This week, 5B have been working hard on their individual targets – especially in maths and literacy.

Some of us continued our work on number by developing our ability to recognise numerals up to 5 and 1:1 correspondence up to 5 (and in some cases more). Others focused on their using and applying skills by sorting objects or identifying why an object did not belong to a group. Some children focused on measures by developing their understanding of long and short. Everyone worked incredibly hard and did some super work!

In literacy, we have done lots of work on fine motor skills as well as developing our fluency when writing our names. It has really paid off as, again, there was some amazing work done!

On Friday this week, Year 3/4 are having a cake sale to raise money for a very important cause – the Alzheimer’s Society. 5B wanted to do their bit to help so, in food technology, we made a banana loaf. We had a practise run on Wednesday to make sure that our contribution was going to taste good and it did! Light, fluffy and not a soggy bottom in sight! We baked another one on Thursday to donate to the cake sale… and had some fun with the flour afterwards!

Tomorrow, we are headed out on a trip to Washington Wetland Centre as part of our science topic ‘Lifecycles.’ On the trip, we will be pond-dipping, learning about life-cycles of insects, feeding ducks and other birds and seeing other animals that live on/near water – even flamingos!

5B’s first week back has been brilliant!

We began the week with a visit to Exhibition Park as we thought it would be a great way to blow away the cobwebs after our half term holiday. Thankfully, the weather stayed dry and we were able to enjoy a stroll through the park to the playground. There was lots of great equipment for us the play on and we all worse ourselves out – it was a very quiet bus journey back to school!

As always, we have been doing plenty of work since our return. Maths, literacy, food technology, phonics and art have all been covered.

In food technology, we used our spreading, grating and chopping skills to make cheese toasties. There were a range of fillings on offer: ham, cheese, tuna, onion and tomato. To keep things healthy, we used one slice of bread to make our toasties as two slices would have been too much! We ate the finished toasties during snack time and they were delicious!

In art, we began making our Father’s Day cards. Obviously, the details of these needs to remain top secret until nearer the time!

In maths, we focused on number work. Everyone had different areas of number to focus on, from adding through to counting and number recognition. We are pleased to say that, even after a week’s break, everyone did brilliantly!

Roll on week two!

What an amazing week everyone at Hadrian (not just 5B) had at school last week! Why? Well, if you didn’t know already, last week was Science and Design Technology Week so we focused on investigating, exploring, designing and creating.

Summing up all the things that happened is hard to do in just one blog, but here it goes…

On Monday, we were visited by ‘Cool Science Guy’ and his friend, ‘Cool Science Lady.’ They did a special assembly in the morning, demonstrating all kinds of amazing science experiments. From recreating a sonic boom and a tornado, to getting Mr Rollins to hold the sun in his hands, everything they did was amazing! In the afternoon, each class had a workshop with Cool Science Guy and Lady where they made gooey slime!

Some of us visited the Star-Lab and the light and dark room. Both of them were great fun to explore.

Some of us also had bubble-play in the sunshine, which was a wonderful experience!

Of course, it wasn’t all about science. For design and technology, we all did boat building in class. This linked well to science (floating and sinking) as we tried to get our boats to sail across the hydro pool…with varying level of success!

DT links to outdoor learning, too. As part of this, on Tuesday and Wednesday, we were visited by Nick Fenwick from ‘The Badger and the Bear’ who did den building and fire building with some of the children. It was quite scary using a flint and steel to make sparks to light the fire, but most of us managed it. We toasted marshmallows over the fire once in was lit – yummy!

Everyone showed off their cooking skills in the grand Hadrian Bake-Off, judged by Mr Rollins and Mrs Stokle. The theme was ‘spring’ and everyone came up with some magnificent creations! 5B had to bake SIX sponge cakes to make our masterpiece! It was covered with FIVE colours of butter icing, too. Impressive is the only word to describe it. The children also painted and decorated a box to display the cake, complete with daffodils and fondant sheep.

