W/b 31.3.25
STEMmaville
What an exciting week we have had in school this week! Every afternoon this week, we have been learning about STEM and doing lots of activities that link to STEM. Every day this week, we have been learning about different STEM careers, one for each letter of the alphabet. We have also been exploring a new zoom in, zoom out picture, looking at different objects and using our reasoning skills to figure out what the picture was.
On Monday afternoon, we had an exciting challenge. With our partners, we were given some spaghetti and some marshmallows. We were tasked with using these to make a tower! We created some very interesting and unique designs, creating different shapes and structures. When some did not work, we would take it apart and try it again a different way, using our problem solving skills.
On Tuesday, we put on our coding hats. With our partners, we got the iPads out and coded some Minecraft games! We had three different games to choose from, all to do with Minecraft. We had to work together with our partner and figure out what worked, what didn’t work, and how to fix it so the characters could flow through the sequence.
On Wednesday, we had a very special surprise. Some people came in from Kielder Observatory and set up a portable observatory in the hall. We went in and sat in a circle on the inside, and all around us we could see outside the observatory. Then, it changed to night time and we could see lots of the stars in space! We learned about some constellations and what they are called, how they got their names and what they are supposed to look like. After all of this excitement, when we got back to the classroom, we drew some of the constellations we saw.
On Thursday, we learned about some different scientists and what they do in their careers. We then had some more special visitors from Newcastle University, who came in to conduct some experiments in the hall for us to watch and learn all about how the Earth was formed!
Finally, on Friday, we were given a challenge where we were given an egg and had to find out a way to drop it without the egg breaking. We were given lots of different materials to help us complete this challenge and worked in groups of 4. This took a lot of trial and error, but it was a very fun time for everyone!
What an interesting and exciting STEM week it has been!
21/03/25
Fitness Festival at Thorp Academy
Today, we were lucky enough to be invited up to Thorp Academy for a fitness festival! After having lunch in our classroom, we walked up and were shown into the hall, where there was a carousel of activities set up for us. These were led by some of the fantastic Year 7s at Thorp. In each activity, we competed against our partners. We would have 30 seconds to do an exercise as many times as possible. Then, our partner would have 30 seconds to try to beat our score! The exercises were:
After all of these exercise we had some tired legs…but we were not finished yet! Then, we went out onto the field and got into teams. In these teams, we completed some relay races where we had to move in different ways, including running, skipping and side steps. Then, the winners went into a final against the Year 7s from Thorp, and a team from Emmaville won! A great afternoon was had by all!
Thursday 6th March 2025
World Book Day
To celebrate World Book Day, we came to school dressed in our pyjamas or as one of our favourite book characters. In the morning, we had our friends from Nursery come down to our classroom, where we were able to read some books together. Then, we participated in a BBC Live lesson, all about different genres of books and choosing our favourites.
The book we focused on was ‘A Child of Books’ by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. After reading this book, we circled some of the words that we found interesting. From these, we all created our own poems!
In the afternoon, we took part in a Footy and Booky quiz from The National Literacy Trust and Premier League Primary Stars. We got to see lots of different footballers and authors, who asked us questions relating to football and some of their favourite books. Finally, we thought about what reading means to us. We created a piece of art using words to answer this question in the style of the book ‘Orphan’ by Sam Winston.
What a lovely day we have all had!
W/c 17/02/25
English - Jungle Recounts
A few weeks ago, we were very lucky to get a letter from an explorer! This letter told us all about their journey through the Atlanti Jungle, and all of the amazing creatures, animals and plant life she saw while she was there. We learned that this type of text was a recount, as it was recounting something that happened in the past. We were so inspired, that we wanted to write our own recounts about our own jungles!
After learning the text, we started to learn how we write a recount. We learned about how to write in first person and in the past tense, as a recount is showing an experience we have had it needs to be told from our perspective. We also wanted our recounts to be in chronological order, so they had to be structured from start to finish. To help us do this, we decided to use time conjunctions, such as first, next, then and finally. When looking at the letter we were sent from our explorer, we noticed there was lots of description and emotive language, which we also wanted to include in our writing!
Then, it was time to start planning our text. We imagined what our jungle would look like, what we would see, feel and hear around us as we travelled through our jungles. We used this to plan our recount, before we finally wrote our own!
This week, after we finished writing our recounts, we decided to represent our stories by drawing our jungles. After drawing them, we used our paints to paint them!
Viking Workshop with Adam Bushnell
On Tuesday 11th February we were very lucky to have author and poet Adam Bushnell come in to teach us about the Vikings. He arrived with a bag brimming with Viking objects. Firstly, we looked at some Viking clothing, such as tunics, chainmail and a nasal helm, which we all got to wear (take a look at the photos below)! Next, we examined some Viking weaponry, including swords, daggers and goose feather arrows. It was great fun to explore and handle all of these replica objects.
Then, we used our knowledge of Viking clothing and weaponry to design our own Viking! After drawing our Viking, we labelled the clothes that they were wearing. Then, we learned about kennings and how Vikings would have called their weapons and armoury strange names, using a noun then a verb, and came up with our own! Some kennings included ‘arm-smasher’, ‘leg-chopper’ and ‘head-protector’.
Adam taught us that Vikings were renowned boasters to intimidate their enemies and prove that they were the strongest warriors. We then came up with our own boasts about fantastic feats that our Viking had achieved, such as ‘I swam through lava,’ ‘I held the entire Earth in my hand,’ and ‘I scared a bear out of its skin!’
To end our session, we drew our own frost giants and serpent monsters. We had lots of ideas for these creatures, for example, only having one eye or having blue scales all over. Then, Adam took our ideas and brought them to life using ChatGPT to create the image of what our monster might look like! We found this really interesting and enjoyed seeing our creations.
