Sports and Wellbeing Week

This week we have been learning about keeping our body and mind healthy.

Changing the volume of instruments

As part of our Sound topic in Science, we have been investigating making an instrument play quietly and also trying to play it as LOUD as we could. 

We discovered that ‘the more force we applied to an instrument, the louder we could make it’ (Grace).  We also realised that ‘if we were gentle when we played the instrument, it played quietly’ (Isaac).

Miss Thomas decided the best place for our LOUD experiments were outside... 

Rounders

Year 3/4 have been learning to play rounders on Friday afternoons this term. This week we progressed from tennis rackets to rounders bats. Mrs Naughton was very impressed by the encouragement the year 4s were giving each other today and the good sportsmanship shown when we disagreed over who was in or out!

The Greatest Show on Earth

A huge well done to Dalai Lama class for our assembly this morning. We were so proud of the way they remembered their lines as well as where to be and when, and delivered it all with such energy and enthusiasm!

Votes for Women!

This week we have been learning about British Values and the importance of equality for all. We have found out about local ‘wonder women’ who campaigned for the vote 100 years ago. We went to the library to look at the exhibition there and have been designing posters for the campaign. We have thought about why the women campaigned and how it must have felt before and after the vote was given to them.

Kodu

All 3 classes have been busy coding and then playing their own 3D computer games. 

Join the Coins 

Miss Thomas’s maths group have been counting up the coins from our charity event last week. They will then create a bar chart to show the different coins and amounts each class collected! Their hands smell very ‘coiny’! 

Designing our Own Sports Day

Using our knowledge of The Commonwealth games and our own school sports day, we worked in small groups to design our own ideal sports days. We thought about the spectators needing a good viewing platform and what they might like to eat. We tried to include a variety of sporting activities so everyone would enjoy taking part. 

Finding out about sound

Our new science topic is sound. We started off the topic by thinking about what we already knew about sound and how we hear sounds.

We then learnt that sounds travel by vibrating through the air and objects. We experimented with different instruments to make rice ‘dance’ on a home made drum skin. 

Art Club’s watercolour paintings 

Map Skills 

Over the last few weeks we have been developing our map and atlas skills. Today we completed a round robin of activities to test these skills out. We had to use coordinates to locate rivers, towns and other features shown on a map of Wales. We had to use the index page to find out where different countries were in the Atlas, we also used the Atlases to find and make lines of longitude and latitude on a global map. We used the contents page to find out where certain information was in the Atlas and we played an interactive game on the iPads where we had to place the continents of the World in the correct place and then label some of the countries in them. 

Changing the brightness of a bulb

This week we investigated ways to change the brightness of a bulb.  We discovered that using more cells in a circuit can make the bulb brighter and using more wires makes the bulb dimmer. 

Successful Team Work

This week our team work was much better and we were all able to research and recreate Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North using Lego bricks. 

We discussed how our understanding of the team work roles has developed each time we use the lanyards and how it isn’t good to try new roles. This should help use when completing the ‘Taking group responsibility’ section of our Leadership Lighthouse booklets. 

Team Work in Circle Time 

Today we worked as a team to complete a Lego building challenge. Our teacher named a Team Leader in each group - from that point onwards the Team Leader was totally in charge. They had to allocate jobs to people based on their skills and ensured the group worked as a team to complete the task. 

The challenge as to build a model of the Eiffel Tower.

We have special lanyards to remind us what our job is when we are working in a group. 

First the researchers had to use the iPads to find images of the tower. Then the designer drew a model and led the team in building it. The resource manager had to collect the items needed to complete the task. The time keeper ensured the team knew how long they had left. The presenters in the groups had to share the model with the class and report on the effectiveness of the team.

We want to try the challenge again next week, but being in different roles as we felt we could work better as a team if we all did our designated job properly. 

Arts Week

We have immersed ourselves in fairytales this week and as well as producing some wonderful writing, we have worked in mixed age groups to produce large scale book covers and character pictures. We then created scenes from our fairytales in a shoe box.

Art Trail

It was wonderful to see so many of you exploring our art trail this afternoon. We hope you enjoyed seeing the products of our creative week.

Spanish

We have been reading a story about a little elephant who lost her Mum. In small groups, we had a go at coming up with our own conversations. See if your child can translate!

Sale Sharks Rugby

We had our second session of Rugby and we progressed on to a short game of tag rugby. It was VERY soggy but we all got stuck in!

