Thursday 14 May 2015

Oliver's Battery Parish Plan Launch Meeting with Input from the Children

On April 1st around 150 residents of Oliver's Battery met at the school for a launch meeting to start working on a parish plan. The hall was very full! 

The children from Oliver's Battery Primary School had provided lots of input to share their ideas and work created by pupils throughout the school was on display at the meeting. The audience listened to several presentations and watched a video made by Woodpeckers class to share their ideas on how Oliver's Battery could be improved. 

The video was very well received and there were lots of comments on how achievable the ideas were. It is clear that the school is seen as an important part of the community and that input is welcome from all age groups. 




The Parish Feedback Video was a fantastic project to bring together the multimedia skills that Dr Gardner has taught Year 3 (Woodpeckers) this year. It was also a valuable opportunity to produce a piece of work with the potential for real impact in the local community. 

After a whole class discussion, each team chose a topic that they felt strongly about. The children then selected, used and combined a variety of multimedia tools to produce the video. The children worked in small teams, taking on the roles of video editors, writers, narrators, illustrators and researchers. 

Every team used Windows Movie Maker Live to edit their video and include photos and some children recorded their voices. Some children chose to work with Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, several drew pictures and then took photos with the LearnPads and included those, some searched for images they could include (and some mastered checking whether they had permission to reuse the images.) 


Friday 8 May 2015


Kestrels Spring Half Term

This half term, Kestrels Class have been working exceptionally hard whilst preparing for SATs. In the following text you will find information about what we have accomplished recently.

In project, we have been exploring a variety of different text types. Included in this have been descriptions, letters, arguments and persuasive writing. Some of our topics have been:

-Dr Who’s Dilemma

-Should teachers wear school uniform?

-A persuasive letter to Miss Thomson describing what we should do on the Friday after SATs.

-Should Giants come and live on Earth?

Here a couple of examples.

A GIANT CONTROVERSY (By Josh Mawer)

Raging controversies have flooded the newspapers and countries across the globe, with discussions of whether giants should return to earth. These rumours have turned more and more realistic. Now giants have been begging us to return to our beloved land. In this argument I will have a debate looking at the pros and cons of this contentious subject.

            My first theory is that giants could help save countries when it comes to attacks and battles. Their huge size and their immense weight would come in handy. However, other countries could have larger and stronger giants than us and this could end up in our country and our civilians being crushed.

            Space has some lethal weapons such as meteorites and asteroids. Giants could prevent our planet from space attacks. When they see a rock heading towards earth, they could team up and catch it and then throw it back to space. On the other hand the meteorites or asteroid could crush us and our giants. This could be caused by the rocks pace and size.

            Medicine is a vital part of our planet. Especially for our giants, they have some very large and important bones which form a lot of our medicine. Medicine from giants’ bones will help 99.9% of our population that are in aid. However, scientists believe this might not be possible. They will have to discover the DNA of the creatures with technology that wasn’t around 45 years ago when Giants used to rule earth. When scientists do discover the DNA of the Giants, for medicine, the results could be fatal.

            My next debate will be on jobs and unemployment. 1’728 people will become unemployed and maybe even homeless! This will be too high of and it may crash peoples’ lives! Also, their massive hands or their clumsy body is almost certain to destroy buildings. The builders and till workers think differently. They believe that giants could become teachers and that they could become greater at our jobs because they have a larger brain than us so they could be smarter than us and they could serve more people due to their size.

            Food is what humans thrive on and if ants return, there will be pros and cons all over the place. Giants must have a massive stomach. This means 90% of food will vanish within 10 years. This brings me on to the cons. One giant is the equivalent of 1726 people. 1726 people won’t have food when one giant eats. This is a big risk and therefore the more the work, the more they eat.

To conclude I believe that giants should not be allowed to live back on Earth as the cons completely out-weigh the pros. For now, I hope that giants don’t come back to earth.

Should Giants Return To Earth (By Jessica Reels)

An extreme controversy has been raging global about whether giants should return to Earth or not. After a century long banishment, they have never ceased to plead for their return. The nation’s representatives have argued furiously and have chosen sides.

Firstly, if they are to return to Earth, the giants could assist us because their strength is equivalent to that of over a thousand men. They can do dangerous work such as building, mining and much more. However, even if they do help us, the more energy they use the more food they consume. It is predicted that in one year’s time, over half of the Earth’s food will be eaten.

Secondly, the nations can set the giants on protecting them from terrorist or invaders. This will make the nation’s people safer. On the other hand, it may frighten the other countries and they will not ship resources or it might even result in a World War 3, consequently destroying the Earth.

Following on from that point, the giants could help us gather resources, such as fishes, crops, wood and water. The counter-argument stated that, because of this, many people will be forced into unemployment, making citizens homeless and bankrupt. Furthermore, the giants might accidently tread on important structures and ancient monuments, such as churches and castles, which would annoy people greatly.

Also, with their immense bulk, the giants can deliver cargo overseas. This can be beneficial to humans because it will take less time, meaning less waiting for the receivers of the cargo, goods or resources. Unfortunately, their heavy footsteps could cause strong waves that could flood land. Eventually, much of the land will be submerged in water.

Finally, the giants could help farmers and such to clear land. They could easily shift rocks and overgrown vegetation. This would be good but they have nowhere to sleep. If they were to lie down, they could crush whole towns and cities. In addition, if they were to make a sudden movement, it could result in an earthquake, or worse.

In conclusion, I think that giants should not return to Earth. The risks and dangers they could bring are too great. I think Earth would become an inconvenient, unsafe and chaotic place if the giants moved back.

In Maths, we have been doing an almost uncountable amount of activities to exercise our brains. This has consisted of area and perimeter and angles of shapes, percentages and decimals, adding mixed numbers, co-ordinates, rotation, reflection and translation on grids, formulas, graphs and diagrams. We have revised on all out past knowledge and have begun texting our abilities and stretching onto higher levelled questions.

We would like to say thank you to all of the teachers who have been with us throughout this half term, especially Miss Thompson, Mrs Cole and Mrs Bordoli for helping us excel to our highest potential. J

 

By Lily Goddard and Jessica Reels