A Look Back at Mrs Vaudin's Time at Oakwood!

As Mrs Vaudin starts her retirement tomorrow, we thought you would like to see some of the photos we've decorated the school with!

Mrs Vaudin thought some of these photos were lost forever, but...



...it's amazing what you can find if you look hard enough!

Science rocks!

Oakwood had an absolutely fantastic day exploring the world of Science yesterday. The day kicked off with a visit from 'The Mad Scientist' to show us some of his experiments.



The day continued with all classes completing a roundabout of spectacular science activities.

A Little bit of Persuasion Goes a Long way!!

Year 5 have been learning lots of persuasive letter writing techniques. Our first attempt was to try to persuade some of our favourite tv characters stop doing something.

Here are a few of our letters, do you think we have been successful?

Quick Links to our OFSTED Report

Thank you for your support during our recent OFSTED inspection.

The report confirms that Oakwood Junior School is a good school, with outstanding practice in a number of areas.



Here are some quick links to documents and pages about the inspection:

• Letter to parents and carers from Richard Wilson (Chair of Governors) and Ian Taylor (Headteacher)
• Full 2010 OFSTED Report for the school
• Our page on the OFSTED Website. The report will also be published here in due course.

Charmingly Situated with much Potential...

On Thursday and Friday Year 5 opened our own estate agent businesses. Currently learning about peruasive writing, we put our persuasive skills to the test as we tried to make the most money selling houses.



After a week of hard work preparing all our business literature including banners, business cards, leaflets, house information, questionaires etc, the big day finally arrived! We were visited by many esteemed clients -all the pupils at Oakwood and many parents. Every client was issued with a specially designed cheque to spend on a house that they had been persuaded to buy.

As you can see from the photos it was a brilliant day and gave us a great opportunity to use our persuasive speaking and listening skills in a formal setting. We definitely have some budding entrepreneurs in the making!

by Conor and Amie.

Year 4's Incredible Indian Music!

Year 4 had a lovely music session in the hall with Mrs Peregrine today. Using chairs as drums and other instruments they explored the many rhythms and beats of Indian music.

Great work Year 4!

St. Patrick's Day

Last week, Year 3 learned all about St. Patrick's Day. We started the day with looking at maps of the world to locate Ireland. Then, using information we had researched, we worked in groups to produce posters all about St. Patrick.

Hannah from Year 6 then came and helped us with learning an Irish Dance. She even wore her special costume so we could see an example of typical Irish Dress.



We finished the day with writing limericks, which are traditional Irish poems. Here are two we wrote together:

There once was a shamrock called Jock
Who lived in a bright yellow sock
His sock was so smelly
A bit like his welly
It gave his poor mum a big shock!

There once was a pot full of gold
That started to grow lots of mould
A leprechaun said
As he fell on his head
To the highest bidder it's sold!

Easter Gardens

Year 3 have been learning about the Easter Story. Last week, we planted Easter Gardens which symbolise the tomb where Jesus was buried and resurrected.

We made the gardens using soil, grass seed, spring flowers, a plant pot (for the tomb) and a stone. When we first made them, they looked a bit bare...




But just look at them now!



We hope they will still be flowering for our Easter Service at Lordshill church next week!

Sure Start Healthy Cookery Course

Sure Start are running a Healthy Cookery Course at our school starting after the Easter Break.

Click on the details below to print out a bigger version!

Celebrating with Mrs Rogers

Congratulations are in order for Zita Rogers who has successfully completed the National PSHE CPD Certification Programme.

This is a nationally recognised qualification run by the Healthy Schools programme and Roehampton University, and Zita was amongst the first group of teachers and school nurses to achieve this very important award.

Here she is receiving her certificate from Paul Nugent, head of School Standards in Southampton...



The award is important because it means that the Personal, Social, Health and Citizenship education at Oakwood Junior School, which Zita has planned and oversees, is of an extremely high standard!



Well done to all the recipients!

5LD's Charter for Children.

As part of our SEAL topic' Good to be Me' 5LD have been looking at the lives of children in other places and times, and with different values and customs.

We examined the life of other children in the world who are not as fortunate as ourselves and it made us realise just how lucky we were- that it really was good to be us!! Here are some of the things we learnt:-

• If we had been born a couple of centuries ago we might have had to start work at the age of four or five.
• There are over 246 million child labourers in the world today.
• Many children work in dangerous jobs with little money and no free time.
• Many children lose their eyesight in poorly lit sweatshops or damage their lungs in work places which are full of fumes.
• Many children are forced to work as soldiers and put their lives at risk.

We looked at the work of UNICEF and Save the Children who are organisations dedicated to protecting children from violence abuse and explotation. We learnt that money from special days like Comic Relief and Sports Relief help lots of children all over the world.

We decided to produce our own Children's Charters to express what we believe are the rights that every child should have. Here are a few examples:-

Year 5 Oasis Trip

On Tuesday 16th March 30 Year 5 children visited the Oasis Academy in Lordshill. We were invited by Year 10 students who put on a range of fun activities for us to do. Check out the photos.

by Amie and Conor, video by Amie

Year 6 and the Law of Averages...

