Green Council look at our school air quality by studying trees!

Today, we had a special visitor to Green Council.
Bike it Ray came with a lot of interesting chart about different animals, poo, and lichens.  He told us that lichens grow on trees and bricks and can tell us a lot about the air quality in our area.

We went for a nature walk to see what we would find in the bottom playground. We were very excited to see lichen on the trees and Bike It Rays said that although there is more to do, the lichens we saw were a healthy green colour and indicate that our air quality is not bad for our infants.  Hooray!

Here we are studying a tree. Do you know what type of tree it is? (clue: the colour is silver!)

4D's Amazing Home Projects!

Wow! Our new topic of Rainforests has started with a bang! It has been an absolute joy to see children bringing in their very own rainforests. The amount of effort and time that has been put into designing and making these beautiful creations is amazing. It has been so lovely to see children so proud of what they have done and being able to share this with the rest of the class. By children being so involved in creating their rainforests, their understanding of what a rainforest encompasses has improved greatly. 

I have been told that there are going to be more joining our display in the not too distant future so I look forward to seeing them too! Happy creating!

Parents, I would just like to say a massive thank you for all your support in enabling your children to create such amazing rainforests and all the help you gave them. 

Fumes or futures... Green Council meeting

Recently, Christian Aid sent us a pack “fumes or futures” which was a brilliant way to talk to Green Council about the subject of Climate change and share facts in a fun and informative way.

Today, we used resources from the pack to play the games and make “chatterboxes” (fortune tellers).

We thought about what we would like to ask our class and one suggestion was, "How can we save energy?"

I'm sure that's a question we all can be thinking about and I was really pleased at how much the children knew about the subject.

Mrs Williams

Busy times in Year 6!

Year 6 have been kept very busy this week! Not only have we been learning about derived facts in Maths and writing short stories based on 'Alma' in English, but we have also managed to pack in two new topics in Geography and Science!

In Science, we have been recapping what we learnt in Year 4 about electricity and building on this to experiment with making and debugging circuits. We came up with our own research questions and investigated these. We were surprised by our findings!

In Geography, we have been learning about mountain formation using what we learnt about tectonic plates last half term. Did you know that there are five key types of mountains? In the first picture, Miss Dixon is pushing her hands together on the towel, maintaining pressure; this creates folds in the towel, just like what happens with the Earth's crust!
In the second, the balloon represented swollen magma underneath the crust which creates a dome mountain.


We're looking forward to learning more about mountains next week... that is, when we're not busy at Woodmill! Hope the packing is going well, Year 6!

Test on Volcanic Eruptions By CA

Today Class 6C did an experiment about volcanoes in our playground, so that we wouldn't cause too much mess in the classroom!

So we took a bottle of Coke and some polos. Then we set everything up, making sure we had a bucket of water for afterwards.

We used the bottle to represent the crust. The liquid coke we used to represent the magma. 

Then we all went a safe distance away from the experiment and our teacher dropped in the polos to create the eruption.

The experiment ended up being successful, although I think next time we would add something so we could drop in the polos quicker, as you can see from the video how we didn't get it in quick enough.

By CA in 6C

Year 3 visit SeaCity Museum

On Tuesday, Year 3 went on a trip to SeaCity Museum in Southampton to learn more about the Titanic. While we were there, we completed a workshop about the Titanic and got to explore the exhibitions about the Titanic. We learnt lots of interesting facts about the Titanic and we started to realise the importance that the Titanic had to Southampton. Here are some photos from our trip!

The Big Switch Off at Green Council

Today we had a a special visitor in Green Council.
Zaki from the Environment Centre came to talk to us about The Big Switch off.

He gave an introduction to energy saving in the school/home.  We now understand that some things use more power than others. Equipment on standby can be using power. We thought about what is using energy in the school, how much energy it uses and what we could do to reduce it.

We learned about the Big Switch Off, taking place in Shirley Warren on Sunday 19th November, where they are asking people to use as little energy as possible between 6-7 p.m. that evening. The amount of energy being used will be monitored on the network

We decided that we will ask our friends to try and save energy by trying to use a slow cooker, using the washing machine or other machines in the morning and putting on the dishwasher after 8pm

Here is a picture of Green Council testing the effect of a hairdryer and a lightbulb on the energy meter. With everything on, the meter reached 1,700 watts. What a lot of energy.

Y2J NO PENS Wednesday!

