Friday 11th April
Happy Friday everyone! It has been a brilliant half-term in Oceania class filled with lots of exciting things including trips out, guest speakers and lots of crafts! This week we have been decorating our Easter eggs for the annual egg decorating competition. There were some amazing designs and it was so hard to choose the winners!
On Tuesday, we had a fantastic trip out to the Oriental Museum in Durham. We have been learning about the Shang Dynasty in our History lessons including what life was like for people during the Shang Dynasty and how they wrote. We become experts at the subject on Tuesday when we visited the museum and spent the day exploring the amazing ancient artefacts that were on show. We were amazed by what we saw and couldn't believe that some of the items on display were from the dynasty which were 3000 years old! We spent some time doing a challenge in the museum where we had to find out lots of facts about aspects of the Shang Dynasty including oracle bones, the significance of the ancestors and pottery. Once we had walked around the museum, we went to the learning classroom where we became investigators of some artefacts. We had to think of what the artefact was and what it may have been used for. We were interested to find that most of the items were made out of bronze and were mainly used for drinking and eating. During the afternoon session, we took part in acting out and telling a story about how the Shang Dynasty ended. The children took on roles in the story and were fantastic at portraying the story. We loved our visit and can't wait to find out more about the Shang Dynasty in our lessons after the holidays.
I hope you all have a wonderful Easter holidays!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 4th April
WOW! We have had the most amazing STEMMAVILLE week here in Oceania class.
We have spoke to scientists who work in the field of marine biology, completed some STEM challenges where we had to work as a team and communicate effectively and even got to take part in a session where we met some staff from Mercedes Benz in Newcastle who discussed about the roles they do, how to become an engineer and the apprenticeship routes they offer. We absolutely loved getting to sit in and look at the 2 cars they brought.
On Wednesday we had a one in a lifetime experience to go into a planetarium to explore the stars. This wonderful session was delivered by Kielder Observatory who have an observatory in the North East of England. We were in awe when we walked into our school hall and saw a gigantic blow up planetarium which filled up almost the whole hall! We walked inside and couldn't believe what it was like. We were transported from the school hall to space where we then began to spot the constellations. We found out that some of the constellations were named after our star signs. We loved spotting them however some were hard to see. We even managed to travel in space to the planets Jupiter and Mars to see what they were like. It was a truly amazing experience and we hope some day we might be able to go to Space ourselves. When we came back to class, we explored some more about the constellations and the life cycle of a star. We then began to create our own constellations using mini marshmallows and spaghetti. It was very fun and we loved researching about all of the constellations that have been identified in Space.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Thursday 27th March
This week in Oceania class we have been working so hard writing newspaper reports in English, exploring the idea of destiny in RE and finding out all about the life cycles of plants in Science.
This week I wanted to share with you the brilliant tinkering that we have been doing on the computer programme Scratch. We are familiar with Scratch as a class and have used it a few times already this year therefore we loved having a session to tinker on it. During the tinkering session, our focus was to try and make music using code. We played around with some of the features on Scratch to see if we could create our own music elements. We realised that sometimes the code didn’t do what we expected it to do so we debugged the programme and tried again. We worked so well in our pairs to create the code and test it out and we look forward to our next lesson where we are going to build up on our ideas and code that we completed this week.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Example of tinkering from Aaron and Evie
Friday 21st March
Happy Friday everyone! It has been a wonderful week this week in Oceania class filled with a wonderful celebration today. Unfortunately, we are losing a lovely member of our class who is moving to a new school. We wish Jax good luck in his new school and we are going to miss him very much however we know he will be just as loved in his new school as what he is here and he is going to have the best time.
This week I wanted to share with you the amazing work the children have completed in Art where we have been explore GuoHua painting. It originates from China and we have loved finding out about the key principles which include simplicity, detailed painting of nature and great brushstroke techniques. We have had a practise of our brushstrokes and this week we have been creating some of our own paintings of birds and insects. I was so astounded by the level of detail and precision in everyone's work! We have definitely got some outstanding artists in this class. We are looking forward to creating our own paintings in the next few weeks.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 14th March
It has been a super week in Oceania class this week. We have been learning all about 6 figure grid references in Geography, learning all about the man who crossed the twin towers in English and explored the parts of a plant in Science where we got practical and dissected some flowers.
