Year 6, our assembly is fast approaching and we need to get learning our songs! Please find below the songs we’ll be singing and the lyrics.
STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Years Three and Four were very lucky to have a lesson delivered to us by Mr. Butler, a volunteer STEM Ambassador who has lots of experience in this field and has visited many schools to help inspire and enthuse children in this field. He certainly did this today!
We started thinking about all the different electricity appliances we use all the time, and how these things are powered. Then we did some investigations into making an energy stick work! (A low-voltage appliance) We discovered that if we held both ends, we could safely create our own human circuit and make the energy stick light up and buzz. We also found we could keep adding children to make bigger circuits, as long as we were holding or touching hands. If we didn’t, then we were acting as switches, stopping the flow of electricity.
We used all this knowledge to apply to a variety of circuits, to work out if they would work, and if not, why not?
This session was a great opportunity for expanding not only our knowledge and vocabulary but also our thinking skills as the children had time to consider different investigations. They are all looking forward to putting this new found knowledge into practise as they begin their Science topic on ‘Electricity’ and in ‘Design and Technology’ when they will be making a reading night light.
Your homework for tonight is to create a word bank consisting of amazing adjectives, vivid verbs and nouns to describe the Blitz, ready for tomorrow’s English lesson. Your vocabulary needs to be up levelled and be at the standard we expect in Year 6. It should take around 15-20minutes and have as many words as you can think of. Below are some pictures to inspire you!
The Year 2 children and adults have had a lovely week settling into our new classroom. We are getting used to a new routine and have moved all of our things into the cupboards and drawers!
To celebrate our first week back together, we had a beautiful liturgy in our new garden. The whole class was involved in preparing it and they all participated through prayer, listening to the Bible and sharing kind words with each other.
Our mission was to treat everyday as a new beginning and embrace the opportunities that come our way.
Year 2 are learning about courage and bravery this term. They were set a summer holiday homework task to build their own lighthouse.
Our lighthouses are inspired by someone who showed real courage and bravery. Grace Darling lived in a lighthouse in Northumberland a very long time ago and she did something very special. We will be finding out all about her later this term.
There have been lots of visitors to Year 2 this week as news has got out that our lighthouses are very impressive. They have got everyone talking about the attention to detail, shining lights and light switches to turn them on. It certainly looks like our families had fun being creative together. Thank you to everyone who brought in a lighthouse for our display.
Year 3 and Year 4 had a fantastic day out today. We visited Nottingham Contemporary in the morning and had the opportunity to explore our creativity in lots of different ways – including using our bodies to represent giraffes and working in groups to make out own models! We also explored what support means, and how we support one another. Thank you so much to all the gallery staff who supported us today!
Then we visited Broadway Cinema to watch Horrible Histories: The Movie. It was great fun to see our history lessons to come to life in a funny musical way, as well as learning more about the habits of the Celts and Romans.
Year 5 were lucky enough to visit the Nottingham Trent Bridge Cricket Ground last week. We began our day in the Pavilion and learnt about past players and some history of the sport. After the Pavilion, we ventured outside to look at the ground and even got to ring the bell. We then put our geography and history knowledge to the test by using atlases and timelines to find information about key events in cricket history. After lunch, Grahame taught us how to play cricket and developed our catching and batting skills – ending in a game. We had the best time and are so inspired to learn about cricket next year.
Last week we had to fight our way along an overgrown path, but this week we took another route and a pair of secateurs! Both weeks, we have been successful in our quest for ladybirds and butterflies. The children have learned facts about these insects, spotted them in the woods, found out what their names are and recorded their finds. They have also played kindly together and challenged themselves to climb trees. Can’t wait until next week!
Big Data & Computer Systems and Networks
Year 6 started the summer term learning all about Barcodes and QR codes and how they are used to transmit data over different technologies. We were able to spend as lesson researching how infrared waves can transmit data and that is can be used for three other purposes; proximity measuring, a barrier and heat detection. Using this knowledge Year 6 were able to put on their creative hats and devise a new type of use for infrared technology in the school that uses either data transmission. We definitely had some interesting ideas!
For the second part of the half term Year 6 have been focusing on ‘Computer Systems and Networks’. They understand that codes can be used for a number of different reasons and decode messages. We spent some researching about Bletchley Park and the need to build electronic thinking machines to solve cipher codes. We also discussed the importance of historical figures and their contribution towards computer science.
Stop Motion Animation
Year 5 started this term on the topic of Animation. We began by exploring the term animation, the history of animation and looking at some 19th century animation toys. The children then started planning their own animations using a story board and gaining ideas from famous amination programmes such as ‘Wallace and Gromit’. Once the planning was completed, Year 5 were able to start creating their animations using play dough models and iPads. They followed their story boards and made small changes and movements to the models while taking images of each frame. They used a program called ‘Stop Motion Studio’ to create and edit their animations. There were some wonderful space themed animations created!
Data Handling
Staying on the theme of Space, in the second part of the Summer term Year 5 have been learning about Data Handling. The children learned about the various rovers that have been sent into space over the years to explore Mars and complete research. We discussed the length of time it took the rovers to get to Mars (from Earth) and the distance between the Earth and Mars itself. We also learned about Data transmission and Binary and that data needs to be simple to survive being transmitted over such a vast distance and that ‘binary’ was created as an international code for the transmission of on/off data. Year 5 have really enjoyed working with Binary numbers and completing the binary challenges.