Year 6 able mathematicians have been using their knowledge of averages (mean, mode and median) to solve some quite tricky problems...

In this group of seven numbers, two are mystery numbers which you have to work out!



Using the facts that the mode for the set of numbers is 5 and the mean is 10, can you work out what the two missing numbers are?

Year 6 can!

Oakwood's Mathematicians and the Collatz Conjecture...

Some able mathematicians in Years 5 and 6 have been working on a very old number problem. They didn't get any instructions, just this cartoon by Randall Munroe:



The Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős said "Mathematics is not yet ready for such confusing, troubling, and hard problems," but Oakwood's mathematicians were!

They had to work out what was happening before they could work out what to do! Can you work it out? (See the answer below if you can't!*)

The problem is called the Collatz Conjecture and was orginally suggested by Lothar Collatz, a German mathematician, in 1937.

Nathaniel, Aaron and Isaac in Year 5 worked out the rules for each step and then tried the rules starting with the number 27. They found all 111 steps by working it out accurately on big sheets of paper (click on the picture to see a big version!)...



They then put all their data into Excel and graphed their results. Starting with 27, they found that the rules took them as high as 9232 before coming back down to 1...



(*Starting with any number, if it's even, halve it, if it's odd, multiply it by three and add one. Carry on following the same rules on each answer you get. If you get to 1, stop...)

A Better, Brighter, Greener School!

If you have wondered what the Portakabins outside both schools are at the moment, they are home to Dave and Matt who are busy replacing all of our lights. (I don't think they sleep in there, though!)

The old lights were very old, getting dirty, buzzed a lot and they have stopped making bulbs for them, so we had to do something quickly!

In some rooms, the old ceilings have had to come down too so that the new lights can fit in new, square tiled ceilings.



The new lights will also help us get even greener!

We are already one of the most energy efficient schools in the city with a DEC Rating of "C" (54).



This is an improvement on our first rating of "C" (63) last year - we might even be a "B" next year!

Racing Rockets in Year 5!!!

Yesterday Year 5 were set another problem solving challenge. We were given the task of designing our own rockets. Our success criteria were:-

• The Rocket must be able to stand up.
• Rocket must include boosters and other attachments.
• The Rocket must be decorated -looking awesome!!!
• Work co-operatively as a group - everybody must contribute.
• Work co-operatively as a class-sharing resources and helping each other.

Here are the results-we hope you agree we did a great job!

Funky Fractions!

Year 5 have been learning about about fractions. We were set some challenging problem solving activities. Here is one for you to solve.

Can you find two ways of cutting a doughnut into 1/8s with only 3 cuts of a knife?

Here are year 5 trying to solve the problem.



If you solve the problem, come to 5LD to claim your sweet or sticker. If you're stuck come to us for the solution. Who will be the first to solve the problem???

By Conor and Amie.

OJS School Council get campaigning!

Last Thursday OJS School Council made themselves heard!

During our last school council meeting, we learnt how pupil voice needs to be heard, not just in schools, but also in our city.

Southampton Youth Parliament have four new candidates who want to represent the views and opinions of children living in OUR area.

We split into four groups and researched each of the four candidates; Nathan King wants to lower the voting age to 16, Miriam Hall hopes to organise more gigs and shows for young people, Grace McPherson plans to give children rewards for excellent achievement, whilst Danielle Townsend has strong views on child abuse.

We presented each of our four campaigns to year 6, who used this information to vote for their candidate interactively using the 'MiVote' system.

Who do you think should be the next candidate to join Southampton Youth Parliament?

Year 6 and the school coucil have had their say....now have yours!

Shadowy Science

Year 3 have been learning about light and shadow as part of their science topic.

We took advantage of the sunny weather on Monday and investigated how shadows are formed and what happens to them over the course of the day.

We learned:

• light travels in a straight line
• shadows change direction over the course of the day - this is because the sun appears to move position in the sky
• the sun appears to move position (but really stays still) because the Earth spins
• shadows are formed when opaque objects block the light

Oakthorne Day 2

While our friends were enjoying their second day at Fairthorne Manor, Oakthorne group had some adventures of their own!

We travelled across Southampton to Woodmill Activity Centre. We had a fantastic time learning archery, rock climbing and tackling the low ropes course.

We learned lots about teamwork, safety and above all, conquering some of our fears!

Marvellous Marking Stickers!!

Today the 'L' Factor committee returned to the topic of marking.

Firstly we discussed what had happened since our very first committee when we talked about how well we thought the marking helped us with our learning. The good news was that the majority of committee members felt that lots of things had improved in that time. In particular the majority of children felt that they were given more time to reflect on, and respond to, marking comments.

To help all children become even more reflective when considering the recorded outcomes of their work, the committee spent the afternoon designing both self and peer assessment stickers that all children at Oakwood can use. As you can see from the following photos they did a great job!!



The stickers have been scanned into the computer and committee members will be delivering a master set to every class later in the week. We look forward to seeing how different classes make use of them.

Well done to every member for another great committee afternoon.