This week I wanted to share with you the brilliant work the children have completed in PSHE. We are currently exploring the topic 'Healthy Me' and this weeks lesson we explored drugs and alcohol and the affect that these can have on your body. We discussed that a drug is any substance that has an affect on your body when it enters your system. We found out that there are different types of drugs including legal, prescribed and illegal drugs. In addition to this we discussed what alcohol is and looked at how it affected the body. We discussed the dangers of both and what to do to avoid taking drugs or alcohol. I was so impressed by the children's mature responses during the session to our discussions and they showed a great understanding of how to keep themselves and others safe.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 7th March
Happy Friday everyone! It has been a super first week back since the half-term in Oceania class filled with tree planting, visits to the Glasshouse to watch the Royal Northern Sinfonia and of course some wonderful World Book Day celebrations yesterday.
On Tuesday, we helped to plant 240 trees within the school grounds. We gathered in groups of 3 to dig holes, plant the trees and ensure that they were protected to grow. We found it tricky at first to dig the ground as some of the soil was hard and had rocks however we showed great determination and whizzed through the planting process.
Following this, we went to the Glasshouse in Gateshead where we watched the BBC 10 pieces concert with the Royal Northern Sinfonia. Many of us has never seen an orchestra is real life and were amazed during the concert. The concert took us on a journey through time and had pieces from the 1700’s although way through to the modern day. Some of our favourite pieces included a piece by Haydn called ‘Trumpet Concerto’ and a piece by Shikhara called ‘Grasswalk’. We particularly liked ‘Grasswalk’ because it features on the game ‘Plants vs Zombies’. Lots of the children were eager to know when the Royal Northern Sinfonia may be playing next and they have a number of concerts coming up on their website including playing alongside some classic films.
Yesterday we had a wonderful day celebrating World Book Day. It was so lovely to see everyone sharing their favourite books. During the afternoon, we had a chance to read with they Year 2 children in Northern Ireland class. Some of us went down to their classroom and some of the younger children visited us. We read them some classic children’s stories which we loved and shared our book interests. It was so lovely to see the children reading to each other and commenting on their favourite books.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 21st February
We have had a fantastic end to the first spring half-term in Oceania class and as I always say the children make me so proud to be their class teacher. They work so hard every single day and now we are half way through the year, I can truly see such a big change in all of the children. They have each made so much progress and that comes from their dedication and willingness to learn.
This week I wanted to share with you all an element where the children have shown this dedication. As mentioned last month on the class page, the children have been working on their woodwork skills in DT. This has been a new skill for a lot of the children however they have had such stickability and resilience to learn. This has resulted in the children creating 3 woodwork products of a magnetic memo peg, a photo frame and an anti-aircraft vehicle linked to our History learning of WWI. They have cut all of the wood in the projects using a hand saw and have attached the pieces together to make the products. They have created designs, made the project and evaluated at the end their successes and challenges of the process. I think their resilience has really shone in this activity as no one gave up throughout the process and the results shown in the products they have created. Well done Oceania for your brilliant creativity and resilience.
Have a wonderful half-term everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 14th February
Happy Friday everyone! We have had such a busy week in Oceania class but I couldn't be prouder of how well the children have conducted themselves this week. They have been willing and open to speak and share their understanding with visitors and truly have shined in their attitudes.
On Wednesday, we took part in a whole day workshop ran by Primary Enterprise World. As part of the workshop, we explored different places around the UK, found out about what skills you needed for different jobs, planned a community barbecue for a family on a budget, explored how to be environmentally friendly and for the final part of our workshop made a jewellery business where we bought supplies, made a product and sold it to customers. This was our favourite part of the day as we got to see what it would be like to be a real life business. Alongside all of these brilliant activities, we also worked on the skills of teamwork, communication and initiative and it was wonderful to see the children work together in small groups to solve problems.
Well done Oceania on an amazing week and for working so hard. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 7th February
We have had a super week in Oceania class this week filled with positivity to reflect children mental health week. We started the week of by watching an assembly all about what this years theme was for the week. The theme this year is 'Know yourself, grow yourself'. We have done small things throughout the week to help us with our mental health such as having some reflection time, doodling or listening to some music that makes us feel good. In addition to this, we have made each other a 'cup of positivity'. This is filled with everything positive for someone to think about themselves and to help them feel good. The children all had some wonderful ideas for what could go in their cups and throughout the week have been doing small acts of kindness to show how much they care about one another.
