St Joe's Blog

St Joe's Blog

Sunday 29 May 2011

Space - the final frontier

Last week, the children in Y4/5 were imagining what it would be like to travel in space. Like all good Captains, using information obtained through their research, they wrote their captain's logs. Are there some astronauts of the future living in Fishponds? I have been very impressed with what I read. Here are some snippets from a couple of excellent pieces of writing:

Captain’s Log Dean

Stardate-627.4

We have landed on Mars. One of my crew members has suffered from space sickness, however he is recovering. At 0800 hours we will be going out to collect rock samples with the Mars Rover 2.0, it’s basically the Moon Rover but made for Mars’ terrain. Yesterday we had one of the insects escape from the greenhouse. Luckily it wasn’t that important because we had hundreds of other insects just like it.
........

Stardate-631.4
Phew, mission accomplished.
We’re back at base now, packing up to go back to Earth. We’ve spent four or five long days on Mars now, but it was fun.
Speaking of fun, I actually caught that bug escapee last night; it was hiding under the Mars Rover.
Soon tourists will be able to land on Mars because of our mission.

Captain’s log Belinda

Stardate: 04102000.412

It’s the fourth day on Mars, the red planet. We’re searching for other life-forms. We saw some plants and little creatures; it could be insects and think there might be life on Mars. It could be the next planet for humans to live on but the only problem is that we live on oxygen and we still don’t know. Earlier this day Hannah, one of the crew members injured herself on a Martian rock. Then I and Rachel (the other crew member) took Hannah in the space shuttle to give her first aid.

Later we checked the rock because it looked different from the others. When looked closer we saw that it was a fossil.

But why would a fossil be on Mars?! And it’s a bit confusing because no one’s been on Mars before we came and surely I bet no alien came to Earth to take a fossil. So this seems to be very interesting. Wonder what will happen next?

Day 6 Today is our last day on the beautiful but boiling red planet, Mars. We might visit Mars again in 2020 or 21 and now we hope that we get back to Earth safely, taking all the pictures and the stuff we collected. Mission Accomplished!

Monday 23 May 2011

Friday 20 May 2011

Rockets to the moon?

In our Space Station topic, we have been following the journey of the Space Shuttle, which launched for the last time earlier this week, docking with the International Space Station on Wednesday. This led us to thinking about the force needed to move a rocket. We tried this experiment with balloons to see whether we had enough puffs to launch them over 5 metres. After a few false starts, we succeeded. How much farther could we have gone?

Saturday 14 May 2011

Y4C Mexcellent Project

Y4C have begun their Mexcellent project, looking at all the great and interesting things to do with Mexico.


Robotic Dancing

Here is a video of Y4C's robotic dancing which we showed in our topic assembly on Monday.


Friday 13 May 2011

Y5P topic assembly




Today Y5P performed their topic assembly to dhow the school what they have been learning over the last 2 terms. Their topics have been Van Gogh and Cool Vibrations. The children had not only learned about the topics, they helped plan them! They seemed packed full of interesting sights and sounds.


-- By Mr Sherwin

Friday 6 May 2011

Playground leaders

The Y45s have been absolute stars! Teaching the infants new games, they have demonstrated loads of skills including leadership, organisation and communication. The infants have really enjoyed playing these unique games.













-- By Mr Sherwin

Playground games

This morning Y45J have been trained in how to lead playground games. Mr Yandell came into school to show the children and SMSAs how to play some games and even let them invent their own games. At playtime the children will be teaching their games to the infants.















-- By Mr Sherwin

Tuesday 3 May 2011

Fire brigade continued

Stop drop and roll.



Fire quiz



-- By Mr Sherwin

Fire Brigade

The year 5 children are having a special visit from the fire brigade today. They have come in to run workshops with the children to teach them about staying safe with fire. The children have learned about fire hazards in the home, fire alarms, exit points, what to expect when calling 999, and how quickly and easily fires can get out of control and the importance of calling 999 as soon as you see a fire. Fore games and information click here.









-- By Mr Sherwin