ topic.

Thursday 21 March 2019

Green Council talks Road Safety and Reducing Plastics

There are two issues concerning Green Council at the moment, and we worked on them in our meeting today.

First, we are still concerned about road safety and secondly (inspired by class 5D) we want to encourage the school to reduce plastic usage in school.

Here we are making posters and designing little sketches for next Thursday's assembly so that we can let our friends know the very important messages about safety and recycling.

Tuesday 19 March 2019

Our most exciting post yet...

Report by RH:
"In Science we have been learning about how plastic affects the world. We wrote to lots of different restaurants around Southampton to praise them about plastic they don't use. I wrote to Nando's. They sent us some things like a glass drinks bottle, recycled pencils, chilli seeds and a pencil case made from cardboard!"

Miss Dickinson and 5D are looking forward to planting our chilli seeds in the classroom! Thank you Nando's!

Reception are Scientists!

Last week the children loved engaging in lots of experiments for science week. We followed the children’s interests to predict what would happen, carry out experiments and evaluate our ideas after. We kept celery in coloured water to see how it changed colour, we explored potion making and did the skittles challenge. One of the children said “I think the water is going to turn a different colour and the skittle will all go white” - what a great prediction! This week this children are carrying on by exploring different materials and magnets. Come and ask us what we find out!

Monday 18 March 2019

Upper KS2 cross-country success!

Last week, Year 5 and 6 cross-country runners - many of whom were racing for the first time - took part in the city-wide cross-country championship. They did so well! Miss Dickinson and Miss McKitterick were very proud of them.

Third reply!



See above - our third company reply from KFC about what they are doing to reduce their use of single-use plastic :)

Friday 15 March 2019

Forces and Flight in 4C

Today, Class 4C experimented with forces and flight.

We made paper planes to see which could stay in the air longest.
We learned about forces and we also sang a song about forces.
We wanted to show the school our video in assembly but it wasn't working by that time - but now here it is!


Put a Nose On It!

We have all had a great day rasing money for Comic Relief. We have been learning a song and dance which we performed together in singing assembly today. Big 'shout out' to the rappers and lead dancers!


Our second reply!

Miss Dickinson received this message from Lush last night, after JB wrote a very complimentary letter to them to praise them for all they do to help eradicate plastic pollution!


Thursday 14 March 2019

Science and Computing Week Year 4


Science and computing week:

Computing and Science week in Year 4 has been extremely interesting. Our focus for the week was motion and forces, with a particular focus on air resistance.

We now understand that air resistance is the force that affects objects when in the air. We deepened our understanding by comparing air resistance to the force of gravity. We used an example of a parachute to help us understand this. It was clear that gravity is the weaker force, otherwise the human would fall to the ground very quickly. Therefore, air resistance is the stronger force as this is what protects the human from hurting themselves. 

Once we had understood the way gravity and air resistance works, we made our own creations to compare which stayed in the air the longest and why. We linked this to cause and effect. Some children chose to make aeroplanes as they know that these are streamlined (one of our key words) to avoid air resistance. However, the children soon realised these were not effective when thinking about air resistance and the target of keeping it in the air the longest. Some also made parachutes that were shaped so they collected the air rather than the air passing by the object. These were most effective. 

Once we had made our creations, we timed them to see how long each one took to hit the ground. To measure our findings we used a stopwatch and then recorded our data in a table. This helped us to compare the findings and consider which creation was the most effective. It was clear that the bigger the aeroplane, the more time it took to fall to the ground. Similarly, the parachutes took longer because they were designed to trap the air. 

Linking to computing, we have created comic strips using Comic Life and an explanation video using an application called 'Explain Everything'. Sadly, Explain Everything is not compatible with the blog post but we will be sure to share these with you in assembly. 

We are excited to learn more!








Our first reply!

5D have been learning all about plastic pollution and the impact of our waste on the environment. We chose our favourite companies to write to, discussing their corporate impact and what could be done.

