RG BBC Music Day

Yesterday, we had a fabulous day celebrating BBC Music Day! We love singing and talked about how we love to sing nursery and number rhymes everyday.

We did some special singing by the group 'Singing Hands'. We watched the videos and sang along whilst also learning Makaton actions.

Our favourites are 'Little Peter Rabbit' and '5 Little Firemen'. See if you can give these songs a try at home!

BBC Music day in Year 1

Yesterday it was BBC music day and we had lots of fun celebrating it in Year 1.

We learnt how to warm up our vocals and sung lots and lots throughout the day.

We love singing the alphabet every morning.

We then talked about 'What we liked about Music', from our favourite songs to the noises instruments make.

BBC music day

Today is BBC music day and we had lots of fun celebrating it in 3C. We learnt how to warm up our vocals and did lots of singing. We linked BBC music day to everything we have learnt about harvest time by singing a special harvest song together!

National Fitness Day in 3H

On Wednesday afternoon 3H took part in 10minutes of exercise to celebrate National Fitness Day. We used Go Noodle and absolutely loved copying the dances. We are now floss experts! We discussed the importance of staying fit and healthy- not only for our body but also for our mind.

Harvest Time Is Here Again...

On Tuesday SWPNS had a visit from Matt who is part of Southampton City Mission. Matt spoke to us all about the importance of giving. He told a fantastic story from the bible and we all enjoyed joining in.

Magic Mark Making!

The children new to school in Reception have settled in really well over the last few weeks. Before we can begin our Phonics lessons we need to play lots of listening games and get excited about mark making.

The children have loved making their own mud paint and using this to create designs. They have painted shapes and even written secret messages!

They are also showing great skill in drawing and colouring which is going to help them be the best writers.

Artistic RE in Year 5

In Year 5 this term we are looking at how people describe God.
Lots of people have different ideas and today we used watercolour pencils to illustrate words to describe how Christians see God.

Here are some of our ideas.

Next week we are finding out about how Muslims see God.

2S - E-Safety Week

We had fun in 2S this week learning all about how we create a digital footprint when we are online and how it can be difficult to change or erase this. We soon realised that we need to be very careful when using the internet in order to keep ourselves safe and respect other people's feelings. With our talk partners we came up with lots of great ideas  about the sort of information we should keep private (like our passwords, address, names, photos etc) and designed our own footprints to create a display to share our advice with the rest of the school.

Year 1 have been amazing readers this week!

Year 1 excitedly had their first dips in the treasure chest this Friday, and grabbed a prize, as a reward for reading 5 times (or more) this week.

All week they have been reading with their adults and receiving DOJO points each time they read.

Well done Year 1, keep up the awesome reading!

3C e-safety Week

We had lots of fun learning about e-safety in year 3 this week. We learnt about why it is important to have a strong password and how to communicate safely online. We made our own posters and  comic strips so that we could teach other children how to be safe online.

3H E-Safety

3H have had a fantastic week learning all about e-safety. We discussed what makes a safe password and designed posters to help others. We also used Comic Life to create comic strips about how we stay safe online.

Art and Music in Year 6

Year 6 have begun a project looking at the impact of music in film, specifically wildlife documentaries. This will link in to their work in English.

Today we studied the composer Hans Zimmer who writes the music for Planet Earth and Blue Planet. We listened to his piece 'Earth' which he has written for the BBC 10 Pieces project. We then responded to the music through Art, using watercolours.

You can listen to the piece here and maybe create your own artwork.

And look at our artwork here:

Well done to our amazing gardeners!

Wow! Well done to Shirley Warren School, Mrs Wilk and the gardening club, you have achieved a silver award in the category of 'Garden for Learning'.

Southampton in Bloom was a whole school project with children from all year groups planting, nurturing and helping to grow their patches.

Year 1 planted lettuces, Year 2 broad beans, Year 3 spinach and green peas, Years 4 and 5 aubergines and a gooseberry stub.

Gardening club expressed their joy: 'We learnt how to look after vegetables by watering them, tieing them up and removing green flies and caterpillars'.

KS1 planted: beans, onions, tomatoes, courgettes, sweet pepper and sowed beetroots, carrots, marigolds, nasturtium and cosmos.

KS2 planted potatoes, strawberries, courgettes, pumpkins, sunflowers, french beans. they also made a herb garden of dill, parsley, coriander and basil.

Who would like to join gardening club next half term?...

Year 6 E-Safety

Year 6 E-Safety Week! 

