Celebrating Creativity!

The Town Hall was packed on Thursday, as parents and participants gathered to receive their awards for the Youth Competition 2018, organised every two years by the Fordingbridge Twinning Association.

The theme this year was ‘100 Years’, celebrating the centenary of the end of World War 1. There were two levels of entry for primary school children:  Year 6 and Year 5 and below.  The competition also extends to Year 11 at secondary and it was lovely to see many old pupils still exhibiting the confidence and creativity we saw in those earlier years

Town Mayor, Malcolm Connolly, presented the awards and we were well represented with eight winners from Year 5 and an overall cup winner from Year 6. Congratulations to Hannah Janes, Libby Wallace, Eleanor May, Masie Somerset, Arabella Coulthard, Holly Harper, Emily Smith, Robyn Sims and Abi Theobald for their articulate and thoughtful letters to a child in 100 years and to Oscar Pike for his beautifully evocative multi-media image of a scene from World War 1 (which Fordingbridge Museum are hoping to display in the near future).

Well done to both Year 6 and Year 4 pupils who travelled to Bryanston School to take part in the Annual Maths Challenge – with two of our Year 6 boys coming second in their competition. What a fantastic achievement considering 25 local schools took part, many of which were from the independent sector.

The competition involves the pupils teaming up in pairs to solve many different kinds of maths problems against the clock.

Despite the nerves and the pressure, they all thoroughly enjoyed it and, as always, were a credit to the school.

On Wednesday 13th December, the whole of Year Six went to Winchester Science Museum as part of our iRobot unit.  Although the start was a little delayed, we had a fabulous day.  Each class had a 90 minute Lego Mindstorm session, where we had to program a robot to move over increasingly complicated courses.  Resilience was required by the bucket load!  The rest of the time, we were able to explore the myriad of fantastic, interactive science exhibits.

The enthusiasm of the children was superb and the behaviour exceptional.  The manager of the museum fed back how impressed he was with the FJS children and how a group had helped a lost child by asking centre staff for help.

Thank you to all those who picked the children up late, so that we could have such a brilliant day out and a massive thank you to Mrs Reeves, Mrs Osborne and Mrs Martin who came with us.

Year 6 children spent Thursday afternoon creating their own classification keys to sort a wide range of different animal types and flowers. Creating the questions to sort the animals and flowers was at times very tricky, but with determination and collaboration they were successful.

Year 4
In 4RP we have been learning about fractions of an amount in maths and on Friday we applied our knowledge into an tricky investigation. In art, we have started to look at samba headdresses which we are going to make next week. We used pictures to give us ideas and to create our final design. In Literacy we have been learning about write adverts for either Rio or Southampton.

5PD
This week in literacy we have been writing a ‘just so’ story about a chosen animal. In maths we have been doing an investigation about a game involving lots of our maths skills. We had to calculate the longest and shortest ways to get to 20 using a game board. Everybody was working hard and had fun at the same time!

5AG
This week 5AG have had lots of fun learning about the rainforest. We learned about tribes and had a ‘tribal visitor’!
Also we wrote ‘just so’ stories in English and learned about reflection in maths!

Year 6
In year 6 we have enjoyed our science learning.
We have been exploring how we hear and learning the different parts of
the ear and how sound travels to your brain. We started learning sign language
and played sign language hang man.

In literacy we have been looking at poems and paragraphs on rain and drought. We also had some exiting new pens! In maths we have recently been focusing on finding the missing angles of shapes. Also converting measurements; it was challenging!
A special shout out to Mrs Savage for reading the best horror stories ever – we were on the edge of our seats!

In maths we have been learning to find missing angles and lengths, we did this by using our knowledge of shapes. We explored that all triangles angles add up to 180 degrees. In English we have been doing descriptive writing about rain and droughts which we really enjoyed.

In literacy last week Year 6 learnt about poems and we made our own poems about any animal of our choice. We learnt how to use repetition, alliteration and onomatopoeia . In mathematics we learnt about shapes and how to use a protractor accurately. In the afternoon we played doge ball in P.E to work on our teamwork.