We are looking forward to doing some further writing about our Vikings!
W/b 3/2/25
PE – Gymnastics
This half term, in our Wednesday afternoon PE sessions, we have been practicing our gymnastics. We started by doing different shapes (such as star, straddle etc). Then, we talked about balances and what makes a good balance. We decided that, for a balance to work, you have to be able to hold it for 5 seconds. You might even have to squeeze your muscles to hold a balance! Then, we began looking at different types of balances. We learned about point balances (a balance on a small body part) and patch balances (a balance on a large body part).
After learning about different types of balances, we started to put them into practice and sequence them. This meant practicing different types of point and patch balances (3-point balance where 3 body parts touch the ground etc). With our partners, we put some of them together to create a sequence of different point and patch balances, making sure we held each of our balances for 5 seconds.
Then, we started to learn about different types of jumps. To make sure we succeeded with this, we had to land with our knees bent and look straight ahead of us when we jumped. We started with some straight jumps to practice our technique. Then, we moved on to making shapes as we jumped. We started with star jumps, where we would make a star in the air, then moved on to tuck jumps, where we would tuck our bodies up in mid-air, before landing with both feet on the floor and our knees bent. We also discussed our balancing and how we could make sure we could keep our balance when we landed!
We have had so much fun so far learning gymnastics!
W/b 27/01/2025
Science – Forces and Magnets
This half term in science, we have been learning about forces and magnets! In our first lesson, we learned that a force is anything that can make something move. We tested these out with some pieces of equipment, like tennis balls and elastic bands, which would not move on their own. So, we applied a force to them, a push, pull or a twist, to see how they would react or change.
We then learned that these kinds of forces are called Contact Forces, and began to measure these forces using a force meter. We picked some objects in the classroom and measured the strength of how hard they could pull by using our force meters. After recording our results in a table, we concluded that heavier objects pulled harder than lighter objects.
After learning about contact forces, we began learning about non-contact forces. The force that we were investigated was gravity, which is why everything stays on the ground, rather than floating up in the air. To test the strength of gravity, we dropped a tennis ball from different heights to see if it would change how high it bounced back up. We measured these and made sure it was a fair test. We concluded that the further you drop a ball from, the higher it bounces because it has more time to build up energy, which is released when it hits the ground.
This week, we started learning about magnets. We learned that magnets have two parts to them, north and south. We had some fun testing the magnets to see how they worked and what would happen when we put them together. We discovered that opposites (north and south) would attract each other and go together, while the same ones on each magnet (north and north/south and south) would repel each other and push them away, no matter how hard we tried to get them together! We have had great fun learning about forces and magnets so far!
W/b 20/01/25
Computing – Networks
In computing this half term, we have been studying networks. Our first lesson was all about what a network is and how different devices can connect to a network. We learned all about our school network and how it works, including how devices can connect to it in different ways. Some devices need wires to connect, like a desktop computer or a photocopier, while other devices can connect to a wireless access point first, such as an iPad or a laptop, which then gives them access to the server.
The next week, we were learning about a files journey through this network and how, if you send a picture over the internet, someone else can see it. We learned that it depends on if it is a wired or wireless device first, because wireless devices have to go through a wireless access point before they can move to the network switch and router. Once the file has made this journey up to the server, it then makes its way back down to the other persons device! In our lesson, we showed this journey by acting as different parts of the network and using string to attach us together, with one of us being the file and walking the journey.
Today, we learnt how a website works! We started off by talking about websites that we like to use and how we can access the internet. Then we drew a picture to show how we think a website works (at the end of the lesson we drew another picture to show how a website really works). Then, we divided ourselves into different groups, the user, the server and the cloud. We had to complete tasks in our groups by working together to show how information is stored on a website and what happens when we ask a website, like Google, to do something! We have had lots of fun learning about networks in these last few weeks!
Monday 13th January 2025
Anglo-Saxon Artefacts
We had a very exciting History lesson on Monday, where we got the chance to explore Anglo-Saxon artefacts from the Discovery Museum. On each table we had different artefacts displayed, with all the artefacts on one table linking together. For example, Anglo-Saxon grave finds, Lindisfarne artefacts and Anglo-Saxon life. We looked at artefacts such as a spearhead, tunics that men and women would have worn and a replica board game with counters and dice. We had the opportunity to discuss with our table what each artefact was and how they may have been used in Anglo-Saxon Britain. Once we had observed all of the artefacts, we then learned their real purpose and any interesting facts about them. One fact that we found particularly interesting is that the Lindisfarne Gospels were written on animal skin and estimates are that 150 calf skins (vellum) were used to make the book! It suggests the book was also written with a pen made from a bird’s feather. To make the pictures in the book, Eadfrith would draw the shapes, then colour them in using paint held in an oyster shell dish. Real gold flakes were added to some of the pages!
Friday 10th January
Personal Growth – Job roles visitor
Happy New Year to everyone! It has been lovely to have you all back in class and ready to learn.
This week we were treated to a very special visitor Helen Doyle who is the head pastry chef at 21 in Newcastle. She also happens to be Alfie’s mum!
Helen told us all about her training, how her work has allowed her to travel all over the world and her role entails.
We got to ask lots of questions about her work and some of the famous people she has served and worked with!
Some of us got to dress up in chef’s whites with aprons and gave out cookies that Helen’s team made for all of us in year 3. They were delicious! Thank you Helen for coming in, for sharing all about your job and for the amazing cookies. Some of us have decided we would now like to become chefs.
After the visit, Mr Robinson received a lovely message from Helen saying how impressed she was with the children’s curiosity and the questions that they asked.