Year 2 Myths and Legends Day!

 Year 2 have had a great day today celebrating all of their learning about Myths and Legends! 

The children were asked to bring in a home project all about a mythical creature or legend. They did a brilliant job and were very brave standing in front of the class for their presentations. 

We are so proud of everything Year 2 have achieved this half term and for having such a brilliant topic day!

Year 3 -This is Us part 2

 Our task this week was to write and perform a collaborative poem on the theme of 'This is Us'. We looked at some more poetic devices like onomatopoeia and studied how poets perform their poems using voice and body language. Children worked together to come up with lines for the class poem. Take a look:-

Year 3 Speeches

Lordswood Explorers Part 1

3LM had a fabulous local walk today, despite the awful weather.😱

Our Geographers were in small groups, observing and recording man-made and natural features of our local area. We also had a particular focus on identifying things that definitely should not be there. 

The children were impeccably behaved, energetic and very enthusiastic. They were also a little damp! But this did not stop them!

They were genuinely shocked at how much litter was around, ruining the aesthetics of the local environment and causing possible danger to animals and humans alike.

We talked about how we could encourage the local community or local council to help reduce rubbish and repair overgrown areas such as Goldcrest pond to encourage wildlife. We also discussed how positive intervention could help globally by recycling the plastic and cans we saw.

At a later date, children will be producing a short persuasive and emotive speech about the litter issue (and other issues) so watch this space!

Y1 and Y4 Story Share

This morning, Year 1 welcomed Year 4 to the base to share some stories they had written. The Year 1 children read a story called Handa's Surprise then wrote their own version of the story changing the continent the story was set in and the fruits and animals. Thank you for coming to share our stories Year 4, we hope you enjoyed the surprise!


 

Physics Day at Oakwood

On Thursday 15th November, Oakwood pupils became physicists for a time. Each year group explored various aspects of physics with practical activities.

Mr Taylor performed 3 excellent experiments to demonstrate the effects of air pressure and how aeroplanes actually fly.

Year R explored the forces of gravity, magnetism and water; 
Year 1 explored floating and sinking; 
I had the pleasure of teaching Year 2 about gravity and friction. They made accurate predictions and talked about the results they observed with great understanding. They also grasped the concept of fair testing; Year 3 explored light including refraction and linking to understanding of materials by creating shadow puppets in 3CB:

"Light travels as a wave. When you put your shadow puppet in between the lamp and the wall, the puppet blocks some of the light waves.

The closer you put your shadow puppet to the lamp, the more light waves are blocked. This makes a bigger shadow. Moving the shadow puppet away from the lamp makes a smaller shadow as fewer light waves are blocked."

Year 5 investigated the effects of air resistance and friction with balloon cars.

Finally, Year 6 created periscopes to explore the law of reflection and combined a little chemistry with electronics. Potato battery anyone?

The children all loved getting stuck in to science today. We are looking forward to the next science day in the spring term, which will be biology based. 

An Egg-cellent Year 4 Diary

4JH decided to document each day they chicks spent with us, filming little clips of what the chicks were up to. We loved having the chicks- and updating the video on their progress!

How clear do instructions need to be?

Today in Year 5 we completed an activity in English focusing on giving precise instructions. We had to sit back to back to our partner and make a small Lego model. We then had to describe to them exactly how to make an identical model.

The activity allowed us to identify how specific instructions need to be, to inform our audience and how important prepositions and adverbs are.

Year 3 Performance Poetry Competition

Here are some of the finalists from our Poetry Performance competition.

Fun with French

A little bit of French:

Over the last couple of weeks Oakwood children have been lucky enough to have a very special visitor: Lucia DiMaiolo.

Lucia studies languages at university and spent several months studying in France, so not only is she fluent in speaking French, her accent is also authentic.

She came in to help with written french and talk to Year 6 and Year 5 (featured below) about her favourite subjects, what it is like to live in France and her favourite / tasting experiences, which include frogs legs, Croque monsieur and dare I say it...McDo, an affectionate french term for MacDonalds.

On that note, you can also see some of the delicious sandwiches designed by Year 4.

In case you're interested, here is a croque monsieur recipe to try at home :

http://www.theslowcook.com/blog/2011/05/27/kids-make-croque-monsieur/

Year 1 Space Homework

The children in Year 1 were given the opportunity to carry out their own research projects about space and then present their work to their class.

What a variety of work we saw; information fact files, posters, models, PowerPoint presentations and booklets.

Well done Year 1 for some interesting and creative homework and for sharing your work so confidently!

Year 4 Oh What A Circus!

Today, the circus rolled into Year 4 with clowns, acrobats, lion tamers, strong  men and even some circus animals arriving to entertain their audience in the ring.  We learned about the history of the circus and then had a debate about the use of animals within a circus.  Finally, the afternoon was spent miming and performing their circus acts to each other.  We certainly have got some fantastic clowns in Year 4.

