What is our new school charity?
We support our school charity for a year and it is now time to change our current school charity, Make-A-Wish.
This week, each class, discussed a range of charities, researched by the children for their homework, and voted on one charity they wanted to put forward for the school councillors to decide on.
Here were the class choices:
The final democratic decision was made by a vote by the School Council and the winning charity for 2018-2019 is WWF. We will support this charity for one year.
What makes a parachute successful?
Continuing our learning about air resistance, we decided to investigate what improved the success of a parachute. Because we had already learnt about what air resistance is and seen it in action with our running parachute, we already knew what we expected to see from our investigation.
We worked in groups, each changing one aspect of our parachute to see whether this affected how safely it brought an egg down to the ground. Each group chose what they wanted to investigate.
- material it’s made out of
- its size
- the number of parachutes
- the number of holes in the parachute
Changing the number of holes
Changing the material its made out of
We tested them by holding the bottom of the cup 1m above the floor (carefully covered by plastic bags) and dropping them. We could then see how damaged – if at all – the egg was and evaluate the success of the parachute.
We were surprised by some of our results and others were what we expected. We’re now going to discuss what we observed in class and consider why we didn’t always see what we expected – a crucial part of the scientific enquiry process.
What is air resistance?
Our new mini topic is Forces.
Rather than explain what air resistance is, we got the Year 6s to feel air resistance today. Running with a parachute tailing you is significantly more difficult that running without. It even adds seconds on to how long it takes you to run 100m!
Three children ran the same distance without anything attached to them:
We timed how long that took and recorded it.
Each person in the class had a different job and we all took our roles very seriously.
Then, we attached the parachute…
It reduced our running time by an average of 3 seconds!
We’re going to continue to investigate this over the next couple of weeks. This will make our data more reliable (and will mean we all get a go with the parachute).
We’re also going to use this information to investigate air resistance in relation to parachutes. We started this off with a simple experiment around a flat piece of paper and a balled up piece of paper and watching them fall. Try this at home and see whether you can complete the missing labels on the diagram below:
Cross Country
Update 28.11.18
Congratulations to Edris and Billy who have qualified as wildcard runners for the Leeds City Finals at Temple Newsam in February.
Well done to all the Key Stage 2 children who represented school in traditional cross country weather today at the Leeds East North East cross country event at Cardinal Heenan school. For some of the children, this was the first time they have taken part in a competitive event and spirits were still high despite the muddy and cold conditions.
Thank you to Mrs Small, Mrs Charlesworth and Mrs Maqbool who accompanied the children and for parents who helped with transport and gave support at the event.
We had a fantastic response to this event with over 50 children wanting to take part. Even though we managed to increase our numbers, unfortunately there were still children who didn’t get chance to participate this time. There will, however, be other competitive and participation opportunities happening over the year.
Great Writing
We’ve been working on writing descriptively this half term and this week’s main aim was to get our readers feeling tense. Here are three great pieces of writing.
Lewis
I was having a calm, relaxing flight until a baby started to cry – classic. The scream engulfed my ears in noise. I didn’t think much of it for five minutes or so… Suddenly, my food started to shake vigorously – very vigorously. Then, the air-con slowed down and the seatbelt sign began to flicker. Then, uncharacteristically, the air stewards looked rather nervous. I started to panic as we had hit some turbulence. Were my eyes deceiving me? The TV stuttered and then went blank – my heart sank. Anxiously, I waited until large bang reverberated around the cabin. It was a suitcase falling out of the overhead lockers… I could feel the tension around me. The air masks dropped over my head as wisps of smoke filled the fuselage. The plane leaned to the right. We were going down.
Humairah
…
As I started to eat, the air-com – loud and noisy – began to slow down every minute until it finally turned off. I, and most people, thought it broke and ignored it. The lights began to flicker same as the seatbelt sign. Getting quicker every minute, the food and trays – loud and shaking – were moving side to side. The shake of the seats reverberated through my body. I still stayed calm. I decided to look through my window and I saw tiny cracks in the wings. Just then, my TV screen began to get fuzzy – probably a glitch – and then turn off completely. That happened to everybody else’s. Some people began to panic – but not me. Then, when I tried to relax and keep calm, the hum of the engine began to get louder and louder as if it were a swarm of bees collecting pollen from flowers in a meadow.