Year 2 starting NO PENS Wednesday as we mean to go on! Lots of identifying, cutting and sticking of continents and oceans this morning. We are finding it a little tricky at the moment but we are persevering and using resources like the globe and world maps to help us - as well as good old teamwork!

Green Council Double trip to Lymington Solar Farm and Aldermoor Farm

Today, 11 members of our school Green Council took their waterproofs with them and set off on an adventure.

First we went to Solent Solar Farm where we saw over 9,000 panels which produce a lot of electricity. Cathy, who showed us around, helped to design and build the Solar Farm which has only been running for three years. We saw the cables that joined the panels to the mains - some of them were very heavy!

 In the afternoon, we visited a different kind of farm. Aldermoor Community Farm is a co-operative in Aldermoor Road and farmer Richard had lots of jobs lined up for us to do. First Richard got out his Lego and made a model. Then he put it in the bin! He got it out again, of course, but he was showing us that we can reuse many things and make them into other things. We shouldn't just throw things away without thinking if we can use them for something else. In the photo we are guessing what H has made out of the blocks.

 Here we are collecting plants to make Comfrey Tea. This isn't for people to drink, it's for plants! We had to find the comfrey plant, take off the leaves, break them up and put them in a barrel. After about four weeks they turn into fertiliser for other plants.

Another job we had to do was planting bean seeds. We used Aldermoor farm's special compost and carefully put each seed in each space. We put a lid on them so mice don't come and eat the seeds.

 We went inside the second polytunnel to see the tomato plants and also saw where the cucumbers grow. At the end Richard kindly gave each child a cucumber.

If you visit the farm when it's open you could also buy chicken food for 20p and Richard let us try this activity out. I think you can see from the smiles that everyone enjoyed this activity, even though it started raining heavily.

We are so lucky to have this community farm so near our school and want to thank Richard for another brilliant trip. Even though the weather wasn't good for us - though the plants liked it - all the children loved it and for us teachers it was exciting to see how much Richard and the team have done since we took a group last year.

You can find more about Aldermoor Community Farm online - they often have open days on Bank Holiday Mondays as well as being open Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays 9am-5pm. Maybe you could visit in the summer holidays and feed the chickens.

We're supporting Send My Friend To School!

Last week our whole school took part in 2017's Send My Friend to School initiative.

One Year 6 student said, "We had the outline of a school and then we had 5 jigsaw spaces on the school and we had about 10 jigsaw puzzle pieces and we had to think which 5 were the most important.  For example I put equality for both sexes and I put toilets and I put school lunches, I put trained teachers and books.

It was hard to choose because they were all really important. There was soap, sinks and hygienic classrooms, but I think those were the most important.

We coloured them in and we wrote what was most important about education and then our MP Alan Whitehead came in and we gave him our Send My Friend jigsaws. He kept them to take to London to tell the other MP's about it. We hope to achieve that all schools - even if they're not in England - have all of those things."

Visit from our Link School

We were honoured to have Ethel, who is the Headteacher at Tukela School in Zambia, visit us with her two daugters last week.  They were in the UK and came to meet the children and celebrate our fundraising of £100 for their toilets, as well as talking to our Green Council about how we could work together.

First, some members of school gave them a tour. Next the two girls experienced life in Year 4 and Year 6.  After that Ethel and her daughters led a very interesting assembly about life in Zambia.

Here are the Green Council with Ethel, her daughters and our pages of fundraising ideas.  Look out for events later on in the year.

2D's attendance celebration!

2D had the best day today! We got to go to Beaulieu Treehouse for a special trip because we had the best attendance in the school with 97%! It was such a great time; we pretended to be moles, pretended to be badgers, did some slimy pond dipping and learnt how to build a fire! We even got to toast some yummy marshmallows on the fire! What a fantastic day it was!

Have a look at some (read: lots of) photos of us having a wonderful time...



2D, thank you for being so great on the trip. Your behaviour was fabulous as always and you continue to be great at showing off Shirley Warren with your enthusiasm, concentration and excitement for our lovely trips.

Also a big, massive, huge, gigantic thank you to Mrs Worley for organising the trip, as well as all of the lovely adults that came along today: Mrs Short, Mrs Croissant, Miss Holdorph, Mr Samuelson, and the fantastic family helpers that come on every single trip - you are all awesome!

