It’s Up to Us!
Our school focus this half-term was 'Looking after our world.' Class 8 were challenged to find out all about climate change and global warming, and what we can do to reduce it.

English

We started our learning in English by thinking about our world and why it is special. We began researching what global warming is and why it is a huge challenge that we face. We then learnt about some of the things that can help to reduce global warming. We wrote non-fiction reports to inform others about what we found and to help give people some advice about what they can do to make a difference and help our planet. We also wrote poems and setting descriptions to help people understand how global warming is affecting the world. Using AI, we created images to illustrate our writing, and published our poems as short films.

DT

To raise money for global warming charities, we decided to make chocolate brownies to sell to everyone at school. We all worked together and it took a full week to make enough brownies to fulfil all the orders we received. A big thank you to Class 9 for showing us how to make boxes we could use as packaging to help us deliver the brownies. In total, we raised £488, which we donated to the World Wildlife Fund to help them look after polar bears and combat climate change in the Arctic. This allowed us to adopt our very own polar bears and combat, who we will enjoy keeping up to date with in the future.

Art

We started our art topic by looking at Ted Harrison, an English-Canadian artist who lived in the Yukon in the Arctic. He created many paintings of his home, using bright, block-colours, showing the beauty of our natural world. 
Then, we looked at the things that impact climate change, learning how to draw factories, vehicles, farms and forests, before creating artwork that reflects the choices we can make to help our planet.

P.E

Our topic in P.E this half-term was ‘striking and fielding.’ We practised our rolling and throwing skills, learning the key techniques to develop our skills. We also developed our striking abilities by practising hitting different balls with a range of bats. 

R.E

Our focus religion this half-term was Judaism. We began by thinking about who matters to us and how we show people that they are special to us.  We then learnt about the Jewish story of Moses and why the 10 commandments are important and how they influence the lives of Jewish people. We also learnt how Jewish people keep the Sabbath holy, focussing on the food they eat and what it represents. Finally, we reflected once more on the people who matter most to us, and how we could make more time for the people who we don’t see as often as we’d like. We created party invitations and chose food that would make a celebration special.

Schools Linking Project

We were visited by our friends from Wheatley Lane Primary School, spending a morning building on the friendships that we have made throughout the year. We made 'chatterboxes' to help us find out more about each other, and took part in a scavenger hunt in the forest school. We were very glad to see our friends again, and hope to see them virtually during Schools Linking Week to celebrate our friendships alongside many other schools across the country.

Thank you for visiting, Wheatley Lane!