Year 3 have been learning all about our wonderful City of Birmingham.

All the children and teachers are in a school “House”,  named after famous and influential Brummies! We all work hard to win house points for our team. It’s great fun!

House teams are;

JRRR Tolkien, Matthew Boulton, Joseph Chamberlain and John Cadbury.

Which house are you in?

For our workshop, Year 3 painted portraits of these important men, and also used clay to create replicas of famous Birmingham buildings and landmarks. Parents came along to join in the fun and we have discovered some great artists among them! Can you spot the replica Bullring Bull, Old Joe, Chamberlain Memorial, The Iron Man or the Selfridges Building in the photos?

Look at our Photo Gallery to see the children and adults at work.

Thank you to all the parents that came along to take part and support your children.

Miss Taylor, Year 3

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We also looked at a story called ‘Galimoto’ this story tell us about the life of a little boy from Malawi in Africa. He recycled old wires and bamboo to make a new toy truck. These toys are called galimoto toys.

We think that the little boy called Kondi was very clever and the story makes us feel very lucky because we can just go to a shop to buy a toy but Kondi wasn’t so lucky. Next week we will try to make our own gallimoto pictures.

First we talked about what animals we might be going to see. Some of us thought that we might see a dinosaur! Or even a crocodile or an elephant!

We talked about how to look after the animals and washing our hands when we had touched them.

We all went to the hall and sat in a semi-circle. First the lady brought out a snake. Haleema said” It’s very long!” and Mehroze asked why it was licking everything. The lady explained to us that it used its tongue to smell. Some of us were a bit scared to touch the animals but others were very brave, and we all had a turn in the end.

We also saw a bearded dragon, a hedgehog, a tortoise, an owl and even a meerkat which Mrs Hussain wanted to take home!

We all enjoyed seeing the animals and when we returned to nursery we drew pictures and wrote about what we had seen.

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Our challenge was to be the first class to successfully weigh, measure, sieve, mix, knead and decorate 30 perfect bread rolls. The competition was judged by our very own celebrity judge, Mr Newman-Smith. After an exciting morning of learning and fun, the winning team was 2AC. Once the bread had been baked we were able to take it home to enjoy. Delicious!
Here are Mrs Ghatora and Mrs Hubbard with the finished rolls in specially designed packaging.

Also this term, our creative curriculum theme is ‘Transport’. We have spent the past few weeks designing a car for the ‘Wacky Races’. In ICT, we used a graphic artist program to design our vehicles. Then in design technology, we made prototypes, improved our designs and then used a range of measuring, cutting, sawing and joining techniques to construct the vehicles. When finished we tested our vehicles in science to see how to make them move in different ways.
Maybe you could make a car of your own?

Here’s what some of the children said…

“Our bread was really yummy!”
“I loved using the saws to cut the wood for the axels!”
“My best bit was making the car go down the ramp!”
“The wheels weren’t big enough so I made them bigger!”

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We have been using globes, atlases and maps to find different continents, oceans, climatic zones and countries around the world. We were amazed to see how tiny England is compared to some of the other countries in the world!

So far we have focused on the Polar and Tropical regions of the world. We have pretended to visit each climate zone and have been writing our own travel blogs in ICT. Here is a selection of our travel blogs for you to read:

–  Grease –

On Wednesday 8th February, Year 6 went to Hall Green School to watch a performance of the well known musical Grease. After lunch year 6 had to line up and get ready for the 20 minute walk to Hall Green Secondary School. When we arrived we found that we were the only school watching the practice play. The lady told us to get comfortable because the play was 1hr30minutes.

The play was brilliant and I saw one of my friends on stage. In the middle of the play there was an intermission which they called an interval. This is where we could use the toilet and chat to our friends.

When the play finished I really didn’t want it to end. Mr Mullan hopes that our performance at the end of year six will be just as good.
By Aaliyah Sundi (Y6AM)

On Wednesday 25th January 2012 Professor McGinty came to Yorkmead School. Y5HB went to see him after play time. When we went in it was designed like a time machine and I was amazed by how it looked.

When we came in we sat on the carpet and Professor McGinty introduced himself. He also told us about his owl Dr Hoot and how they went back in time. He was really funny because when we laughed at his owl’s name he said, “don’t laugh, that’s his name” and everyone laughed even more.

So, when we were there he said that he and Dr Hoot had been in their house and Eastenders was about to come on and Professor McGinty didn’t like Eastenders and Dr Hoot adored it so he said he decided to take him to Ancient Greece. He said he got in his time machine and set the time to Ancient Greece. He said he did it in slow motion and some music came on.

Then they were in Ancient Greece so they came out and they were by a newly built building called the Parthenon. Then he heard some people coming and was about to run back to his time machine. When the people spotted him they started shouting Athena which was one of the Greek Goddesses. They thought he was Athena because she is wise and he had an owl with him and owls are wise. Then he started to join in saying Athena but he said it in a funny way

He also showed us some old Greek money and some of them were really small and it was always like that it hadn’t even got smaller over the years it was always like that. We saw lots of other interesting artefacts and three people had to dress up as Ancient Greeks.

By Karen – Year 5

 

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On wednesday we had a visit from PROFESSOR MCGINTY. We learnt about the gods and about the shops. The Ancient Greeks have more than 10 gods, here are some of their names; Athena, Hades and Hera, there are lots more. PROFESSER MCGINTY made Faiza and Hadir dress up as Ancient Greeks.

The shops in Ancient Greece sell everything, even shoes, clothes and toys. We got to feel the toys – they were made from wood. PROFESSER MCGINTY had to go through a time machine to get to Ancient Greece and the people kept calling him ATHENA. He had a small TV with lots of buttons on it and he had an owl called Doctor Hoot who loved Eastenders.

After he showed us the TV, he showed us the basket of doom which had a sword and a shield in it.

By Shanice – Year 5

 

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Each class started with a short introduction to the drums – where they are from, what they are made of, and their cultural importance. There were different types of drums which all had wonderful African names like the djembe (pronounced jem-bay), the djun djun (bass drums) and the talking drums, which were played with a stick. The rest of the time was a fully hands-on experience where the children learnt the techniques of playing the various instruments, basic conducting signals, a traditional rhythm, call and response sequences and how to work together as a band.

After rehearsing, the classes then performed in front of the rest of Key Stage 2. All of the children were introduced to the fun of songs from across Africa, in languages such as Zulu and Congolese. It was great fun to sing together.

We all thoroughly enjoyed the experience, both in terms of what we discovered about African drumming, as well as the enjoyment of playing as part of a band.

Here’s a taste of what we felt about the day…

“It was fun learning the different African rhythms.”

“I enjoyed playing the instruments because I’d never played them before.”

“It was a fun experience because it was like a little part of Africa coming to visit us.”

“We played the instruments in turn so that it sounded like a wave of sound going around the hall.”

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