Finally, I want to say a big thank you to 2D (again) for having such great attendance this year. It has meant that you have worked hard and made fantastic progress, and I am so, so proud of you all. Plus, it means I got to spend loads of time with you all which is just my favourite thing to do. As I always say... it's my favourite kind of day when everybody's here!

Year One Traveled Around the UK!

In Year One we have started to learn all about aviation and the countries in the United Kingdom. We decided we wanted to write an exciting adventure story about flying around the UK on an aeroplane. So, we created our own aeroplane in our school hall and flew to the different countries where we learned lots about the characteristics of each country... including special foods! We had so much fun and really enjoyed being passengers on Year One Airways! 

Our Flight around the UK

Lepe Beach adventures!

Year 2 had the most awesome time ever at Lepe Beach today! We just got back half an hour ago and it's fair to say that we are exhausted...! What a fun time we had!

Today, we had 3 different activities going on:

• Scavenger Hunt - finding things on the beach and using them to make a piece of seaside art on the beach. 
• Lepe Explorer - looking around the area of Lepe and using things that we found using our senses to make potions!
• Story Walk - listening to a story as we explored Lepe's meadows, ending with a lovely "picnic" at the beach with our animal friends.

Basically... it was AWESOME. 

Have a look at these photos to see what we got up to:

Year 4 New Forest Trip

Yesterday, Year 4 went on a trip to the New Forest. We had great fun learning about the forest and the habitats that can be found within it. There were also opportunities to get up close with animals and their skulls to see what they feel like and decide what they might eat by looking at their teeth. The trip was rounded off with a lovely walk in the forest at Bolderwood once the rain had cleared up! Here are some pictures to show you what we got up to!

The Environment Centre Green Council Challenge!

Green Council were very excited to have a visitor to speak at our meeting today.

Christabel is from The Environment Centre and she came to tell us about a project she is running in Shirley Warren. She is looking at how people can use less electricity so that they can be more Green.

She asked us to imagine that we were not just the Green Council for Shirley Warren but for our local area.  What would we change?

First we played the "Earth and Spoon" game. we had to pick up litter and tidy up the city Christabel had brought in. We also had to return the animals to their habitat.

Next we had a poster to colour and decorate to show how we would like to see improvements in our local area.

If you want to find out more about the project, you can look at www.environmentcentre.com which has all of the contact details.

Thank you, Christabel.

World Water Day Fundraising event.

This term we have been collecting money for our twin school, Tukela in Zambia.

They currently have 2 toilets shared between 130 students and 8 staff.

First of all the Green Council brought back their class bottles to count the money.

Next we lined up the bottles in order of the class that collected the most, compared to the class that collected the least.  

Can you tell which class was the winner?  

Yes, Year 5 not only filled their bottle but also had an extra bag of money.  When counted, it added up to £13.62. Year 5 have won an "Arty Party" with Mrs Williams next Tuesday afternoon.

Here are the children sorting all the money into different values. 

I think this was their favourite activity out of all of the Green Council meetings this year!

Here are all of the denominations being counted after they were sorted.  

When all of the money was counted by two boys in Year 6, we found that we had raised... £100.09!  

What an amazing achievement, Team Shirley Warren.

Year 2's World Habitat home projects

A while ago, Year 2 were challenged to create home projects using our science project at the time, living things and their habitats. They had to make something to show one of the four world habitats that we learnt about.

You may have seen our work on display in the corridor outside the Key Stage 1 classrooms, but just in case you didn't, have a look at some of them below. What fantastic work they did!



We made projects to show the ocean, the rainforest, the desert and the arctic. Can you guess which project shows which world habitat? Which one was our favourite?

The Bigfoot Mountain Debate in Year 6

Today, Year 6 hosted a debate about whether Bigfoot Mountain should be developed for tourism.

Children were put into groups such as environmentalist, skier, developer, farmers, Indians and local people and they had to argue whether they were for or against the proposed development.

Here is the agenda...

The discussion was heated with strong debate, but when it came to vote for "Should Bigfoot Mountain Ski Resort be granted planning permission?" "yes" gained 10 votes but "no" gained 18 votes, so the motion failed.  

However, Mrs Carrington said that the best debaters were really those for the Ski resorts.

How do you think you would vote?

Year 4 Egypt Topic Day

Year 4 have started the summer term with a topic day! 

Using maps, topic books and iPads, we are discovering lots of exciting things about Ancient Egypt.