Giraffes@taddy

  As part of Black History week, we have made posters with the theme Proud to be me based on the women of NASA. We have been reading  Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race   this half term and have found out a lot about the segregation, prejudice and obstacles which    Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Christine Darden had to overcome. 

   Yesterday afternoon we had our first formal debate in Topic and loved every minute of it. We had the statement: This house believes that Scientists were right to demote Pluto from planet status to dwarf planet status. We looked at the language and structure of a debate then did some research into the reasons behind the statement before finally having our debate which we all really enjoyed.  

  We were so excited to have a visit from the planetarium today and learn about space in the space show inside the planetarium. Irina was  our very knowledgeable guide.. We had to enter really quickly so that the dome didn’t deflate. It was dark inside so we listened listened carefully and we had to shout out the answers to questions. We impressed  Irina  because we remembered a lot of facts that we had learned before in science and topics. We learned lots of new things too... including how to sleep in space! I learned about one of Jupiter's moons. The surface is covered in ice and under the ice is water. It would take us 5 years to get there. The temperature on Venus is 460 DE I learned that to get to Mars it takes 6  months .I also learned that Jupiter has a  moon that is made of ice and under the ice is water .Jupiter and Saturn are made of gas so you can't land on them .This is very interesting:  the sun is not actually the biggest star there are o...

We made soup  for harvest.  We  all brought in some vegetables  so we had a really good selection. We carefully peeled and chopped them to add to our soup. We used a sharp knife, so we had to be really careful. Giraffes had some very impressive  hopping skills - I can see that some of you have done this before! We cooked the vegetables to make the vegetable soup.  It looks delicious!  On Friday, as part of our Computing lessons , we designed and published posters advertising our soup selling. The children took their posters home to advertise the event. W e hope that you will be able to join us to enjoy the children’s homemade soup. 

 Our Year 6 children asked if they could start a school choir and after finding out if there was anyone interested in joining - there were lots- they set about organising it. The first session was today and was led really well by the children. It was fantastic to see children from Reception to year 6 joining in and it was lovely to hear singing wafting through school. Well done Y6s for organising this. Here they are leading the singing.

 Giraffes led our whole school collective worship today and shared  what they have been learning about love in our Heartsmart lessons. It was fantastic to see them leading collective worship for the whole school again.

 Over the last few weeks, we've been on a mission to make Blackberry jam. We started by going on a walk around Taddington (led by the locals) to collect the Blackberries. The children worked so well together as a team that they were very fruitful. The children decided that whilst we were walking, it would be a good idea to take some bin bags and do a spot of letter picking at the same time, this proved to be less fruitful, which we were delighted about. On our return, we froze the berries, ready for the next week. The following week, we made the jam. The children split into 3 groups and rotated around the different activities. As a collective they managed to; split the wood using a bill hook and mallet ready to use for kindling, collect birch bark to start the fire, light the fire, maintain the fire. They also, prepared the Blackberries, added the other ingredients to the mixture and cooked the jam on the fire. The jam was then left to cool and transferred into jars for t...

Fitness week has been keeping us busy.  After our lovely community walk, hymn singing, meditation on Monday afternoon, we have been thinking about making our journey to school more active. Some of us have been trying to do a park and stride rather than just driving to school. This morning, Giraffes enjoyed the fitness session, which Miss Furness organised.  Running, throwing, passing and skipping were practiced enthusiastically, as you can see. I

  In maths, we have been working on place value with some very big numbers. We have been using place value grids  number lines  and part-whole models  to represent numbers.

Kickstarting our forces topic in science, our entry point saw us getting i nspired by Wallace  and Gromit’s cracking contraptions , Rube Goldberg and Joseph’s machines .  We could have watched them all afternoon -  they are truly amazing, but we had a go at making some of our own chain reactions. We managed to get a marble to fly, hit, roll and fall using a tube, straws, spoons, boxes and yogurt pots.  We also made a human machine , which transported our Proud cloud jar around the classroom. We're ready to feel the force now, so watch out for more exciting science adventures!