Here at Hadrian School, we really got stuck into the celebration of World Book Day and have done lots of fantastic things this week!

Here in Class 5, we enjoyed story yoga with Ellen on Wednesday – this did our gross motor skills the world of good and, also allowed us to listen to the story of The Gruffalo. We all really enjoyed our story yoga and felt very relaxed afterwards.

On Thursday, our Head Girl from last year (Emma) visited us and she read the story ‘Little Monkey’ to us. She sat in the special story-telling chair and did an excellent job of reading to us – we were all captivated! Well done, Emma!

There was a special assembly on Thursday afternoon to celebrate World Book Day. During this, there was a performance of ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ by Rachael and Phil’s classes then Babs’ and June’s class performed ‘Fussy Freda’ and Marc’s class performed ‘Hoot Owl’ – all of the performances were brilliant and we thoroughly enjoyed watching them. As well as live performances, Loveday’s class made a video of a sensory story they had done in class called ‘The Emotional Postman’ – this was also brilliant!

As part of the World Book Day ‘Share A Million Stories’ campaign, we are trying to share three stories a day in class. Class 5 have been doing extremely well with this and some children have even brought in books from home to share, which is lovely. As the campaign is for the whole of March, it would be great if you could send in more stories from home!

Of course, the costumes on the day were, as always, spectacular!

Class 5 had a lovely morning on Tuesday 3rd March when they were visited by Gail from Warburton’s  as part of our topic ‘Where Does Our Food Come From?’

As well as learning about the history of Warburton’s, healthy eating and food hygiene, we also learned about the factories Warburton’s have. Their factories are very large and operate every day of the year apart from Christmas Day! One of the factories is only used to make gluten-free products! Everyone working in the factories has to wear a hair net and, if they have a beard or mustache, they wear a special hairnet to cover them too!

Once we did our learning, we all donned a hair net (no-one wants hair in their sandwich) put on an apron and washed our hands in readiness for some healthy sandwich making.

There was a huge range of fillings to choose from and, of course, most of us put almost everything into our sandwiches! A popular combination was chicken, ham, cheese, cucumber, pepper, tomato, red onion and…banana! It has to be said, even with some unusual combinations, all of us ate every last mouthful!

It was lovely to have Gail in this morning and we learned a lot. Thank you Gail!

It was Pancake Tuesday this week and Class 5 were more than happy to get involved in all the fun of the day!

As well as having a special Pancake Day whole school assembly, we had some pancake fun in class, too.

We made pancake batter from scratch then each of us cooked our own pancake to eat with some lemon and sugar. They were lovely! We didn’t want to take the risk of flipping the pancakes we planned to eat so the grown-ups had prepared a couple for us to try out or flipping skills…it’s not as easy as it looks! However, we all had great fun trying to flip the pancake in the pan as you will see from the photos!

In science this week, we learned about how rain-clouds are formed then we made our own rain clouds bu using water, shaving foam and a pipette with food colouring in – the effect was just like rain!

We had our first practice for the Dance Festival this week, too. It went very well, although there are lots of moves to remember!

On Tuesday 11th February, we had a visit from Andy Haddon, the founder of the Big River Bakery. He came to talk to us all about bread as part of our ‘Where Does Our Food Come From?’ humanities topic.

We learned that bread is made from different grains, such as wheat or rye, and that there are only four key ingredients you need to bake bread: flour, water, yeast and salt.

As Big River is a local bakery, Andy also told us a lot about the history of baking in the North East. Did you know that there were once lots and lots of windmills in Newcastle? No, nor did we! As Andy had noted the name and logo of our school, he also told us that Roman soldiers were given a loaf of bread each day made from a grain called spelt.

Andy talked to us about a bread very particular to the North East – the stottie! Stotties are very flat, but very tasty – the reason they are so flat is all to do with the amount of air in them.

Obviously, class 5 had their own questions for Andy, ranging from ‘What’s your favourite bread?’ to ‘How do you make bread crust?’ He found it very tricky to say which bread was his favourite!

Next on the agenda is to plant some spring wheat (we learned that there is winter wheat and spring wheat, too!) and visit Big River to bake some bread of our own. We are all looking forward to it already!

Thank you, Andy!

If anyone from Class 5 is tired this weekend, it won’t be a surprise as we have not stopped all week!

In science, we finished off our sound topic in a very tasty way by making popcorn. “What does that have to do with sound?” I hear you cry! Well, when making microwave popcorn, sound is vital to cooking it just right. We talked about what happens to the kernels as they heat up and that the ‘pop’ sound would start off slow, become fast, then become slow again. The children were asked to predict how many minutes they thought it would take (predictions ranged from a few seconds up to 10 minutes) then they were challenged to raise their hand when they thought the popcorn was done. Once it was cooked, we had to eat it – a very tasty science session which showed how sound helps us in every day life.

