OJS School Council get set for the Christmas Fair!

The School Council had a very busy Friday helping Mrs Handley-Garland set up for the Christmas Fair!

Tables, decorations, a helpers' rota and a very secret room all had to be organised ready for Monday's Christmas celebrations!

Everybody had a part to play in preparing for the Fair - from gathering ideas for the stalls and making posters, to organising helpers and setting up the secret room, we have had lots of fun and are looking forward to everyone enjoying the Fair on Monday!

By Rhian, Sean and Miss Denton

Lovely St. Lucia!

Year 6 had a fantastic St Lucia morning!

In Miss Denton's class we learned about Caribbean music - steel drums, soco and calypso music. We learned 'The Four White Horses' and made our own Caribbean music using drums!

We made Caribbean collages with Miss Beavill, "It was great making the waterfall," commented Alex.



We learned about family life in St Lucia with Mrs Collins. We started to make our St. Lucia factfile. "I learnt that in St. Lucia the average wage was a pound a day! I was shocked," said Elliot.

We all had a great day and learned lots!

By Alex, Elliot and Miss Denton

School Council Conference 2009!

Yesterday, we had a fantastic time representing Oakwood Junior School at the Biannual School Council Conference 2009!

We started the day by taking part in a team-building exercise with lots of other schools also at the conference. We successfully built a newspaper bridge to hold our egg safely! Mrs Bevan-Mackie and Mr Honeybone were glad we didn't get egg on the carpet!

After break, we improved our communication skills with Mr Honeybone and had a tour around the stadium! We discussed with Mrs Bevan-Mackie what makes a good school councillor. We also had time to share our work on anti-bullying with other schools and 'magpied' a few ideas to bring back to OJS.

After a quick lunch, we drove to the Civic Centre and presented a speech in the Council Chambers,we did this in front of the Mayor and all the other school councils! We felt quite nervous standing in the middle of the chamber but everybody was really interested in our explanations about Committee Afternoons at OJS.

Finally, the Mayor and the Town Sergeant gave us a tour of the Mayor's Suite. It was a brilliant day!

Sean really liked seeing the picture of the first Asian Mayor of Southampton, Alisha loved trying on the Mayor's clothes, Lewis found the tapestry of WW2 fascinating and Caitlin enjoyed comparing the old and new pictures of Southampton!

Thank you to the Mayor, Mrs Bevan-Mackie and Mr Honeybone for making our day so special. We can't wait for the next conference!

Written by Lewis, Alisha, Caitlin, Sean and Miss Denton

Year 3 explosion!!

On Wednesday 18th November 2009, Year 3 had a hands-on taster of what life would have been like during World War 2.

The had a fun-packed day visiting two museums - Explosion Museum of Naval Firepower amd SEARCH Living History Museum, both of which are in Gosport.

At Explosion, the children were able to get up close to, and even touch, examples of naval firepower through the ages. They learned about the site of the museum, Priddy's Hard, and had a chance to set off the air raid siren in the education centre.



The children became museum curators at SEARCH, where they explored objects from history, and used clues in the World War 2 kitchen to help them decide whether the objects were from that period or not. They also hid in an Anderson Shelter during one of the air raid sirens.

Year 6 trip to Highclere Castle

Last Friday year six were treated to a fantastic trip to Highclere Castle, near Newbury. We had a wonderful day, even though the weather was not so wonderful!

Firstly, we explored Highclere's Secret Garden, complete with hedge tunnels, grape vines and ancient fig trees.

Once inside the castle, we watched an informative video all about the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. We were also lucky enough to view actual artefacts from Ancient Egypt, discovered by the Earl of Carnarvon and Howard Carter. Finally, we visited the 'hands-on' room, where we could dress up and create pieces of artwork.



By Angela, Bethany and Miss Beavill

All the fun of the Fair!

Our second Committee Afternoon passed in a blur of planning and preparation for the school council, as we continued to put our Play Ranger plans in to place, whilst also preparing for the Christmas Fair!

We have now completed our recruitment drive for Play Rangers and selected candidates begin their training with Mrs Le-Bas next week. We are all looking forward to seeing the new Rangers supporting children on the playground and also showing us how to use the new playground equipment.

We also met with Mrs Handley-Garland to help her organise the Oakwood Junior and Infant School Christmas Fair, which will be on Monday 30th November, from 5-7pm. We have all chosen jobs to help with the preparation and running of the Fair - come and see us in action!

Delightful Data Loggers

5LD have been having a 'sensor' ible time with the Easy Sense data logger. For the last week 5LD have been taking the data loggers into assembly and recording the noise levels-at one point we managed to reach 90 dba!!!

After assembly we interpreted the graphs for our Sensational Sounds work. Later 4 super secrect spies snooped around the school. They stood outside each class room door recording the sound levels. The highest recording was 73.5 dba!!!

Take a look at the graphs and see if you can work out who was the noisiest and quietest classes at that particular time. We will award a sticker for anyone who posts the correct answer.



By Amie And Conor

Boats Ahoy at Lordshill Library.

Year 5's boatastic boat projects have now docked at Lordshill library. You will find them in the the children's section of the library so go and check them out!



by Amie and Conor.

A Day to Remember

On Wednesday 11th November 2009, Year 3 walked to Hollybrook Cemetery to visit the World War 1 Cenotaph.

We looked at the graves, read the names of the men who had died at sea and we spent some time reflecting on the sacrifices these young men made for us.

At 11am, we stood for 2 minutes in silence and laid a wreath of poppies on the monument. The poppies had our thoughts and prayers written on them.



On the way back, we stopped to pay our respects to the World War 2 graves.

The year 3 children showed great maturity on our trip, and we were very proud of how well they behaved.

