Nikki Mahadevan

A Tupton Taster and Taiko Drumming

Our Year 6s spent  Monday morning at Tupton Hall School designing ‘alternative’ movie posters using Photoshop, an industry standard software package for image manipulation and creation. Rango the Chameleon morphed magically into Ringo playing his fish guitar; Up became Pup in a Cup; Zookeeper became Lookeeper (use your imagination!); Epic became Antiseptic. Mr Cooke even made an appearance in a Where’s Mr Cooke? poster sporting a stripy red and white hat. The Photoshop session was a new workshop option offered by Tupton as part of their annual ICT transition programme for Year 6 children from feeder schools.

In the afternoon the children were joined by our Year 5 children for a very energetic Japanese Taiko Drumming workshop led by Tupton Hall’s Head of Music. The hot weather wasn’t able to dampen the children’s enthusiasm and the rhythmic pounding of drums reverberated around the Expressive Arts Department and possibly outside too through the open windows – oops! Tupton Hall runs a Taiko drumming club especially for their Year 7 students…I think they may have gained a few future recruits!

Tupton Hall Junior Maths Challenge

Well done to our four Year 5 mathematicians who represented the school at this year’s Junior Maths Challenge hosted by Tupton Hall School.

Building a tower
Solving acronyms

They faced challenges such as solving mathematical acronyms and anagrams, building a structure, maths logic problems and a memory drawing task. They came first in the memory drawing test and also did well in the tower building challenge, gaining the second highest combined points score for weight bearing and height.

The children were able to let off steam in the Gym by taking part in some more active problem solving and were given the chance to work with children from the other schools. This fantastic, well organised, event was ably lead by Tupton Hall’s Sixth Form Student Ambassadors; we look forward to taking part in next year’s challenge.

We are the ‘Dragon’s Den’ competition winners!

Dragon’s Den competition winners! Dragon’s Den competition winners!

Our winning Dragon's Den presenters
Our winning Dragon’s Den presenters

Fantastic news – our school has won the Cluster Primary School Dragon’s Den Competition! The £250 prize money will be presented to our school by members of the Dragon’s Den Panel in the next couple of weeks. Well done to everyone who contributed ideas and a special thank you to the three children (one Year 6 and two Year 4s) who went along to pitch the winning idea for a ‘learning garden’ to the Dragon’s Den. Our team spoke clearly and well and answered questions confidently. The Dragon’s Den panel were impressed with the way the children talked about the plans and also loved the fact that the ‘Learning Garden’ is building on and developing what we already have. They thought it was great that, as a school, children have already organised Enterprise fund raising activities to support putting plans for the ‘learning Garden ‘ into place.

CONGRATULATIONS – What exciting news!

Well Dressed!

We managed to complete our contribution to the Brackenfield Well Dressings on schedule; it will be on show with the rest of the well dressings over this Bank Holiday weekend. It’s been hard work but we’re sure you’ll agree it was worth it! For the first time the boards were put together in school which meant the children could see the board develop over the week from start to finish. As always, they were involved in all stages of its design from the initial drawings, assisted by Anne Robson, through to adding the variety of natural materials needed to complete the well dressing.

Visit our well dressing page to find out how we make our well dressings and for pictures of our earlier ones.
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Well Dressing Materials Wanted

During next week we will be putting together our contribution to the Brackenfield Well Dressings, “The Parting of the Red Sea”. We need natural materials:

Well Dressing Materials Wanted

Fresh materials such as flowers are added last and should be brought in from next Wednesday.

Pictures of our well dressings from previous years can be seen on the web site’s well dressing page.

Plummeting Peregrines and Propaganda Posters!

On Friday, Derbyshire Wildlife Trust visited school to give an assembly about the Derby Cathedral Peregrine Falcons. Find out more on our Wildlife Blog or on the Class 3 Blog. Keep an eye on our birdcams; we already have eggs in our colourcam box and more are likely to follow soon in the B&W birdcam box.

Have a look at the super propaganda posters that Class 2 have designed for their World War II topic.

Staff Sergeant Fleetwood Visits School

This term’s KS2 topic is World War II. On Friday, Staff Sergeant Fleetwood visited to talk to the children about how different it was for soldiers serving in the army in WWII compared with those serving now. He brought in kit and uniform used by soldiers in WWII as well as that used by soldiers today. There were plenty of dressing up opportunities!

World War II Topic

What was it like to live in fear of Doodlebugs?

Living in fear of the Doodlebug
doodlebugstories
The children have designed their own Anderson shelters
The children have designed their own Anderson shelters
Homework researching three facts about a WWII leader - Htiler by NH
Homework researching three facts about a WWII leader – Hitler by NH
Class 2 have looked at how propaganda posters were used during
World War II. Here are some that the children have designed.
Year 3 mind map: what we know
Mindmap – what we know, Class 2
Class 3 WWII Display
Class 3 WWII Display

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Our resident Year 4 WWII aircraft expert
shares his knowledge with Year 5 and 6.

Whirlow Farm Visit

KS2 children enjoyed a great day at Whirlow Farm taking part in WW2 workshops as part of their ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ topic, learning about life on the home front. They dressed up in 1940s clothing to be evacuated for the day and took their war time packed lunch in paper bags.

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The children used a hand pump to extinguish a potato incendiary bomb and took shelter when the air raid siren sounded. The farmer’s wife took them on a tour of a WW2 kitchen. In groups they kneaded dough for home made bread and set out the china for the visiting vicar, as well as having a go at some ‘make do and mend’ activities like knitting and rag rug making. It was very funny watching children peel vegetables and loading scraps into the metal pail for feeding the pigs.  Martha , the ‘land girl’ took the children on a tour of the farm. They had a go at ‘digging for Victory’ in the vegetable patch and had a look at how the farm land was used during the war.

Our Enterprising Tuck Shop

Class 3 Tuck ShopClass 3 has started running a tuck shop. We raised money to start it by running a Christmas coffee morning and inviting all the parents. We made over £20 and managed to buy stock and a place to keep it.

We have been running the tuck shop for about 6 weeks! Every few weeks we go out to buy stock. We have a wide range of sweets, fruits and savoury items. We have a treat day every Thursday which means we can buy chocolate, Haribos and lolly pops. On Thursdays, the tuck shop is really popular because it is sweet day, and every body loves sweets! On Fridays two Infant class school council members run the tuck shop, when KS2 go swimming. On other weekdays we have breadsticks, apples, bananas and a mixture of raisins.

We make around ten pounds profit each week from the tuck shop. We are saving our tuck shop money to buy a bin for the school playground. With our tuck shop money we have already bought name badges for our buddy and mini leader jobs.

By NS, MG, EE & RL Class 3