…
Grace
Beginning to doze off in the cool breeze of the air-con, I noticed the breeze slowed. This didn’t concern me. Until… it stopped. I tried everything: pressing the buttons, opening and closing the air-con flaps and trying to tell and air steward or stewardess. They wouldn’t listen. No matter how hard I tried, it didn’t work. So relaxing!
A short minute later, I heard a baby’s shriek from several seats behind me. It was reverberating around my head. I tried getting the thickest cushion I had. Reaching down to get my pillow, I noticed the food on my steel-grey tray was shaking. The crying had now suddenly stopped. I looked around the plane – new and comfortable – and noticed the window cover was shaking. I looked to see if anything else was shaking, It was – everything was shaking.
At home, have a look at this writing together. You could discuss:
- what they’ve done well
- what we were writing about
- how you feel as a reader
- what your child’s writing was like
Living and Learning: Take Over Day
Year 6 have enjoyed taking over today and I’ve enjoyed putting my feet up!
- Dylan started the day by welcoming the class from the playground and saying good morning as they came in the door.
- Sachpreet took the register and noted down everybody’s choices for lunch.
- Martha took charge of answering any phone calls to our building throughout the day.
- Isabella and Albert did a great job leading our topic review lesson with the Year 4s visiting.
- Ethan led our spelling test and Isaac gave us out times table test, coming up with questions (and answers) himself.
- Grace and Rohan joined Mrs Weekes on a learning walk of the school – which they really enjoyed.
- Josh kept a record of any warnings the class received through the day.
- Ben and Noorpreet were on duty at break, giving out cool class tokens for good choices.
- Isaiah and Sachpreet joined Mrs Small on the gate at the end of the day.
- Ripley and Nicky gave out Living and Learning certificates in assembly.
- Pia and Lewis gave out Learning certificates during assembly.
- Humairah and Haniah revealed who had won the cool class cup during assembly.
- Rohan chose the winners of our golden ticket prizes at the end of the day.
- Filip and Noorpreet gave out cool class tokens during assembly.
- Kai gave out homework and made sure everybody knew what they needed to do for it.
Everybody who wanted a job took over part of the day and enjoyed every minute of it.
Here’s our assembly take over
We know how to stop bullying.
We enjoyed looking at this week’s Creative homework all about the STOP message.
We began by looking around the room as each other’s before sharing some that had stood out to us. Then, we looked some more so that we could see those that had been mentioned and any we hadn’t had chance to look at yet.
Well done to those people who had their homework to show. There were some really fantastic pieces to enjoy. Unfortunately, a third of our class didn’t have either their homework, their spelling or both this week. Your child should be completing homework independently but help at home by making sure it is completed and brought in on the correct day.
School dinner feedback
We always welcome feedback on our school dinner menu.
As a result of pupil, parent and staff feedback, there are a number of changes we are implementing, as we work with Catering Leeds to prepare our next menu, for after February half term.
- There will be a jacket potato choice on Thursdays to give three main meal choices rather than the current two choices.
- We will be trialing meat free Monday on week 3 of the menu cycle.
- Jacket potato choices will continue to be the most popular fillings on a rotation basis – cheese, tuna and beans.
- Vegetable choices will continue to be the most popular ones selected by pupils.
School dinners are always an agenda item at School Council meetings so children are encouraged to use their pupil voice to provide feedback to their school councillors or via a suggestion slip in the Living and Learning box.
The menu will be circulated to parents and posted on our website once this is available.
Takeover Challenge Day
Takeover Challenge day is on Friday 23 November
What is Takeover Challenge?
Takeover is a fun engagement project which sees schools and organisations across England opening their doors to children and young people to take over adult roles.
It puts children and young people in decision making positions and encourages schools and organisations to hear and act upon their views and ideas. Children and young people gain an insight into the adult world and schools and organisations benefit from a fresh perspective about their work.
Recently, our new School Council discussed how children could be involved in ‘taking over’ at school. Therefore on Friday, takeover activities will include serving school dinners (representatives from Year 4), working in the school office (representatives from Year 5), leading assembly (representatives from Year 6) and accompanying Mrs Weekes on a learning walk around school (representatives from Year 5 and 6).
In addition there will be opportunities within class where children will takeover. For example, taking the register, spelling/times table tests, parts of lessons, PE warm ups and guided reading.
Check our class news pages to see this in action.
Christmas dinner menu
Catering Leeds, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Thursday 13 December. Please contact the office, before Monday 26 November, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