Y3 Storytelling Beowulf

Before half-term Y3 shared the tale of Beowulf with the school, just as the Anglo-Saxons would have told it - from memory!



If you thought that was scary, why not pop in and see the terrifying tales Y3 were inspired to write by themselves...

The Day 5BK's Crayons Quit!

Thanks to 5BK who put on a great storytelling assembly this morning!

They gave us the full gen on How To Capture a Dragon , having learned the method off by heart to get the rhythms and structures of instruction writing stuck in their heads for later use!

They also performed The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers. This was a great story to showcase their dramatic talents, but also reminded us all about how we solve our disagreements and make friends again.

Testwood Lakes Navigation

Today Year 4 tried out their navigation and survival skills at Testwood Lakes. They looked across Southampton and located landmarks using 4-figure grid references. They used their compass to build a shelter which would protect them from the cold Northern wind, and used smaller scale maps to set the record for the fastest time (for any year group!) to complete the orienteering course!

Toy Adventure for Year 1

On Friday Year 1 were invited to bring in a favourite toy for their very own Toy Adventure!

During the day the children had the opportunity to talk about their toys and introduce them to the class and the toys were able to meet up with other toys in role play.

It was unfortunate that the toys couldn't go outside to explore with their owners, as the weather was so wet, but that did not stop them having fun.

The toys were able to play parachute games with the children and they even completed an obstacle course around the hall which included.... crossing a "bridge" over a river, going over hurdles, under the "rainbows", between the "bushes", balancing along a "snake", as well as jumping in and out of "puddles" which were more recognisable as hoops!

With a little bit of imagination a real toy adventure took place. I wonder which activity they enjoyed most?

Ancient Lands Completed in 5BK

Today 5BK completed their ancient lands. They then presented what they had learned about the Ancient Egyptians throughout this term and how they had represented this through their lands. We all had great fun making them and it’s a great end to a fantastic topic! Here are some pictures of them completed and some close ups of the extra detail we added.

Tell me a Dragon

Year 1 have read a really lovely book called 'Tell me a Dragon' which describes lots of different dragons from snaggle toothed to jade winged and amber eyed.

We then created our own pages to go in the book and have made class 'Tell me a Dragon' books.
We performed our pages for each other (which was tricky as it was windy and we had to be really loud).

If you want to read our books, come and visit Year 1 to have a look. We would love to share our pages with you.

Dragon hunting in Year 1

This is a post about when Year 1 went on a hunt to find evidence of dragons, but we didn't really want to come across one!

These are some of the things we found:
-bones (from left over dinner)
-shiny scales that have fallen off
-fresh red blood (which means a dragon had it's dinner recently)
-pheasant feather (more left overs)
-smelly brown dragon poo
-deep claw marks on the trees (too high to be faked by teachers)
-swishy tail trails
-muddy footprints
-3 glittering dragon eggs in a nest
-1 single dragon egg high up a tree (too high to be faked by teachers)
-a broken fence and branches (it's trail of destruction)
-blackened scorched trees from it's fiery breath
-cracked concrete from heavy dragons stomping around

Watch this space for some inspired dragon related work from Year 1. (Please see your homework).



Brought to you by the children of Year 1.

Fruity Tutti Triumphs

Jude's ice cream


In Year 5, we did a business project to test our teamwork. We did it with Jude’s Ice Cream company. First of all, we did some detailed research on Jude’s website about Jude and her families’ company. After that, we made a leaflet all about Jude’s Ice Cream and the story of the company.

We were also lucky enough to go to the factory itself. We were fascinated by the journey of ice cream and how it is made. After the amazing trip, we got back to school and did taste testing in the afternoon. This helped us design our flavour. We tasted a variety of different bases and toppings.

The next day, we named our group and we made a group charter stating all the rules to keep our team fair and successful. Furthermore, we created a questionnaire to give Year 4’s. That helped us decided our key information and flavour of our business.

Over the next few weeks, we had to put together a powerpoint presentation, create a design for our product and packaging. Also research a charity we wanted the profits to go to, calculate the costing of production and the profit we would make. Then finally present all our work on a A1 poster.

When Jude visited Oakwood, each team performed their pitch showing her the powerpoints and posters of all our hard work. After watching them all, she made a very difficult decision of choosing the winning team.

The winning team was ours (The Fruity Tuttti’s and our flavour was called Brazilian Sweetness; strawberries, white chocolate chips and a vanilla base.) This project was great fun! Everyone learnt so much about teamwork and how designing a product and running a business works. We also learnt lots of new ICT skills, because all our work was done on Google Drive. This allowed us to work together and use several programs; Google docs, Google slides and Google sheet. Learning how to do calculations on Excel was tricky but great, when we could do it.

Thank you Jude and your team for everyone that allowed us to have the opportunity to do such a fun topic.

By Fruity Tutti (The winning team)