During Hook Week, we spent a day at a real working farm exploring the impact that food has on our bodies and environment. It was a lovely opportunity to see how the food we eat is produced and the many challenges the farmers face in finding the right balance between food production and environmental sustainability. We even got to see some newborn lambs!
What an amazing time children from NJS had at the 2024 Young Voices concert. The Young Voices experience is not just a children’s choir concert but the largest children’s choir concert in the world. All members of staff were so proud of the way the children put their all into singing each of the songs and the dance moves were pretty cool too! 😊
During Case Study 2, we have been creating our final product, which is a Lowry-style painting of the Doncaster landscape. The students took their own photos of buildings during our fieldwork experience and have been practising a range of watercolour painting techniques to ensure they were ready to create their final product.
It was our first ukulele session of the year and the students loved recapping the basics and getting familiar with the ukulele again. We also began working on our first song!
Year 5 have been busy working through their new expedition ‘The Power of Change’. They have started exploring the guiding question ‘How has the 18th Century influenced lives today?’.
We began our expedition with our usual ‘Hook Week’, the above photo shows our learning journey so far. We experienced what a Victorian School and Victorian Workhouse would have been like, built background knowledge about Victorian Schools, visited Danum Museum and the surrounding areas, explored a Victorian artist (William Morris), watched Oliver Twist and began to look at The Industrial Revolution in more detail.
We are already working through our first case study and can’t wait to find out even more!
We finished this week in Mathematics with some problem-solving activities. The students were showing resilience and perseverance by using a trial and error method to try and order the numbers so the adjacent numbers were added together to make a square number.
During Hook Week, we began by engaging in a Victorian school experience. The pupils dressed as Victorians and took part in strict Victorian lessons led by harsh and cruel school teachers! On Tuesday, the children watched Oliver Twist to learn about the lives of poor children in the Victorian era. The focus was life in the workhouse and the pupils even carried out some painstaking workhouse tasks. Wednesday’s focus was the Victorian artist, William Morris and the pupils created some of their own art in this style. The week ended with fieldwork to Doncaster City Centre where the pupils explored the development of industry in Doncaster at the time of the Industrial Revolution. They visited Danum Museum and looked at how Doncaster was a significant location in the development of railways.
Today, 5JC spent some time sharing their stories and soft toys with Class 6 at Norton Infant School. They have spent the last few weeks preparing and writing their stories based on a rainforest animal of their choice. Before writing the story, as part of their DT case study, the students researched, designed and created their very own soft toy that was suitable for a Y2 student. It was great to see all of their hard work over the last few weeks pay off as the Y2 students were engrossed in the stories.
The Kids EFL cup, a football tournament hosted by club Doncaster, took place on Thursday at the Eco power Stadium. With schools only able to select a strict team of nine for the competition, a team year 5/6 NJS children made the trip to the home of Doncaster Rovers to play against invitational teams from across Doncaster, including local schools Owston Park and Askern Spa. In freezing conditions, the team played exceptionally well and enjoyed a good tournament, showcasing great attacking and defending skills – passing to good support options in space when in possession and closing down the space against attackers when in defence. Whilst the team did not progress to the latter stages of the tournament, there were several exceptional performances: strong defensive performances from Ted and Will in Year Six ensured defenders were kept in check as well as great attacking performances from Fraser, Brooklyn (both Y6) and young Blake in year 5. Additionally, a huge thank you to Mrs Flint for accompanying the team with myself in extremely cold conditions. Great effort team!
This week, we have been planning and writing our own rainforest stories based on our chosen animal. The students came up with some wonderful descriptive vocabulary that we could use in our opening paragraphs. The students then shared these wonderful ideas with their friends meaning we all had a deep repertoire of vocabulary to use.
