Chinese New Year in Year 2

We have had fun learning about the festival of Chinese New Year. Having our own obstacle races, an extra snack of noodles which we ate using chop sticks and we made our own tangram pictures.

Chinese New Year in Year R

We have been learning about how people celebrate Chinese New Year. We have read a story called, "Ling-Ling's Adventure to China" and have learned some facts about China. We have been trying on traditional Chinese clothing, learning how to use chopsticks, looking at globes and maps to see how far China is from where we live, painting things that 'Ling-Ling' saw while in China and even doing dragon dancing! For our homework this week the children have been challenged to find out what year they were born in. Happy Chinese New Year from Year R!

January Club of the Month - Sama Karate

Our January Club of the month seems like it happened so long ago now, but it has only been a week.

On Monday we were visited for the day by Sensei Rachael from Sama Karate who showed each of our classes some basic moves and gave a little insight into some of the things they get up to in Karate club, and some of the really cool equipment you can earn (as well as all the belts).

Rachael runs Karate club here at Oakwood after school on a Tuesday in the KS2 hall - so if your child enjoyed it and would like to do more then come in and speak to her, or contact the school office for more details.

Here are Y3 taking part in their sessions.

Willow class assembly.

Willow class brought the house down with our fantastic class assembly. We have been learning all about fruit in our topic, A Fruity Twist. We showed off our fantastic work and acted out the story of Handa's surprise. We finished off the show with a fruity song accompanied by the Willow class band!

Y4 Information Text Story Telling

Y4 started their next English unit on Information texts by learning one. Through story telling they put actions and symbols to the text to help remember it.

They learnt the whole piece in two lessons.

Do you think you could recite the text from their pictures?

Year 2 Freeze Frames!

Our topic for the last 3 weeks has been 'Who is Behind the Tree' which focuses on learning about all sorts of traditional tales.

We have written character profiles, our own twists on the traditional tales, filmed our own tale of Little Red Riding Hood and danced as the different characters.

When we filmed our tale we also took some freeze frame shots! Can you spot what is going on in each part of the story?

A place to investigate and relax!

In one of our quads, an old pond has leaked quietly behind locked doors for many years, getting clogged by leaves and fruit from an overgrown fig tree...

Lots of people have worked hard to look after the area and keep it tidy, but it's never really been used as much as we would like. 

Now, thanks to the hard work of Mrs Sweetingham, workers from the city council, some money from Sainsbury's and good advice from Ian at the Hawthorn's Centre on the common, it's getting a new lease of life!

A smaller, non-leaky pond has been installed and we're also going to create some sunken bog gardens. We'll be piling up old logs to make a mini-beast habitat, planting colourful, pollen-heavy flowers to attract insects and also making it a great place to visit for garden birds, with nest boxes and feeders.

It will take some years for the garden to mature, but we'll use it for science and geography study, as well as for relaxing. We hope a small team of pupils will work together on its upkeep. 

Bigger staff, bigger staffroom!

Oakwood Primary School now has 60 staff and neither of the former staffrooms is big enough for that many people!

Over the last few days, the KS2 staffroom has been turned into a building site as we've had walls knocked down, doors blocked up, carpets torn away, paintwork freshened, cupboards created and lots of builder's tea drunk...

It's fun trying to watch children and staff go into the old Friendship Room through a door which isn't there any more! 

We'll keep you up to date with progress! 

The Adventures of the Gingerbread Man!!

We have been learning about the adventures of the Gingerbread Man.

We used the Gingerbread Man's buttons to help us with taking-away in Maths, we practised using the main letter sounds to label a Gingerbread Man.

We designed our own Gingerbread Man using art and craft resources and we even baked a Gingerbread Man to eat at home. They were delicious!!!

We read the story and then used the puppets to retell the story using the traditional story language.

Digital Art!

Our KS2 Studio Committee had great fun today creating digital art which we're going to use to display in the Art Studio!

We used a Fractal Generator program which uses complex mathematical equations to make designs and create colour.

We hope you like the results!