On Tuesday 7^th May, 5B braved the drop in the sudden drop in spring temperatures to visit Leazes Park in Newcastle. We were very glad we did, too!

The park was lush and green and was beautiful to walk through but, even better, was the sight of numerous ducklings on Leazes Lake. We were all surprised (and excited) by how brave these fragile, little birds were as, not only did they swim up to us straight away, they even got out and came right up to us! Obviously, they were hopeful for some food but, as we had no bird seed, they were unlucky. We will be armed with seed next time we go!

As well as ducks and ducklings, we also saw a swan, some Canada geese and a moorhen…there was even one tiny baby moorhen swimming about!

We continued our walk up to the playground and enjoyed ourselves playing in the two playgrounds in the park. There was lots of climbing apparatus and several slides which everyone had great fun using.

After a quick snack, we returned to the minibus, walking by the Victorian bandstand on the way.

Everyone was really tired in the afternoon, but we had an absolutely fantastic morning!

5B have continued floating in space this week (not literally of course) as some more of the class visited the Centre for Life to learn about stars.

As part of the workshop, they created their own constellation using black paper, white pencil and star stickers. They look very effective! As well as this, they visited the planetarium to listen to an interactive story. Everyone really enjoyed themselves and learned lots.

In class, we focused on our favourite star, The Sun. We learned that it is made of gas, that its light takes about eight minutes to travel to Earth (light speed), it has a temperature of about 10 000°F, it is NOT on fire and that The Sun is a source of light.

Some of us were lucky enough to visit Nun’s Moor Fair on Thursday and, those that went had an amazing time. While those children had all the fun of the fair, those that stayed behind also had fun as we watched Lego Batman and ate popcorn.

We had our last dance lesson with Paul from Dance City this week. We have had such a good time learning urban dance moves with him and everyone has got better and grown in confidence each week.

We interviewed Paul as part of our Arts Award, too. We learned lots of interesting things about him… he is in a dance crew called ‘The Bad Taste Crew’ and his favourite move is the ‘baby freeze’ – he showed us the move, which you can see below.

Have a lovely bank holiday weekend!

Hello and welcome back! We hope you have all had a wonderful Easter break.

5B have had a tremendous first week back and have started the summer term as they mean to go on – full of energy and working hard!

Our science topic this term is ‘Earth, Sun and Moon – Space Exploration.’ To introduce the topic, some children from 5A and 5B went to the Centre for Life in Newcastle city centre to participate in a workshop called ‘Destination Space.’

During the workshop, we learned lots of information about space and what it’s like to be an astronaut. We then worked in pairs to test three different materials to see which would make the best spacesuit. We tested plastic, cotton and paper for their strength, flexibility and weight. We were unanimous in our opinion that cotton was the best!

In food technology, we made chocolate-covered flapjack, which were yummy! No-one (not even the grown-ups) is sick of chocolate yet, even though we all over-indulged on chocolate eggs at the weekend!

In literacy, we shared our text for this half term. It’s called ‘The Star in the Jar’ and everyone loved listening to it. We are going to be doing lots of work based around this book in maths and literacy. If you’ve not read it before, we highly recommend it!

In history, we were introduced to the Vikings! We’ve only had one lesson on them, but we can already see that they’re a fierce bunch!

On Wednesday, April 3^rd, Hadrian held its annual ceilidh – and what a lot of fun it was, too!

5B all had their dancing shoes well and truly on and tried their hand and lots of different dances, some of which were really quite complicated!

Everyone had fun spinning, twirling, sidestepping, skipping and stepping, but it was quite tiring so we had a little breather half-way through to refuel with some juice and a biscuit.

Music was provided by the very talented teachers who form the Hadrian School band and they really did do a brilliant job. Mrs Stokle and Mr Rollings provided the instructions for the dances and helped keep everyone right…or at least they tried to!

A brilliant afternoon that was enjoyed by everybody.