Blog by Jo Hurley

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…

Upper School are coming towards the end of their topic about Evolution and Inheritance this half term. We have learnt about adaptations, variation, inherited traits, survival of the fittest and this week we thought about how animals adapt over time to fit into their environments. 
The children…

For the last couple of weeks, the Upper School children have been researching, planning and producing a non-chronological report about Easter celebrations in different countries such as Mexico, Spain and Germany. They had to think carefully about how they set out their writing as the objective was…

This morning, Upper School braved the bracing wind to complete a maths competition that I set up around the school field. There were 29 maths challenges hidden all over the grounds and they worked in pairs to find them and try and answer the questions correctly before they could go and try a…

After a very busy and intense morning completing SATs papers, the Upper School children enjoyed going outside in the grounds of school to find the types of materials birds might use to make their nests. They found wool, straw, sticks, grass, moss and leaves to add to their clay bases and recreate…

Upper School finished their Tennis skills topic today with some tennis matches. This meant they could show off the skills they had learnt! They demonstrated forehand and backhand shots, tactics to beat their partner and accuracy with their own shot placement. All the children agreed that they had…