The Commonwealth Games 

We have been learning about countries that are part of The Commonwealth. So far we have located them on a map and learnt about the languages that they speak in these countries. Next week we will find out more about the countries and what some of their human and physical features are. 

Sale Sharks Rugby Training 

Today we had our first rugby training session with Jack from Sale Sharks. Unfortunately, the dew on the field hadn’t evaporated so we ended up with soggy feet. This didn’t stop us having fun though! We showed great determination and perserverence during the session. Jack helped us develop our running, catching and team work skills. We learnt how to be competitive and kind at the same time. We are looking forward to the next session - even if we end up being Soggy Sale Sharks again! 

Rick from Sale Sharks then taught us how the points system works in Rugby. We had to calculate the points throughout the season using our maths problem solving skills. 

A visit from the Christian Trust

Today each class took part in a workshop by the Christian Trust. We learnt about the story of Easter by becoming mystery detectives. We learnt a song called Hosanna, which had lots of fun actions and we created a Easter symbols sheet. Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead to save them and that this is a symbol of hope and new life. 

Germination and Growth

We have been investigating what plants need to grow by depriving them of various things and monitoring them every few days to see how they have changed.

Tudor Portraits 

We have been learning how to draw faces with more accuracy. We used faint grids on our paper to help us keep the eyes, mouth and ears in the right place and in proportion. We explored using a range or drawing materials, such as charcoal, oil pastels and chalk pastels. We played a game called ‘Pass the Portrait’ where we only drew one feature of the face, then passed it to the next person to draw another feature. This resulted in some rather unique portraits! We used charcoal to create portraits of Henry VIII by scaling up a picture of him. We then spent the afternoon drawing one of his 6 wives and using either oil pastels or chalk pastels to colour  block and added details using shading and finer lines. 

World Book Day 

We have all enjoyed dressing up as characters from our favourite books. 

We wrote character profiles and created new book covers for the books.

Tudor Street

The school library is looking a little bit different .... in fact, it’s like walking through a completely different time in History!

Check out these impressive Tudor buildings! This was a holiday homework which clearly captured your imaginations. 

Cricket Coaching 

Today we were very lucky to have some professional cricket coaching from James, who works for the Chance to Shine charity.

We learnt how to hold the cricket bat correctly, hit the ball and run between the wickets. We played a game as a team and also battled 1:1 to test our reflexes. 

James thinks some us of could be professional cricket players!

Fair Trade

Today we learnt all about Fair Trade.

The Fair Trade concept was set up to ensure farmers always get a fair price for the crops that they sell. 

Farmers are then asked to contribute a little bit of their profit to be combined together to make a ‘Social Premium’. The villagers then vote on how this money should be spent to help the village; build a school, build a well, a weekly visit from a doctor etc. 

We played games to find out about where different Fair Trade items came from and learnt about how the Fair Trade process works for all of the stake holders. 

Bug Hotels

Our bug hotels are nearly finished.

We have measured, cut and joined lengths of wood to create a cuboid frame. We are currently creating the floor, sides and roof of the hotels by wrapping wool around the frame. The next stage will be filling the frame with insect friendly fillings (like leaves and twigs) for the bugs to visit. 

We cant wait to put our bug hotels out in the school grounds. 

Keep your selfies safe!

Following on from our Maths and Computing week, we have been learning about keeping ourselves safe online in Circle Time. We have learnt that you should never share personal information online and you shouldn’t message or talk to people you don’t know.  When using a profile picture you should not use your whole face in the image - you could cover it with your hand (by doing a dab), use an emoji as your face or use a cartoon version of yourself. You could even use a photo of your pet or your favourite toy instead of a picture of you. If you do use a photo of yourself, don’t allow your school logo or sports club to be seen as this gives information about you to possible strangers. 

We designed our own ‘safie-selfies’ - check them out! 

Design technology 

This week we had to cut 4 pieces of wood to a given size and then glued them together to make a rectangular frame. We used card triangles to reinforce the joins. 

Science - Living Things 

We have been thinking about ways to sort a variety of animals. 

Some of our ideas : Can they fly? Do they have more than 2 legs? Do they eat meat?

We then used these yes/no questions to help us complete classification keys. 

Design Technology

This term we are learning about animals and their habitats, we are going to make our own bug hotels in Design Technology.

This week we learnt how to measure and cut accurately using a bench hook and a junior hack saw. 

To make sure we were safe, we had to keep our fingers tucked in as they held the wood and the bench hook. We had to make sure we didn’t put our fingers near the blade, and we were not allowed to walk around with the saw. 

