Bikeability

The Bikability scheme helps children to ride their bikes safely and to have road sense. A very important lesson that the Year 5 children loved and learnt so much from.

Codebreakers

As part of our Codebreakers spy mission, we had to drop our spy (a raw egg) from the spy plane (the bridge) in a home-made parachute without killing them. Using a range of costed materials, we built safety measures into our egg holders and designed our parachutes. Many spies died unfortunately but many survived to continue their mission. Great work!

Purcell Music Workshop

Year 5 were lucky this term to have a visit from the students from Purcell School of music and what amazing days we had! The children were fabulous Adventurous Aardvarks and Open-Minded Octopuses and thoroughly embraced the whole experience.

We were treated to a performance by the Purcell Students on Wednesday, where they introduced us to themselves, their instruments and their music. On Thursday, Respect class worked in groups either with djembe drums, strings or vocals. Each group worked with students from the school to learn how to play the drums, sign a song or compose music for the violins, violas and cellos.

We showcased our learning during our own after school performance, and I know that the children and adults watching were all blown away by just how fabulous each and everyone of the children were. The culmination of the week was a performance by the Purcell students at Charlton Church where we were all lucky enough to listen to them play, demonstrating their passion and commitment to their instruments and their music.

A unique and positive experience for all the children, inspiring many to want to learn different instruments and learn more about music.

Learning Lift Off

Today, for our Learning Lift Off, we looked at all things espionage and deciphering! Our topic this term is Code Breakers, and we spent time learning about the code breakers of World War Two and their work at Bletchley Park.  We looked at the work of Alan Turning (and the other code breakers) and how they used ciphers to read the many German messages intercepted as part of the secret work carried out at Bletchley Park. We practiced deciphering many different types of code: numerical codes, where we had to use our maths knowledge to help us break the code; Pigpen codes, the trickiest one to decipher; and alphabetical codes. 

Once we had practised, we wrote our own messages and ciphers. The children were amazing! They came up with some great codes for their classmates to break, and were equally brilliant at solving them! A great start to our learning this term.