Some of us also had a messy play session where we explored sounds – it was great fun!

In English, we have done lots of work on reading and spelling. There has been some super progress in both these areas and the grown-ups are all very proud of how well everyone is doing.

In art, we have been doing some more work in the style of Andy Warhol. Everyone chose a famous character they liked, traced over a line drawing in Sharpie (this was very tricky to do!) and then glued a thin layer of different coloured tissue paper over the top. The results are fabulous as you can see and they will look even better once they’re mounted onto card!

In food technology, we made salt dough numbers to use in maths and, also, some yellow, lemon-scented Play-Doh to use in our choice and fine motor-skills time.

In maths, we focused on our number learning outcomes. There was work on number bonds to 10, reading 2-digit numbers and ordering numbers. All challenging at first, but everyone did brilliantly!

Have a wonderful weekend!

As always, Class 5 have been very busy this week.

In science, we continued our work on sound. This week we looked at pitch. To do this, we made water xylophones using empty glass jars and coloured water. We talked about how the amount of water in each jar changed the pitch of the sound it made. The challenge was for each group to create a scale of sounds with their jars so that they go play them high to low or low to high. We all had great fun investigating pitch this way, although the classroom did get rather wet!

In food technology, we made carrot and coriander soup.We had to use our peeling, grating and chopping skills to make it, but it was well worth it as, when we ate some during afternoon snack, it proved to be a big hit.

Our maths work this week focused on number. We were all using our counting and numeral recognition skills to complete pegging activities, join in songs and play interactive games.

On Monday, we held a special assembly to celebrate Chinese New Year. We all ate prawn crackers and fortune cookies and sampled some noodles. Delicious! All the classes had made things to decorate the hall; we made Chinese lanterns and paper plate rats as this year is the year of the rat.

Class 5 have had such a busy week – we’ve been up to all sorts!

In science, we continued our work on sound by investigating whether sound can travel through water. To do this, we got a bucket full of water, a plastic bottle with the lid removed and bottom cut off and two metal eating knives. The bottle was stood in the water and, in pairs, one of us clanged the knives together while the other listened through the bottle. The effect was brilliant and proved that water does indeed travel through water.

On Wednesday, it was the Burn’s Night ceilidh. We got into the swing of it and danced our socks off all afternoon – fabulous!

Food technology and art were both Chinese-themed this week as Chinese New Year is happening this weekend.

In food tech, we did some food tasting. Vegetable spring rolls, egg fried rice, soft noodles, prawn crackers and chicken curry were all on the menu and they were mostly a big hit with everyone!

In art, we made Chinese lanterns and, also paper plate rats – it is the year of the rat this year, after all!

There’s also been two birthdays to celebrate this week so we’ve had to have cake…TWICE! It’s a hard life…

Throw in some Cosmic Yoga, maths, English, reading and RE and that’s our week! No wonder we’re all tired!

On Wednesday 15th January, Class 5 paid a visit to the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle city centre.

However, this visit was not about art. It was our first meeting with a class from Belford Primary School in Northumberland as part of The Linking Project. The Linking Project supports schools and communities to develop a positive, cohesive ethos by helping children, young people and adults to explore identity, celebrate diversity, promote community and champion equality – which is incredibly important.

Prior to the Christmas holidays, Class 5 and its partner class in Belford exchanged ‘All About Me’ fact files as a way of introducing each other a little. Meeting face-to-face was the really exciting part and we had such a wonderful day together.

We began by playing some ‘ice-breaker’ games to get the children talking. These went really well and there was lots of smiling and laughter throughout.

After that, the children were split into two groups (a mixture of both schools). Each group had a different job to do and, in the afternoon, they swapped so that everyone had done the same activities.

In one activity, the children worked in groups of three to design and create an imaginary world. It really got all the children talking and everyone was involved in the making process, too. Some of the ideas were tremendous as you will see in the photos.

In the other activity, the children used their listening and creative skills as they had to choose a piece of art in the gallery and describe it for their partners to draw. The catch was, their partners could not look at the art work – they had to rely on the what they were being told. Some super work was produced and all the children had great fun!

By the end of the visit, some firm friendships had been made and there was lots of hugging goodbye.

We will be seeing our friends from Belford again soon, which the children are already excited about!

An absolutely wonderful day and we are proud to be part of such an important project.