Plastic Free Day

You will see from some of our other recent blog posts, that Oakwood had a great 'Plastic Free Day' this week.

All children got involved with learning about single-use plastic and its effect on our environment. Key Stage 2 were lucky enough to have a visit from a group from King's Church who told us all about their ecobricking project, Year 6 did a local community litter pick and two of our Pupil Councillors were lucky enough to have a slot on local breakfast radio!

Across the school children also completed their own pledges to reduce plastic, wrote letters and emails to local companies to ask them to reduce their plastic use, they found inventive ways to re-use plastic in school, to name but a few!



Have a look at Year 3's top tips for reducing plastic:

Top Tips for families to reduce plastic use!
These are some of the ways our class have thought of to reduce our plastic usage and help the environment.
1. When you buy an ice-cream, ask for a cone instead of a cup as you get given a plastic spoon too – too much plastic!
2. Ditch single-use plastic items
3. Always take your litter home, wherever you are!
4. Re-think your birthday bag! Ditch the rubbish plastic toys you only use once. Include just a cake or something home-made.
5. Take a cloth bag/re-usable bag to the shops.
6. Always use paper straws instead of plastic straws.
7. Use re-usable tubs in a lunchbox not food wrapped in plastic.
8. Use metal cutlery.
9. Drink from a re-usable bottle at school and when you’re out.

Please think about using these tips at home. These tips will help our planet!

BBC Radio Solent Interview

We were invited to join Julian Clegg on his breakfast radio show at BBC Radio Solent today. Oakwood were represented by two members of our Pupil Council who spoke brilliantly about the Plastic Free Day and how we can reduce our use of plastic! Have a listen!

Year 3 Groundforce Project Phase 1-Ideas and Meeting Mr Barrett.

As part of the whole school Groundforce project to get everyone involved in improving the outside environment, Year 3 have been given the responsibility of improving the walled areas outside of their classrooms. To get our project off the ground Year 3 met together to come up with some initial ideas. We talked about safety, budget and what could be achieved realistically.  We then invited Mr Barrett to meet our school councillors to discuss our ideas. Mr Barrett was very excited and extremely helpful and suggested a few ideas of his own. The next phase is to write to Mr Taylor for advice on our plans and details on safe paints and resources we can purchase.

Take a look at our initial ideas:-

Sharing Learning in Year 3

Year 3 Explore Their Local Area

On Thursday our intrepid Y3 Explorers set out to have a look at their surrounding area. They followed the route on their map themselves. Visiting five different locations, the children compared the biodiversity, the transport and the housing of each area to see how things changed on our journey from our school location to the commercial centre of Lordshill.

Busy Term Continues in Year 3.

The Spring term continues to be a busy and productive one in Year 3. As well as learning more about the Anglo-Saxons, we started our new DT sewing unit. After threading our needles and tying a secure knot in  our thread we practised our running and back stitches. We had the challenge of joining up dots on a piece of cardboard-pulling the thread so that the stitches were taut but not too tight that it made holes in the card. We think we did a great job for our first time-take a look.



Our science works on magnets continues, This week we have been carrying out an investigation to find out which magnets are the strongest. We are learning to carry out investigations like scientists-making sure they are fair tests, taking accurate measurements and recording and evaluating results.



In English we have been learning to recite the story of Beowolf, whilst in maths we have been making up our own times tables raps and songs to help us learn our tables more easily (videos to follow shortly.) In our reading sessions this week, we were treated to a very special storytelling when one of our Year 3 children from the Czech Republic shared some very special stories-reading them in her native language and then translating into English. Here's a brief snippet-as you can hear it was a great story and made us laugh.

Rights Respecting School Committee

Our Rights Respecting School committee met today and had lots to consider.

We started by thinking about how we respect rights in school, and where we see those rights - we thought of the School Charter, Class Charters, Playground Charters, displays... We also talked about how we can respect those rights everyday, by being kind and thoughtful to people around us.

This year, we will be focusing on the 'Global Goals'. We talked about what some of the goals mean for us, and how we sometimes take them for granted in our everyday lives.

The committee will be sharing the Global Goals introduction video with their classes, and next time, we will think about which goals we can campaign for!

First meeting of Reading Champions Committee (previously known as the Library Committee)

The Library Committee met for the first time today. Our first decision was to rename our committee 'The Reading Champions Committee'. We decided that we preferred this name because ultimately we wanted to champion a love of reading.

After getting to know one another with a game of 'Find someone who' (which involved finding out Mr Taylor's favourite author - do you know?) we talked about our ideas for the coming year. We decided we wanted to promote the library opening times; ensure that a range of genres - poetry and non fiction amongst others - are also read for pleasure with, and to, classes and visit other libraries to establish links and magpie some good ideas from them.

We finished with a couple of poems from a great poetry book in our terrific library. A productive first meeting!

Imagine The Future...!

Oakwood was really privileged to be involved in Southampton City Council's Imagine the Future event today...!

Our pupil representatives boarded the Red Funnel Isle of Wight Ferry this morning (thanks to our friends at Fairisle and their minibus!) and spent the day being involved in workshops about the future of the city of Southampton.

We talked about how we could improve the lives of young people in the city and what would be the best use of the city's money...

