Waterfoot Primary School

What a great day we had on Monday - full of Science activities.

We started the day of with an assembly to let us all know what science week was about this year - Time and Space.

We watched a great introduction to it and even ,carried out an experiemtn with the teachers.

After that, we went back to class and looked at how our brain works and made a 'connectome'.  What is a 'connectome' I hear you ask? 

Neurons are cells in the brain which send signals within the brain and throughout our bodies. The signals tell us what to do, like to drink when we’re thirsty. Groups of neurons make connections with each other when we learn something. Over time, our brains change based on our experiences and the number of connections grows. The connections are collectively named the ‘connectome’.

Next, we made pendulums and investigated how they worked.  Mrs Read set us the task of trying to make our pendulum swing exactly 10 times in 30 seconds.  We experimented with making the weight on the end heavier/lighter, the string longer/shorter and changing the height in which we dropped it from.  The closest we got was 10 swings in 27 seconds.

In the afternoon, we went outside and took part in an 'Alfresco' activity called 'The Hunt'.  In this activity, we will combined our mathematical skills with our working scientifically skills to explore the various speeds of British animals and how the time it takes them to run from point A to B is critical in catching their prey!

To finish off our day, we designed a poster that could be entered into the national science week competition.

It was a fun packed day with lots going on.

Well, Spring 2 has been fantastic so far and the sun has even made an appearance.  

What have we been up to?

We are covering forces in Science and have made balloon rockets and looked at and used forcemeters.  

We have brushed on our tennis skills in P.E and mastered handling the racket and controlling the ball.

We have also been learning how to say what pets we have, what they are called and what pets they don't have.  Have a listen and see what you think.

Today, the children took part in some learning about Mardi Gras.  We learnt about why and how it was celebrated, where it was celebrated and even had a go at some Samba dancing.  

Have a look at our photos.

A great start to second half of the Autumn term. 

We have been focussing on Creative games in our indoor P.E session where the children have been brushing up on their skills in football, hockey, basketball and rugby. 

We have also kick started our English unit – Wizard of Oz by creating a tornado in jar.  The children loved making these and were able to use them to create lots of vocabulary that we could use in our writing.

We have had a taster session in martial arts to encourage and enthuse children to join the outside club that is held in Whitwell Bottom on a Monday night.

Last week, we had a visit from a poet called Paul Jenkins who told us about a Poetry competition being held in Rossendale and that we could have the chance to have our poems published in a book.  We have spent some time this week working on our poetry and constructing poems all about Rossendale.

We are only two weeks in and we have had some fabulous homework pieces completed as part of the half-termly theme homework that can be found on the website.  These are displayed in our classroom window – why not come and take a look.

I think that is all for now.

Over the last 2 weeks we have been looking at light in Science.  We have been exploring how light travels and how periscopes work.  We made our own periscopes and practised with them and they worked!

We have also been looking at Salvador Dali in Art and we made our own moustaches which we loved and found very funny.

Last week, we had a huge focus on anti-bullying both online and offline and we have done alot of work around being different.  We have discussed what makes us different and what the world would be like if we were all the same.  The children engaged really well in discussions and were able to contribute some excellent veiwpoints which were well recieved by all the class.  

What a great half term we are having Cedar class.  Keep it up!

We hope you all enjoyed our Christmas show 'Away in a spaceship!' The children had worked so hard to learn all the songs, their actions and the script for the show and I'm sure you'll agree that they did themselves proud! Thank you to all the family members who were able to come along and watch us! We celebrated in the afternoon with a Christmas party; playing Christmas corners, heads & tails and musical bumps before settling down for a bit of party food before home time. Here are some pictures of our Cedar Class children! Lots more photos of all the Upper Juniors have been posted on the Waterfoot Facebook page. 

Welcome back to all our Cedar families! We hope you all had a very merry Christmas and a happy new year! We are already two weeks into the new school Spring term and already we have done so much! This half term, our topic is 'Heroes and Villains' and in English we have begun with a Villain - Macbeth! The children have seemed to really like this Shakespeare story and to kick start the unit, the children made potions like witches do as this popular story begins on the Scottish heathland with three witches.  They have written some fantastic descriptions of the setting when Macbeth was fighting in the battle against the Norwegians and we have acted out different scenes from the story.  We have also written letters (in the character of Macbeth) to Lady Macbeth to tell her what has been happening. Currently, we are working on newspaper reports about the death of King Duncan which we will finish next week.

 In P.E, we are creating a dance routine by pretending we are superheroes and villains and inventing moves they may use to represent their super power.     

During our Science lessons, the children have been learning about Scientific heroes! We began with Professor Stephen Hawking and investigated how black holes work then we have moved onto learning about Libbie Hyman and how she classified different creatures.

And finally, for this week’s update, in art we have been drawing portraits and looking at how to add detail by shading to create the natural shadows.  We have also completed some portraits of some famous villains and we are so very proud of them.

Have a look at the photos to see what we have been enjoying.