School Council Committee Afternoon!

Oakwood Junior School Council had a jam-packed committee afternoon planning ideas for school improvement!


We believe that children need more support at playtime! As a result, we are going to re-launch play rangers! We discussed how we could do this and decided we would need to:

• Plan a recruitment drive (year 5 and year 6 assembly)


• Select candidates (use a vote system if necessary)


• Organise training for the new play rangers, teaching them how to be a fantastic ranger!


• Organise training to teach the rangers how to use the playground equipment and how to store it properly.


• Plan a rota for the rangers so they know when it is their duty day.

We also felt that the play equipment might need a new home or better storage, this would mean the equipment would be easier to keep tidy and in would stay in good condition for longer.

We asked Mrs LeBas (Head Dinner Lady) to give us some information and advice about Play Rangers. She gave us some top tips on how to make Play Rangers a success!

Watch out for the our next update on Play Rangers after Committee Afternoon 2!

The Travel Team Plans Ahead...

The Totally Travel Team Committee met for the first time this afternoon on the first of our Committee Days of the new academic year.

Our committees mean that all children in our school have a say in how the school is run and the improvements we make.

Last year, the Totally Travel Team had ideas for the new 20mph School Zone and designed 20 is Plenty signs, looked at how safe Sandpiper Road is, and arranged for the Truck Safety Team to tell us how to stay safe around big lorries.

Today, we started this year's hard work. We...

• designed our Totally Travel Team ID Badges
• organised Walk To School week resources for 16 - 20 November;
• designed bookmarks for Road Safety Day on Tuesday 24 November (each child will get one);
• wrote letters to parents to accompany a special Road Safety Booklet which all parents will be getting.

We think we got a lot achieved for our first Committee Meeting and are looking forward to next time!

The 'L' Factor.

The 'L' Factor committee had a very successful first meeting this afternoon. The L stands for learning. Throughout the year our committee will be looking at lots of different ways we can all help each other become better learners.

Today we looked at how our books are at marked at Oakwood. Every child in the committee felt that having their book marked was very important. Through discussion and questionnaires, we came to some conclusions about what was successful and what could be improved to help all learners know their next steps. The committee were very pleased with the rewards and comments they were given when they had produced a good piece of work.

Children would like to find more ways of showing that they themselves understand what is a good piece of work. They would like more time to read and respond to the teachers comment; more one to one marking with the teacher and times when they can mark and review each others work. Over the next couple of committee meetings we have decided to trial a few ideas.

We learn 95% of what we teach others.
William Glasser.

At the end of the afternoon we started to design our committee logo. Well done to the 'L' Factor committee a very productive meeting.

Spot the Secret Agents!

James Bond visited OJS today!

In fact, there were lots of James and Jane Bonds, Professor Laytons, thieves, spies and secret agents in the school today, as year 6 arrived in disguise this morning to celebrate the launch of their new Secret Agents topic.

We started the day by playing a game of 'Spy and Seek'. Our codeword was 'Stormbreaker' - you will have to ask any of our agents to explain why we picked that particular word!

As secret agents, we imagined ourselves in a variety of settings and designed appropriate masks and costumes to help us blend in to our surroundings! We used a variety of art mediums, including watercolours, to display our ideas.

Finally, we read our new class novel (the clue might be in our codeword!) and cracked some secret codes!

Well done to everybody for making such a huge effort with your costumes. We have had a fantastic start to our new topic and I know we are all looking forward to finding out what is in store for Alex Rider!

Icebergs Ahead!

Year 5 Titanic Day

At the end of last term Year 5 celebrated Titanic Day. It was a wonderful commemoration which marked the end of a fabulous unit of work investigating the part that Southampton played in the history of the Titanic, and how it was affected by the disaster that occured.

All the children came dressed ready to board the ship. They had chosen whether to be passengers (1st, 2nd or 3rd class) or workers. After a quick fashion show children recorded all relevant details onto their passports and boarding passes.

In the afternoon all children took their documents down to passport control and boarded the Titanic to the melodic sound of the 'orchestra'. The day culminated in High Tea where the children sat down to a delicious feast of scones, jam and cream. These had been made by the children in a Let's Get Cooking session the previous day. They were then taught an Irish jig by our resident school expert Hannah.



Year 5 would like to thank all the Year 6 muscians and passport control officers who helped make it such a special experience.

Boat-Tastic Boat Show!

Last term Year 5 had a terrific time at Southampton Boat Show and guess what we even saw Princess Anne!!!

During the day we had a little lifeboat lesson which included learning about the dangers of the sea. We also learnt that all of the RNLI workers are all voluntary. In small groups we toured around the boat show and got to see all the fantastic sights. Most pupils favourite experience was going on board the simulator which made you feel like you were actually on a real boat and even squirted water at you!!! We saw sunseekers sparkling in the golden sun and we even had lunch on the beach with a jazz band accompanying our munching!



What a great day!

by Amie and Conor.

Boats Ahoy!

Year 5's Brilliant Boat Projects!

Year 5 had their own AMAZING boat show yesterday. After working extremely hard for the last 6 weeks on their home learning tasks, it was time to show off the completed projects to parents and fellow pupils. We had models of all ships and sizes, from little lifeboats and canoes to speedboats and sparkly cruise ships. Everybody agrees they were all 'BOAT-TASTIC' .

As well as the magnificent models we had jaw dropping stories, fascinating facts and scintillating PowerPoint presentations. These will all be shared in class in the next few weeks for everbody to enjoy.



From next Friday a range of these super projects will be on display in Lordshill library up untill Christmas. So take grans, grandads, aunts and uncles and ENJOY!

Well done to all the children in Year 5. Everybody has been extremely impressed and very proud of how hard you all worked.