This week I wanted to share with you all the brilliant work we have completed in Geography where we have been exploring biomes. This week we focused on the Savannah biome which we found could be located in many places around the world including Africa. We looked at the typical characteristics of the biome and the flora and fauna that can be found there. Following this, we created our own Savannah biome maps where we created a map from scratch with features you might find. To go alongside our map, we created a key which included using a four digit grid reference. We used our maps to write the grid references for where the features could be located. I was so impressed by the children's understanding about grid references as it is not always easy to remember!
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 31st January
Happy Friday everyone! It is the last day of January and I couldn't be more proud of Oceania class for how hard they have worked across this first month of the year and especially this week. We have been learning all about the weather in French, defining what makes us the people we are in RE and converting between units of measure in Maths.
This week I wanted to share with you the wonderful history work we have completed based on our topic of Durham. We started the unit in Autumn term with a visit to Durham and the cathedral and this week we began to look at what a Prince Bishop was and why there were Prince Bishops in Durham. We discovered that as a Prince Bishop you could mint your own coins, create your own armies and collect taxes from the people. It was essentially the same as being a monarch of the country. We all wished we could have been a Prince Bishop! We also found out that William the Conqueror created Prince Bishops to protect Durham and the North East as there had been a number of attacks in the North of England where people had attempted to invade Northumberland from Scotland and also tried to invade York therefore he needed someone to keep an eye on this area and protect it whilst he managed the rest of the country from London. As a response to our learning, we had to write a persuading and convincing letter to William the Conqueror as to why he should choose us to be a Prince Bishop. I have to say I was very convinced by some of the letters the children wrote in the class.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson.
Friday 24th January
It has been a brilliant week this week in Oceania class. The children have been working so hard on writing stories to develop characterisation in English, exploring animals that have made adaptions to survive in the Alpine Biome in Geography and testing forces in Science.
This week I wanted to share with you all the amazing work the children have carried out in our DT lessons over the past few weeks. We have started our new unit which has a focus on woodwork and have been exploring how to create items from scratch using wood and tools. In our first week, we made a magnetic note holder. For the past 2 weeks, we have been making a picture frame from scratch. We firstly made a design for the frame before we got to work starting to create the frame. We cut the wooden pieces using a hand saw into four 10cm wooden blocks. We then attached the pieces together with PVA glue and put a back on the frame. We then decorated the frame based on our designs and evaluated what had went well during the process and what we would do next time. Throughout the process, I couldn't have been prouder of their growth mindset to complete some very complicated and tricky tasks such as using the hand saw or trying to get the pieces to stick together. We all had a good giggle throughout the lessons at things going wrong such as glue getting stuck to pieces we didn't want it to however we all made an absolutely amazing frame by the end of the session and something we should be so proud of. Keep up the amazing work you superstars!
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 17th January
Happy Friday everyone! It has been such a busy week this week filled with experiments in Science where we have explored forces, role play of characters in our English lessons and learning Gymnastic rolls during our PE lesson.
This week I wanted to share with you the brilliant assembly we had on Wednesday morning which was delivered from the Gateshead Music workshop team. The assembly had a focus on the genre of Pop music throughout the decades. We started with the 1950's and made our way up to the present day. The children loved getting involved whether it be playing an instrument, dancing or even singing along to the songs. We experienced music from Elvis Presley, The Beatles, ABBA, Wham, Oasis and George Ezra. We love when the music workshop team come in to school and we can't wait for the next assembly!
Have a brilliant weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson
Friday 10th January
We have had a brilliant first week back following the Christmas holidays. The children have settled straight back into routines this week and it has been so lovely to hear all about what they have done during the holidays. This week we have started lots of new topics such as forces in Science, learning all about the desert biome in Geography and starting a new book called ‘The Promise’ in our guided reading sessions.
This week I wanted to share with you the wonderful work the children have completed in PSHE where we have begun our new topic on relationships. This week we have explored that we may have relationships with people by being part of an online community. We discussed that this could be playing with our friends online, speaking to family online or by joining a group on an app we may use. We had some fantastic discussions around scenarios and debated whether these were safe or unsafe. In addition to this, we discussed about how to keep ourselves safe whilst online and how to spot the signs of something dangerous and something that we know is wrong when being part of an online community. The children were very honest during the session about what they do online and we reminded ourselves of the SMART ways to stay safe online.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mrs Thompson