Thank you to all the parents who came to celebrate 5S Arts Fortnight. The children loved being explorers, creators, artists, dancers…….the lost goes on. We centered our Arts Fortnight around our Space topic and planned performances to really make it come alive. The children memorised the solar system performance IN A DAY!! They have so much to be proud of. Our creative writing was based around creating a fantasy planet on which their alien resides, this really gave them a chance to explore different landscapes and be as creative as possible. The children were given full rein deciding what kind of planet they could create (we even had a planet, upon which was an island with a tree which gave eternal life to the inhabitants – WOW).

Well done 5S

This week we entered the season of Lent, celebrating in style with some pancake themed events. The class competed in their house teams to see who were the quickest in a pancake flipping relay. 

Through the next few weeks as we work towards Easter we will be focusing on seven habits which help us to grow and flourish as individuals: celebrating, reflecting, sharing, praying, encouraging, resting and creating. We have decorated footprints with the seven habits as a theme that runs through them to symbolise our journey through Lent. 

For E-safety week this week the children have focused on making space for conversations about their life online and looking at some of the dangers that can be involved in in-chat gaming. The children took part in a interactive live lesson by the BBC, listened to fun raps/songs about hiding your personal information online and fact-checking online news, re-designed our new desktop background and took part in an immersive assembly and workshop by Bigfoot Art Education.

Our Art project for this half term was to create a silk painting representing different elements of the Polar regions. Here you can see the children adding the final details to their painting. As a class we learnt a lot about mixing colours, using gutta and painting with precision as silk paint is extremely watery and can spread fast. The children were amazed at how fast a drop of silk paint would spread and then understood why we needed gutta to create a barrier to stop the colours from mixing.

This week we delved deeper in to our Earth and Space topic and looked at the positioning of each planet in our solar system. The children enjoyed watching the different videos which showed the planets in orbit and a little bit about them. We then created a solar system with fruit and toilet paper to show the children the relative size of the planets. The children noticed that the further away the planet the colder it was, all the rocky planets are closer to the sun and the gaseous planets are further away. Towards the end of the lesson we always have a fact finding session where the children are tasked to find a fact about our learning that we haven’t heard of yet. This always leads our discussions in very fascinating directions.

Miss Saeed’s favourite one: Scientists believe that it rains diamonds on the planets Uranus and Neptune.

This week we had a look at a lovely poem called Amulet by Ted Hughes. It was very interesting and certainly different from the kinds of poems the children were used to. Over the week researched different Artic and Antarctic creatures, their habitats and diets and planned which animal our poem would be based on. After rating the intensity of vocabulary and building up our knowledge bank we began writing our own in the style of Ted Hughes. Have a look at this amazing example written by Shangen!

Inside the Orca’s eyes, the frightened prey.

Inside the frightened prey, the penguin’s tears.

Inside the penguin’s tears, the Orca’s greed.

Inside the Orca’s greed, the fallen penguin’s corpse.

Inside the penguin’s corpse, the forgotten soul.

Inside the forgotten soul, the Orca’s laugh.

Inside the Orca’s laugh, the frozen ocean.

Inside the frozen ocean, the majestic whale.

Inside the majestic whale, the bitter-cold landscape.

Inside the bitter-cold landscape, the Orca’s fins.

Inside the Orca’s fins, the swirling blizzard.

Inside the swirling blizzard, the Orca’s eyes await.

Our computing unit for this half term has been looking at all things video! So far we have looked at what a video is, different camera angles and their purpose. This week the children have started to plan their videos in groups – the scripts, camera angles, designating roles and will go on to film and edit them next week. Have a look below at the boys taking a picture for their credits slot to go at the end of their video.

As you can see they had lots of fun being creative together!

The children thoroughly enjoyed visiting the Royal Armouries Museum today. They had the chance to see weaponary from centuries ago, to scale sizes of animals used in battle, a clash between a Celt and Roman soldier and lots of fun becoming Spartan Warriors. The trip complemented our unit this half term, Ancient Greece, beautifully. The children acted out the story of Perseus and Medusa in an immersive and comical workshop. Have a look at some pictures we took of the day!

For Anti-bullying week the children learned about how bullying can take place online/offline, in school and out of school. We learned about who we can go to if we feel like we or someone we know is being bullied. We watched two stories; one of a bully and their story of redemption and another about a journey of a boy who was bullied and how managed the situation. The children then designed posters for our UKS2 picket where we marched around the playground denouncing bullying. Our chants to support our message were ‘Be a buddy and not a bully’ and ‘Bullying is whack, get on the right track’.