Today we prepared and presented our Fairtrade presentations based on the point of views suggested in the Fairtrade post below.

It was very interesting to see how we worked together to produce our final presentation. Each group has a presentation creator, a researcher, a blogger and a motivator all with different roles to help achieve the end result. I was very impressed with how some groups used each role to support another and produce some high quality research. We ended up with:

3 power points, 2 iMovies and 2 piccollages. Some presentations were supported with additional posters as well.

It was an excellent way for us to share what we had found and to help us understand the concept of Fairtrade.

Well done everyone!

Here is a short video showing our afternoon's efforts:

As part of our focus on E-safety this week, some of the children in Years 4,5 and 6 wrote their own radio scripts to promote staying safe online.

We did have a few technical issues, but eventually our show was broadcast to the rest of the school.

If you missed it, would like to listen again or are looking for e-safety tips give it a listen by downloading the show from the link below.

A superb effort from Year 5 last week! Every single one of us achieved our weekly certificate from Mathletics including 7 silver!

Brilliant

Last week saw a fantasitc performance from the whole of Year 5. 31 of us achievled our Mathletics Bronze award for the week, and we also had one Silver award as well (for achieving 5 Bronze certificates)

Our combined score was 101,173 points which means we answered around 10,000 questions correctly last week, which is amazing! Our score saw us place 2nd in the UK and 10th in the whole world which we are all very proud of.

As part of this, Drew also featured in the daily charts for top pupil performances, finishing 2nd in the UK and 25th in the World!

I wonder how many certificates we can achieve this week. (I know some of you already have earned it in just one day! Wow!)

Our classroom was in desperate need in decoration in preparation for Christmas. Therefore, this afternoon, we created our own paper chain decorations. However, they weren't what many people would expect because we took some time before we started to connect our decorations to our recent research linked to our Christmas single. (Feed the World)

We started off by thinking about what Christmas was like for us, in our own homes. As you can see, we all have lots to look forward to.

However, as we know from our Oddizzi work earlier in the week, life in other countries is not always the same as on in our own. Many people are a lot less fortunate than ourselves. We then thought about what it might be like at Christmas in these areas and compared them to what we expecting our own to be like.

We also thought about some of the lyrics from our Christmas single, Feed the World, to help generate some ideas.

We could clearly see that we had a lot to be thankful and grateful for in our own lives. Our groups then suggested some of the things we would stop to say thank you for on Christmas day. We also suggested some of the changes we could make to show greater appreciation of the issues in other parts of the world.

With all of this in mind, we then created the links for our Christmas decorations. Each link contains a message explaining something we will be thankful for this Christmas or one thing we would like to change to show appreciation of our own situation.

Everybody worked very hard to complete their decorations.

Thinking carefully about what we will be thankful for this Christmas.

A finished decoration ready to be put up (not on the walls Miss Hemmings)

Our finished decorations adding a little splash of colour to the classroom.

Our Christmas single, Feed the World, will be available to buy from Thursday 12th December with 50% going towards a hunger based charity (to be decided by the class).

Today we have had some visitors in school from Spain, France, Sweden and Turkey. They have been teaching us about their country.

In year 5 we made a traditional Turkish dip called cacik.

First we chopped some cucumber, added some mint sauce and garlic paste. Then we mixed this together with natural yoghurt. It was delicious!

You could make this at home.

During the week, beginning 21.10.13, the class used an iPad game as a stimulus for their ideas and writing. Below is an outline of the week and how the game was used to generate ideas which were later used in a longer piece of written work.

Many of the ideas can be seen in the mind map below which was created at the lesson planning stage using the iPad app 'Popplet'.

Day 1
In the first lesson the children took a virtual trip to a theme park using the computer game 'Theme Park'. They briefly explored the park, looking at the rides and attractions before taking screen grabs of those they found the most interesting.

Following this, the children were tasked with creating a poster showing what the park was like and the attractions they liked to most.

