Blog by Jo Hurley

On our final week at the curling rink, Upper School enjoyed playing in teams of three against each other. One player was ‘skip’, one was a ‘sweeper’ and one throwing the stones. The success rate was much better this week with many of the children’s shots going into the ‘house’ (target). The…

Today Upper School learnt about biodiversity and how important it is. We also went out into the school grounds and conducted our own biodiversity study (minibeast hunt) to see how biodiverse our field actual is…

Altogether, we found 8 different species but our grassland key that we were using…

This week’s curling lesson involved a short recap of how to launch the stone and then we were quickly organised into teams for some curling games. 
In teams of 4 or 5 the children were given roles such as ‘skip’, ‘sweeper’ or ‘lead’ and everyone had a go at trying to get their stone into the…

As part of our D&T work, the children have had the opportunity to explore and create mechanical models using Lego and K’NEX. They used levers, pulleys and gears to give movement to their models. Iain and Thomas even added a motor to their gear system to be able to pull things along.

Mrs…

This week, Upper School’s curling lesson was all about balance and coordination. The children worked on moving along the ice with a curling stone and also played some fun games without the stone like collecting the cones without falling over. 

After some successful (and not so successful -see…

This week was all about research and designing a product.

We watched NASA videos showing the Mars rovers such as Curiosity and Perseverance and the jobs that they are carrying out on the surface of Mars. We then looked specifically at their design and what sorts of mechanics were used to make…

Upper School had another brilliant session at the Curling Rink today! We continued to practise sliding across the ice with a stone and also trying to keep our balance with a beanbag on our heads! We ended the session with a brilliant game where two teams tried to get the curling stone as close to…

Following on from last week’s lesson when the Upper School children learnt about and made a pulley system, the children this week explored mechanical gears. We learnt about what they do and how they work. After that, they made their own gears using card cogs and split pins. 
Two groups of…

Year 5/6 have begun their five week Curling programme at The Flower Bowling today. We had a fantastic time learning how to move on the ice with the curling stones and how to score points in a game. 
It is a lot harder than the professionals make it look at the Olympics! 

Today the focus for our D&T lesson was to find out about mechanical systems-in particular, levers and pulleys. The Upper School children watched short videos about these systems and then had a go at making some themselves. Spencer, Eddie and Harry used the K’NEX to build a seesaw lever model…

The Upper School children enjoyed a day of Platinum Jubilee activities today including drawing portraits of the Queen, making crowns, a jubilee lunch and a special jubilee worship with Helen. We ended the day by planting our Queen’s Jubilee oak tree and singing the National Anthem. Here are some…

Upper School have worked hard to collage the outline of the Queen’s head with all things British! Their brilliant artwork is now up in the school hall ready for the Jubilee celebrations tomorrow! 

I am really looking forward to seeing my class dressed up in red, white and blue for the…