Thanks to the City Council, Red Funnel, Bitterne Park Sixth Form, Richard Taunton College, St Anne's Sixth Form and City College for a brilliant day!

Have a look at our Twitter storyboard below to see how the day unfolded!

Tweets about ImagineTheFuture

Playground Committee Test Out Wet Play Games.

After the successful introduction of wet play books, the Playground committee have made it their next task to ensure that every class contains a wet play box that has a variety of entertaining, fun and interesting games. Needless to say our first port of call was to test out and play different games to see what games we would like to have in our wet play boxes.

Take a look at the fun we had:-





Now we have a good idea of the activities we prefer, we have come up with ideas to raise funds and persuade people to part with old board games etc that they might not use any longer. We will keep you posted-so keep watching this space.

Paper and Pen Fun with the Playtime Committee!

Today the playtime committee have been learning lots of different paper and pen games that we can teach our classes to play during wet plays. We had lots of fun playing Twins, Boxes, Character Consequences and making chatterboxes and the great thing is they didn't cost anything! Here are a few pictures:-

We also had a great idea for wet play artwork and will be emailing the office later-we think it will be great for pupils and teachers alike. We will keep you posted. 

The Travel Team's Green Cross Code Video

In our committee meeting, the Travel Team made this video to teach others the green cross code.

ChildLine visit Year 5 and Year 6

Article 19

Governments must do all they can to ensure that children are protected from all forms of violence, abuse, neglect and mistreatment by their parents or anyone else who looks after them.

Article 24

Every child has the right to the best possible health. Governments must provide good quality health care, clean water, nutritious food and a clean environment so that children can stay healthy. Richer countries must help poorer countries achieve this.

As part of our rights respecting and anti bullying work, Year 5 and 6 were visited by experienced ChildLine volunteers. Through a special assembly and guided workshops, they helped us to understand how we can all keep happy and safe. They also showed us what we can do when we we feel unhappy, unsafe and feel we don't have a voice.

Rights Respecting School Committee

Our Rights Respecting School Committee met for the first time today, with representatives from Year 1 to Year 6 all having a say in how we can improve how we respect rights at Oakwood.

We started all together, with a discussion about what rights are and how we are already respecting rights in school. We also talked about the adults' responsibilities in making sure we have these rights.

Then, Key Stage 1 children went off around the school in search of rights evidence. They took photos of our whole school charter, playground charter and displays where Articles are shown.

Meanwhile, Key Stage 2 children produced an information leaflet for parents and wrote a letter to our governors asking for one of them to volunteer to be part of our future committee meetings.

We will keep you updated with our progress throughout the year!

KS1 House Reps

Last week our new House Captains and Vice House Captains were voted in by the school. Not long after they put their badge on and polished it proudly, they were to undertake one of the first roles - a talk to KS1 children. In order to have a closer link with KS1 children, House Reps were needed from Y2. Children in Y2 put themselves forward and explained why they would be suited to the job. In accordance with the Rights Respecting Schools Article 12: Every child has the right to say what they think in all matters affecting them, voting took place, once again pupil voice was strong.

Our new House Reps for KS1 are very proud and determined to support their Captains and House!

First Meeting of the Playtime and Lunchtime Committee.

The playtime and lunchtime committee met for the first time this morning to set our agenda for the year. We looked at what we enjoyed about play times and things we thought we could improve together. We had loads of ideas to make outside break times and wet break times even better. Our ideas included: more seating areas for people to read and be quiet; a book trolley to wheel reading material out for breaks; bins and compost bins on the playground to reduce waste; water fountain for drinks on playground; design and create playground markings for games; more equipment for wet play times. We even had ideas on how to raise funds for any expenses that might be occurred. We are looking forward to achieving the goals we have made.



by Maisie and Eloise 6LD

Introducing our 2014 - 15 House and Vice Captains

The votes have been counted and the results are in! Introducing our new House and Vice Captains for 2014-15:




They are wearing their badges with pride, and already have had an important job to do manning stalls at our Macmillan Coffee Morning. Look out for news from them soon!

House Captain Voting

Article 12 of the UNICEF Rights of the Child Charter, which is one of our focus articles on our Whole School Charter, says that we all have a right to say what we think and be listened to.

Well, we certainly got a chance to do that today!

Every pupil in the school had a chance to vote for their House Captain for 2014 - 2015. The role of House Captain is very prestigious and the chosen pupils will be expected to be exemplary role models. Everyone who voted has had to think carefully about their decision and vote for the person who they think will represent their house the best.

After a rigorous application process, which included writing application forms and preparing and presenting speeches to the school, our Year 6 House Captain Candidates will be nervously awaiting the results of today's election.

We will be announcing the winner next Wednesday - watch this space for the results!

KS1 Pupil Council Banner!

Pupil Council from KS1 have helped to design a banner to remind everyone about how to play nicely at playtimes and lunchtimes. They used the 'Right's and Respecting' Charter to help them to think of ideas.

From RRS Banner

House Captains are here!

After a lengthy selection process, which included application forms, speeches and a whole school electronic voting system, we finally have our 2013-14 House and Vice Captains.




They have already been fantastic ambassadors for the school by showing round parents of prospective 2014 Year R children.

We are very proud of them!