Friday 23 October 2009

Year 3 Art Gallery Visit

Year 3 had a fantastic time on their trip to Southampton Art Gallery this week.

They were budding artists in a portrait printing workshop and aspiring art critics on a tour of the gallery.

They learned how to draw faces, as well as how artists communicate their ideas through their work. They also learned a thing or two about mono-printing.



A great time was had by all!



(The Art Gallery is open every day apart from Monday and is free to get in!)

Everybody Writes Day - Planet Mad!

Oakwood was planet mad for our Everybody Writes Day on Friday 16 October.

Every year group had a planet to work with and used Holst's Planet Suite as musical inspiration. They then used lots of imagination and creativity to come up with some exciting writing about their planet.

Year 3 made rockets to travel to Saturn in. The flames held poetic lines about their journey.

Year 4 wrote some free verse poems about their planet, Jupiter. They then presented them on paper planets.






(Listen to Jupiter - The Bringing of Jollity!)

Different writing tools were the order of the day in Year 5. They wrote alien messages using tin foil, chocolate, sand and even baked beans!

Year 6 sent cryptic message rocks down to Earth in their newly created Martian language.






(Listen to Mars - The Bringer of War!)

All year groups then exhibited their work in the hall for the afternoon for the rest of the children to see. As you can see from our photos, Everybody Writes Day at Oakwood was a lot of fun!

Get Active at Half Term!

Our cluster schools have got together to lay on a big range of free activities to keep you occupied during half term...!


We're working with the YMCA to offer:
  • Multi-sports
  • Drumming and DJ workshops
  • Arts and Crafts
  • Outdoor Challenges
...including a unique opportunity to work on Team Building activities with volunteers from the YMCA in The Netherlands!

You can download the leaflet to read all the details, or you can phone YMCA direct on 023 8021 0227 to book places.

Don't forget - these activities are all free!

Awesome Egyptians Home Learning Exhibition!

Great fun was had by all as the year 6's exhibited their fantastic Ancient Egyptian home learning projects!

Amidst a sea of pyramids, parents and friends were able to wander around and read Egyptian fact-files, ancient hieroglyphic manuscripts and even Egyptian newspapers!

Many of the children transformed themselves into Egyptians for the day - from slaves and priests to King Tut himself, the costumes were outstanding! Whilst we thought many of the fine linens worn by the Ancient Egyptians were beautiful, unsuprisingly, shaving our hair to make wigs (and to prevent nits!) or wearing perfumed fat, were less popular wardrobe additions!

The children put huge amounts of time and effort into their home learning exhibitions and it was lovely to have their work so widely celebrated by their peers, family, friends and school staff. Congratulations year 6! We look forward to the next home learning project in the spring term!

Kay is moving...

We have worked with Southampton City Council to move Kay, our lovely crossing patrol lady, to the new crossing point outside the school!



She will be in her new position after half term. Please make sure you cross with her in the right place!

Titch says "Thank You"

Titch came into school this morning to celebrate Harvest with us!

He told us how he thanked his Mum for his breakfast...
...and his Mum said to thank the Supermarket
...and the Supermarket said to thank the farmer
...and the farmer said to thank the cow
...and the cow said to thank the grass
...and the grass said to thank God!

He then told the story of a family who received some of the harvest food and Mum said "Now we can have breakfast..."



Everyone brought in food for the collection - a really excellent display of tins and packets and boxes which was collected by Basics Bank after the assembly! They will sort it and send it out to those who need it over the winter months.

(You might notice that Titch also bought Chris along! Chris brought his MBE to show us - Congratulations! - and he told us it was the last of 39 Harvest Assemblies he had done this year. You must be exhausted, Chris! Thanks for fitting us in!)

Into Cyber World...

We've had some excellent work done at Cyber Cafe this term!

Here are some photos showing what we've been up to...



The Cyberpupils learned how to use Photoshop to design their own CD case labels and also the labels to attach to the CD.



They have now taken these home and they can turn them into music CDs, or put files from their computers onto them!

Well done!

Tuesday 20 October 2009

House Captains 2009 - 10

Not many people know this, but Mrs Di Maiolo, who works in our office, also works for Southampton City Council when they have council elections!

SO... she was the perfect person to organise the elections for our House Captains!

Firstly, she and Mrs Worley told us in assembly about how elections work.

On election day, she made sure everything ran smoothly and then counted the votes...



...and today, she announced the results and the Mayor of Southampton, The Right Worshipful Councillor Elizabeth Mizon, met our newly elected House Captains!

Well done to them all!

Big Money from the OSA!

A really big THANK YOU to everyone who supported our Summer Fair, comes to the regular Discos and other OSA events!

Mrs Handley-Garland handed over a cheque for £1112.50 in assembly this morning - money which was raised at those events.



We've already spent some of this money by bringing the theatre to your children on the first day of term - a fantastic performance of Robin Hood!

Thanks again, OSA!

Superhero Fun!

In Year 2 our topic has been SUPERHEROES! We have made superhero puppets, clay models and superhero sidekicks.



Look at our puppets. Some of us decided that sewing the pieces of felt together was the best idea. This took us quite a long time but we got the hang of it.













































































































































Monday 5 October 2009

Walk to School Week!

This week is our HEALTHY SCHOOLS WEEK and WALK TO SCHOOL WEEK.
So put those shoes on and walk to school if you can. Remember to add a sticker to your chart in class if you have walked.

To remind us to stay healthy we are having the following at school:

Tuesday-Exercise day

Wednesday-Extra piece of fruit or vegetables in your lunch box

Thursday-No crisp day

Friday-Reflect on how to be healthy