Today we received our first reply - from Domino's Pizza!


They said that they enjoyed reading the letters that were sent and they understand our concern for the environment and oceans.

They also reported that they are aiming to send zero waste to landfill.

Result!

Traditional Tales - Year 1 Class Assembly

Here are Year 1 ready to show and tell their adults all that they know about Traditional tales.


Year 1 you were amazing and very brave! We are all very proud of your enthusiasm to act and amazed by your super reading skills.

Thank you to parents and carers who came along to watch :)

Friday 8 March 2019

SoundPop Academy Workshop

Children from KS2 Choir had a really exciting workshop with the SoundPop Academy.

WHAT IS SOUND POP ACADEMY?

We are more than just a choir or a singing club. We are a performance group who pride ourselves on engaging and guiding kids through the diverse world of singing, dancing and performing. We achieve this by inspiring our singers through weekly sessions delivered by our incredible academy leaders. If you love to sing, dance or perform, look no further.
If you loved it, or are interested in singing and performing, check out their website





Thursday 7 March 2019

RE in Year 4

During Spring 1 our key concept was Identity. First of all, we explored what makes our identity. We then looked at how the celebration of Baisakhi helps Sikhs feel a sense of identity. We received news that the Prime Minister was going to introduce a new law to forbid people from wearing religious clothes or jewellery. We wrote persuasive letters to the Prime Minister to explain how we would feel if this law happened. We had to convince Theresa May to change her mind as we felt  we should  have the right to express our identity.






World Book Day in 1S

We had a wonderful time sharing books with each other. All of the children looked amazing in their costumes.  First, we shared our favourite stories with our parents and teachers. Then we practised our rhyming skills with The Cat in the Hat. Later this afternoon we shared some stories with Year 2. We also heard stories from other countries around the world. We had such a busy day!

The Great Fire of London


This half term Year 1 will be learning all about 'The Great Fire of London'.
This pupil was very proud to share with the class his adventures in London.
He saw the Monument that was built to remember the fire and visited the streets (Pudding Lane and Seething Lane) where the fire took place in 1666.
He was brave and climbed all of the 311 steps to the top of the tower and back down again!
Year 1 can not wait to use their Historical Enquiry skills to find out more about the events that happened in 'The Great Fire of London'.

World Book Day in Year 1

We had a great day dressed up as characters from our favourite books.
We were lucky to have Year 2 join us and read their favourite books to us :)
Thank you to parents who came in to share stories today.

World Book Day in 4C

We had a super day today and shared many stories in class with each other. Thank you to the parents who came in to share stories too! The costumes were AMAZING!! Who will you share a story with everyday?









RB are loving World Book Day !

Today in RB we have been celebrating World Book Day! 

We have all come into school in different costumes dressed up as our favourite book characters. It has been a lovely morning reading special books with our grown ups from home or from class with cushions and blankets. 

For the rest of the day, we are going to try and review different books, write our own stories, and explore non fiction and fiction books.




5D love World Book Day!

Check out some fantastic costumes from Year 5!

5D's adventure to the universe and beyond!

Yesterday, 5D went on a trip to Winchester Science Centre to explore more about our solar system, universe, galaxy and beyond!

We started by exploring how light travels in space and we were shocked to find out that although light may look white, it's actually made up of five colours which can be split by refraction. Check out what we saw when we put on some special glasses and looked at white light!


After our workshop, we were able to explore the centre's exhibits and activities. Here's a few pictures to show what we got up to!




We finished up the day with a 'wow' moment in the planetarium. What a fabulous time we had!

Friday 1 March 2019

E-safety Advice




With lots of coverage and concern recently publisihed in the press about internet safety now may be a good time to remind yourselves and your children about staying safe online.
You may like to ask them about our Lock - it , Block-it, Show-it, Tell-it policy 

Please find below  some links to various useful sites with information and advice on different things you can do to help keep your child safe whilst online.