We have been busy in year 6 discussing what constitutes e-safety and how we can keep ourselves safe on the internet. We started our discussion by considering what e-safety means and how we can keep ourselves safe. Here our some of our considerations:

We then watched two videos reminding us how to keep our information, ourselves and other people safe online. These were very informative and enabled us to think about our own safety online. These are the links if you want to check them out to further your own understanding of e-safety! 
https://youtu.be/-PpHQuTnMT4 
https://youtu.be/SPIPOBG8elw 

Next, we looked at three different Instagram accounts. One exposed the identity of a person using their name, pictures and personal information and the other two used avatars as their pictures. However, one used their name and the other used a fake name. This sparked a discussion about how important it is to keep our information and identity private when using the internet and social media sites. We can do this by: 

Y4 are 'buzzing' about Music!

Year 4 have begun their year of instrumental learning. We have begun with a focus on brass instruments. This week we learnt the correct 'embouchure' for creating a buzz on a mouthpiece and then got to play our first piece.
We really had to focus on resilience as it wasn't easy at first, but Mrs Mead was really proud of what we achieved by the end of the lesson.

Music in KS1

We have been seeing what has been in the KS1 Music bag over the last few weeks and today we found the last puppet in the musical scale - Elsa. Here she is joining the other puppets in the musical scale box.

We talked about why Chase is the leader of the puppets and not Anna when the alphabet starts with an A. This is because middle C is very important in music.  Can you name all of the other characters? Which characters would you choose for the letters A to G?

Year 1 learn all about: Lock it, Block it, Show it, Tell it

Lock It, Block It, Show It, Tell It is a strategy with an easy to remember slogan to promote online safety to children and their parents.

Lock It

This is about keeping personal information secure: usernames, passwords and personal details.

Block It

This is about blocking rude or nasty messages. It's about blocking bad websites, not downloading anything you're unsure about, and not clicking on any links or pictures you don't know about.

Show It

This is about showing an adult if you come across anything that makes you feel uncomfortable or is inappropriate. This could be a website, a picture, a message or a video.

Tell It

This is about telling an adult if you feel you are being bullied or upset online.

Year 1 have thought up some actions to go alongside this slogan, to help them remember the rules of being safe online.

Lock it!

Block it!

Show it!

Tell it!

Democracy and Voting at Shirley Warren primary

One of the things we do as a school in the first few weeks of term is vote for who we would like to represent each class at Green Council.  Green Council is our school council with an eco focus which has 12 members, a boy and a girl from each year group.

This year, Year 4 used the UK parliament's Fairness resources to learn about how decisions are made in a democracy.

First we had to get into small groups and discuss whether we thought each of these statements was fair, unfair or don't know. What would you say?

* Adults do not have to go to school

* Children have to go to school

*Children have to do homework

*Dog owners have to clean up after their dogs

*Children are not allowed to drive

*School holidays are usually at about the same time for all children

*The school rules apply to all children

*Some people can run faster than others

After this, those who wanted to be Green Council reps (they are called candidates) made a speech in fromt of the class saying why they would make a good rep. Finally, we had a secret ballot and one member of the class was chosen.

Next Friday Green Council will meet for the first time and you will see who they are on the next blog post.

Mrs Williams

Thursday @ Stubby (part 2)

What another jam-packed day!

5D completed their Eggstreme Challenge...
  

5M had a quaking time at the Earthquake zone...

    

We both discovered a secret guest in our mammal hotels!



We were lucky enough to have an evening visit from Mrs Mann and Miss Lott too!


Can't believe we're coming home tomorrow. We've had such an amazing time but looking forward to seeing you all :)

Stubbington - Day 4 (part one)

After another delicious breakfast and room inspection (they are getting slightly better!), it was time to check our Small Animal Hotels to see if any visitors had checked in overnight.

There were promising signs in some of the hotels, with two looking as if they may have a visitor.

We carefully carried all the hotels to the classroom and hoped there would be something for us to examine.

Very quietly and carefully, we opened up the animal hotel...

We had a visitor! It was a common shrew. An amazing and quite rare find as these little creatures need to eat every couple of hours. 

Not sure if Miss D was nervous or excited...










As an insectivore it hadn't been very impressed by our seeds, apple and chocolate however it soon cheered up once we found it some delicious worms and woodlice to munch on.

The children had lots of questions about the shrew.

We were able to study the shrew to answer all our questions and we also discovered it was a female - Charlotte the Shirley Warren Shrew!!

The children had an opportunity to estimate the weight of the shrew - inside a bag for the shrew's safety!

After the session we released Charlotte the Shrew back to where we had found her - she was very happy to scurry off into the bushes.

The afternoon session was an exciting trip to Earthquake!!!  See Miss D's blog for photos. All I can say is that Mrs Mead managed to fall in...

This evening, we had the delight of the 'S Factor'! The children all performed their house song amazingly well, showing their fantastic teamwork and courage in front of an audience.  

However, there could only be one winner - I have to say the best team, Kestrels, won. Although as Kestrel Team Leader, I may be a little biased...

All in bed and snoring away.  More adventures await tomorrow before our journey home.

See you all soon.

Mrs Mills and 5M.