To start off Maths week, Mr Johnston set a very tricky task for the Kestrels and year five would have to show a great deal of perseverance to link into our value word. The class showed excellent problem solving to break the code to create a hundred square purely using symbols. Reece, Phoebe and Poppy worked very independently. Well done!
This morning, Year 5 Kestrels were extremely lucky to have a visit from Professor Mcginity and his amazing time travel detective tales and mobile museum. Our current topic is Ancient Greece and Professor Mcginity told the children about what it was like to live there in 429BC.
The children enjoyed listening to the Professor’s animated and humorous style, while learning new facts about Ancient Greece. The Professor was very impressed with how much the children knew.
The children looked at a wide range of artefacts such as swords, masks, coins, children toys and discovered the Greeks used tortoise shells to make musical instruments!
The professor discussed the clothing that the Ancient Greeks used to wear. Boys used to wear shawls called “Himations” and girls used to wear dresses called “Chiltons.” Kai M and Zara tried on some of this clothing.
We all really enjoyed the visit from the Professor. So much so that the children wrote the Professor some thank you letters and asked him to come visit soon!
A massive thank you from the Kestrels, Mr Johnston, Miss Johnson and Mr Koeri.
This afternoon, Phil from Peacemakers came to lead a session. This session focused around listening and non-verbal communication. The Kestrels took part in activities to help exercise these such as, ordering themselves in alphabetical order, birthdays and house numbers, all without using speech. Kestrels had to work together and devise strategies to moves a ball around the circle as quickly as possible.
Phil set the class a challenge to think about a way in which the ball can move around even quicker, to bring to our session next week. Can you think of a way?!
Many congratulations to Cody of the Kestrels for being awards in today’s Star Assembly. Cody was praised by Mr Johnston for doing his best, placing a great effort into his work and having a positive attitude to school.
Well done!
Today, Year 5 had a visit from Dave who is a member of the Buddhist Centre. Dave explained to the children how Buddhism came into being, what they believe in and what they do as part of their faith.
The children heard all about the 4 sights, fasting, meditation and enlightenment.
The children had lots of questions about Buddha and Buddhism:
Year 5 would like to thank Dave for his visit and telling us all about his faith and beliefs.
This term, Year 5 are beginning their course with Phil from Peacemakers. The purpose of this course is to empower children to help them with day to day situations in school.
In today’s session, the objectives were to encourage good listening, working as a team and showing the children that it is ok to sacrifice yourself in a game, for your classmates.
At the start of the session, children were asked to order themselves on a scale of 0-10 of how good they are at listening. Children were asked to encourage each other throughout the course to reach as close to 10 as possible.
In one of the games, year 5 had to use effective communication to help move a box around a circle without using their and hand and then their arms! The task was difficult at times but year 5 were able to invent some effective strategies to past the box to each other within the rules.
Kestrels demonstrated a great deal of good listening and teamwork today. Well done!
In this week’s PE lesson, the children practiced their ball handling skills using a basketball. Kian make a blog effort during the lesson and Soloman and Joshua demonstrated excellent skills in front of the whole class at the end of the lesson. Well done!
Happy new year from Mr Johnston, Mrs Johnson, Mr Koeri and all the Kestrels!
The children really hit the ground running today and were very focused on all tasks given along with being very hard working. Mr Johnson introduced our new topic of Ancient Greece which the Kestrels were excited about.
In English, we looked at prefix, suffix and root words. Mr Johnson asked the class if anybody knew what these words meant. Mya raised her hand and was able to give a perfect definition of all three words! Throughout the day, Mya was very enthusiastic and contributed to all discussions throughout the day, along with produced some excellent work.
Because of this Mya was our star of the day! Well done!!
On the last day of autumn term, Year 5 completed their topic on volcanoes in a spectacular way! The Kestrels have worked hard on making and painting their volcanoes in previous sessions (as you can see on other blogs) and really enjoyed using bicarbonate of soda and vinegar to make them erupt. Poppy-Rose said “It looks just like Mount Etna erupting!”