Day 2:
The children then used the ideas from their poster and virtual visit to create an advert suitable for television.
To do this they:
- Saved themepark images from the internet using 'Safari'
- Edited images, adding their own faces using 'PicCollage'
- Used the photo and video functions of the iPad's camera.
- Used 'iMovie' to create their final advert.
Here is just one example of the many created:
http://5tanfieldlea.weebly.com/1/post/2013/10/drew-theme-park-trailer.html

Their work was added to the blog, with a link added to their literacy books (including a QR code which can be scanned as a direct link)

Day 3
Today we focused on writing the best sentences we could using the ideas we had formed about the theme park.
At first the children created simple sentences, which they then assessed themselves using a scoring sheet. The children then tried to develop their sentences using their understanding of what would make a stronger setence. Their final sentences were again self assessed, giving the children an understanding of exactly how much they had improved their original ideas and hopefully how they could continue to do so in the next lesson.

Day 4
In the final lesson, we pulled all our ideas together to write a written recount of our day at the theme park. The children were encouraged to refer to their scoring sheets from the previous lesson and to try to maintain this standard in their final piece of writing.

"In our writing today, we have been using an up-levelling sheet to assess our own writing, giving our work a score. We have been looking at our sentences and thinking about how can improve them.
Here are just a few of the super sentences that have appeared in our books today.


"When, I went to the fabulous, amazing, theme park it was fabulous. However, it was lunchtime so we went to a burger place it was scrumptious in fact it was so nice it watered in my mouth. Whereas, I didn’t think the chips were nice" (Roan)

"Behind the candy shops gates, It smelt lovely. I could feel my tongue melting and different smells of amazing candy at the Candy Shop. My Mum told me "I shouldn't have any candy" therefore I didn't take any sweets. Instead of getting sweets I just watched. Anyway, I saw that peoples favourite sweets were lollies moreover bom boms" (Hannah)

"Deep inside the park, the romantic heart-shaped maze was beatiful and creative however, even though it was a hard decision, I didn't try to get through" (Tamzin)

"The amazing burger watered in my mouth however my brother did not like it! Would you like it? (Kieran)

"In front of the Scary Cyclops ride, the brillaint, fast, amazing rollercoaster clattered and clunked over my head. Therefore, I decided to ride it!" (Alicia)

"Another thing, when the mouth watering, lovely, warm chips passed by me I asked my Mam "Could we get some of them chips?" My Mam answered "yes however only if you eat them all!" When I got them, they were delicious. (Drew)

"In front of the dragon house, the unusually, huge, scary, fantastic rollercoaster roared like an alpah lion!" (Brett)

Our sentence score sheet:
(adapted from the fantastic ideas at http://mrparkinsonict.blogspot.co.uk/)

This week all of our work is based around a virtual visit to a theme park courtesy of the appropriately named iPad app 'Theme Park'.

We used the screen grab function to take images of the attractions we liked.

The remainder of our lesson today focused on creating a poster using the app 'PicCollage' which would remind us of the attractions at the park as well as help us to persuade others to visit the park in the future.

Tomorrow we will be using our posters as inspiration for a persuasive advert for television or radio.

Here are just a few examples of our work:

We have been learning how to read grid references in our topic work recently. This week, we decided to put our skills to the test by taking a walk around the local area. Equipped with an OS Map and a handful of 6-figure grid references we set off on our quest to find out exactly what was at our referenced points. Working in small groups, we were successful and, as you can see from some of the photographs, had a great time in the process.
Do you think our map skills could help us in numeracy? And if so, how?

Use this fantastic song, performed by Year 5, to help you remember what mean, mode, median and range are.

Thankyou to Mrs Ovington for the suggestion.

X-Factor here we come!

This week we were writing an extra diary entry for Laura based on our knowledge of the events in 'The Wreck of the Zanzibar'.

Check out these 'super sentences' from this week's Big Writing!.

Can you spot why I like them so much?

As part of literacy this week, we have been preparing storm poems based on 'The Wreck of the Zanzibar'. There have been a lot of fantastic ideas in our writing including similes, metaphors and alliteration. Below is an example poem using only the ideas from Year 5's work!