We were all very excited to use the saws. We used sandpaper to make the edges smooth. 

Next week, we will have to make a set of specific measurements so that we can make a rectangular frame. 

Viking boats came sailing across the sea....

Here are some of our finished Viking boats!

Viking Longship project

Believe it or not we are currently making our own Viking Longship models this week! They are currently under construction in the classroom. We are making them out of cardboard and masking tape. Once they are finished we will decorate them with acrylic paint and then test them out on water! We hope they won’t sink and that they are waterproof. Watch this space for the finished articles next week! 

Viking Day!

We some very special visitors to school this week - actual Vikings!

Sven and Niall taught us all about everyday life as a Viking and what it was like to go to battle!

We looked at lots of objects that Vikings might have used and had an opportunity to ask questions too.

Miss Thomas sold us all to Niall and he then trained us as Viking Raiders. We learnt how to hold our swords and shields and work as a team to fight and to defend ourselves. In return, Miss Thomas was given some beautiful clothes, necklaces and silver coins. Some of us were given jobs, these included being a law keeper, a grain grinder and even a wee collector!!!

Our favourite part of the day was when we re-enacted some battle scenes, this included attacking Mr Templer, who was a monk for the day!

We also learnt about Viking art and created some Viking tattoo sleeves and did some weaving using looms and wool.

We really enjoyed learning in this active and engaging day and have loved sharing our new learning with other children. 

Viking Clothing

This week we have been learning about Viking clothing. We learnt that their clothing was basic, but warm (Scandinavia is very cold). Men would wear long shirts with a belt over baggy trousers. These were normally made from wool. They used natural dyes from plants and berries to change the colour of the wool. Ladies wore dresses with tunics over them and sometimes they wore head scarves. Both men and women wore woollen socks and leather shoes. Leather is made from animal skin.

After we researched the different clothing, we decided to be Viking fashion designers... check out some of the Winter '17 collection... 

Pet Rocks

The Pet Rock task was set as an optional homework over half term and we have been delighted by your creative ideas. 

Here are some of the amazing creations.

Viking Villages

As part of our History and Geography topic, we have been investigating not only why The Vikings invaded Britain, but also why they decided to stay (settle). 

We used natural resources to recreate a Viking village; thinking about having a river (water for cooking, cleaning and drinking), hills (for protection) flat land (to farm on) and woodland (for building materials) nearby. We really enjoyed collecting the resources from around the school grounds and then making our natural 3D models. Next week, we plan to make maps of our villages using symbols and a key. 

We've been learning some songs about The Vikings with our singing teacher from Stockport Music Service!

Dragon Ships

CHORUS

Ay! Oh! Ay! Oh!

1)

Dragon ships

Speed across the Sea,

What belongs to you

Will soon belong to me.

2) 

Dragon ships

Cutting through the waves,

We'll rob you of your wealth,

We'll grab ourselves some slaves.

CHORUS

3)

Dragon ships

Looming through the fog,

We murder and we maim,

And we'll treat you like a dog.

4) 

Dragon ships

Stop us if you dare,

We'll set your home ablaze,

We'll leave your bodies there.

Viking Rock!

We're the Vikings on a raid, yeah!

Christian monks better be afraid, yeah!

Longships sail from the Northern shores

Better run!

And we land in Britain  with a great big roar!

Better hide!

We'll take your gold and we'll take your chains

And we'll make you thralls to the mighty Danes!

CHORUS

Viking Rock!

Viking Roll!

Raiders from the North in the days of old.

Viking Rock!

Viking Roll!

With the power of Odin and the (clap clap) love of gold. 

Ludworth Goes Global!

This week Year 3/4 have travelled across the globe through their learning.

During the first half of the week the children found out about Denmark, Sweden and Norway - these countries are collectively known as Scandinavia and are the homeland of The Vikings. Each class conducted research and activities about one of the countries and then then shares their knowledge across the year group in a fact swap!

Did you know that lots of the Disney films are based on stories written in Denmark?

Did you know that Forest Schools first started in Sweden?

Did you know that Norway only has 6 hours of daylight in the winter?

Later in the week, the children were immersed in some cultural activities from New Zealand, India and Mexico!

They performed their own Haka, just like the New Zealand Rugby team (Mr Tennant's favourite sport). Then they took part in some Indian meditation and bhangra dancing (Miss Thomas visited India in the summer). Finally, they made decorations for the Mexican Festival of the Dead (Spanish is the most spoken language in Mexico - Mrs Naughton is fluent in Spanish).