Friday 16th December
'Twas the week before Christmas, when all through the school. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; well, not quite – we’ve had a great week full of busyness! It was our ‘Festival’ Enrichment Week with a focus on music, RE, MFL and geography. In particular, the children had a fantastic time learning about Samba; experimenting with beats, rhythm and instruments and embracing the samba experience. It was also our Christmas dinner day where we pulled crackers, enjoyed festive tunes and shared our Christmas joy over a lovely meal. To add to this, we finished our persuasive writing about an adventure park and performed them as radio adverts! I would love to visit all of them!
Friday 9th December
A very good week with Class Antarctica was had. In maths, we explored multiplying a two-digit number by a one-digit number using partitioning and representation, in English we continued to develop our understanding of how to persuade in a written text, the class had a challenging core workout during yoga, for science the children drew a graph to present how the time of sunrise and sunset changes during the year and leant about why this happens, and in music we identified the use of 4 beats in a bar and created our own 4 beats in a bar compositions using our hands and feet to create different timbre.
Friday 2nd December
What a fantastic educational visit Year 5 had to Durham this week. As part of our local history topic, we visited the cathedral and found out about its rich history. We learnt about when, why and how it was built and the importance of St Cuthbert and St Oswald’s. We found out how the cathedral has been used (in particular by the monks), explored the monks’ old living, eating and sleeping quarters (which are now museums), and were provided lots of information about historical artefacts. Obviously, there was a lot of enthusiasm too about seeing the locations where Harry Potter was shot! We also took an educational walk around the city where we used our geography knowledge to recognise features of the temperate deciduous forest biome that we were in as well as applying our map work skills whilst finding out further historical information about Durham.
Friday 25th November
It has been another excellent week for Class Antarctica. We have been exploring negative numbers in maths, writing snow poems in English, developing flexibility and mindfulness in PE with yoga (and swimming), role playing the heliocentric model to help understand our solar system (see photos) in science, comparing and contrasting the grassland biomes with the tundra biomes, and describing musical compositions using the language of musical elements. It has a been a great week of learning, and as always, full of enthusiasm and hard work! Well done Class Antarctica!
Friday 18th November
It has been a busy week for Class Antarctica. We explored databases in ICT and developed our skills of how to find information by using different operations to refine a search. On Wednesday, a big group of children went Gateshead Leisure Centre for the Y5/6 Indoor Athletics Festival and had a great time. Finally, Friday was Children in Need. The children came dressed up, donated money, made cakes to raise even more money and raised awareness of children who need support.
Friday 11th November
Well done to Class Antarctica on another excellent week. I have been particularly impressed with their descriptive skills in English where they have been using powerful descriptions and adverbs to create an ominous setting, and senses and character reactions to build suspense.
The class have also continued to make excellent progress with their swimming. This week, the majority of children were already able to swim one length of the 25m pool and it is only November!
Friday 4th November
This week in science we started our new topic of ‘Earth and Space’. The children were provided different evidence from different time periods to justify whether people thought Earth was a flat disc or spherical. They had lots of good discussions and lots of explanations to justify their ideas of whether the evidence provided supported a flat Earth or spherical Earth perspective.
We also competed our art work where we had explored perspective and techniques that could be used to create different perspectives. The children used size perspective, position perspective and atmospheric perspective (in which they applied their knowledge of tints and shades) to create fantastic landscapes.
Friday 21st October
What a busy week it has been for class Antarctica. For starters, it was intra-school competition time where every class had a house competition for these areas of PE they had been developing their skills. For Antarctica it was basketball and the children had a great event. It was full of teamwork, skills, effort and fair play. Congratulations to Team Tyne who were this term’s winners.
In science, we continued our exploration of dissolving and how this links to the particle model. The children designed their own question of inquiry involving skittles and dissolving, their way of ensuring a fair test and their own hypothesis with explanation. They carried it out and tested their hypothesis.
To end the week, children had their first prayer space in a long time and the people leading were amazed by their attitude.
Well done Class Antarctica on great week and a fab Autumn Term 1.
Friday 14th October
This week we had a drama workshop based on WWI and the perspective of German nationals living in England at the time. Through role play, archived footage and newspaper articles, we were able to gain a real empathy for people of German descent who were treated with great distrust and hatred during the Great War.
Friday 7th September
What a wonderful week of poetic magic it has been during poetry week at Emmaville Primary. Class Antarctica have been inspired by the book ‘The Lost Words’ and in particular the poem ‘Raven’. We explored organisation and features such as repetition, alliteration, similes and metaphors through ‘Raven’ and then used it to develop our own poems in the same style. The class all produce wonderful work, one of which is below. Well done class!
Rabbit
Robin requests, what are you?
I am Rabbit! A soft fluffy blanket as I curl up on your knee, jumper of trees as my long fluffy ears flow in the soft breeze, with cheeks as fat as Henry VIII, scoffs Rabbit in reply.
Adder asks, what are you?
I am Rabbit! Eyes as black as midnight as I steal all the carrots from the garden, a carrot stealer, whiskers as fine as spider silk, nose shapes like a heart, paws like a pillow, snaps Rabbit in reply.
Butterfly bellows, what are you?
I am Rabbit! A bright white snowball, I dig like a digger and hop like a slinky, laughed Rabbit in reply.
Bee burbles, what are you?
I am Rabbit! Carrot murderer, a slip slide rider, soft as a pom-pom, stealer of carrots that Granny wondered where they had gone, sneers Rabbit in reply.
Ivy inquires, what are you?
I am Rabbit! Queen of the underground, a cute happiness, warns Rabbit in reply.
Truly, nobody knows what you are!
Not true! Since I am Rabbit! I pick ears the better to hear, I pick feet the better to run, scowls Rabbit in reply.
Friday 30th September
A fab week with the children has included art where the class explored primary, secondary and tertiary colours as well how to create tint and shade to create a monochromatic scene. As well as this, we continued our exploration of properties of materials in science by finding out how and we could separate a insoluble material from water and explaining why this was possible.
Friday 16th September
A great second week for Class Antarctica. We have had lots of great learning experience which included using a variety of representations to explore tenths as equal parts of a whole, our first swimming lesson as a class and exploring properties of materials whilst using scientific vocabulary to describe those properties. A super week indeed!
Friday 9th September
It has been a lovely first week with the new Antarctica class. They have shown all the characteristics and attitudes that make a great team; enthusiasm, kindness, teamwork, respect, effort, desire to learn and high standards. We are looking forward to the year ahead and helping them to grow and develop.