Stanford Junior and Infant School
Living together - Learning together
On this page you can see updates over the term of our activities and learning.
If you want a reminder about our Home Learning, have a look at our Explanation Sheet.
Stanford School had an inspirational speaker visit- Julia Scardone. Julia is a Judo athlete, who has represent Great Britain in many competitions all around the world. She spoke to the pupils about her inspirational, yet challenging journey to become a successful Judo competitor and how having passion, determination, resilience and sportsmanship made her the successful competitor she is today. Julia then demonstrated some basic Judo skills to some KS2 pupils. Thank you Julia, for inspiring Stanford pupils to achieve through hard work and determination!
The children are studying ‘Escape from Pompeii’ where the people of Pompeii were so used to earthquakes they used to sing rhymes about them before they knew how much danger they were in.
The children used a thesaurus to find different synonyms for the word shake. They then used these words to create their own poems in the style of the book.
Each child within the group had to give their own ideas to produce their collaborative work.
In maths we have been learning about fractions, tenths and decimals. To help us understand this we have been using Numicon (shown below) so the children could visualise what a tenth looks like.
We pretended this was a whole bar of chocolate with 10 sections in it.
would be 3/10 or 0.3
We played a game to show different decimal values. The children were able to use different combinations of shapes to show the values and had lots of fun.
0.5
0.9
1.2
Today there was a competitive spirit in the air as the houses ‘battled’ for points in our intra-school competition. They had lots of fun practising their archery school and being allowed to throw balls at each other In dodgeball.
Well done to the winners of the Poppy Class 'Design an Easter Egg' competition. All the eggs looked wonderful.
Thank you to Mr Read for judging and for Miss Wilson for organising the eggs with the Easter Bunny.
Year 3 have been very lucky to have Mrs Groves come in to teach them how to play the Djembe drums. This is very difficult and the children had to concentrate very hard to follow the different beats. Everyone was amazed by how well they did!
We all set up our own investigation. We carefully measured out food colouring to put into the water and stood our flower in it. We then thought about where we could leave it to test if the temperature would affect the rate of transportation. We decided to leave one in a cool place, one in a warm place and one at room temperature. We had lots of fun doing this!
We had great fun in science! We used our bodies to recreate the job of the stem and tell the class how water gets through the plant. We all had different ideas on how we could show this.
The last chicks of the day arrived. ‘Princess Laya’ and ‘Hen Solo’
Shortly after the arrival of ‘Shelley’ came our next ‘cel-egg-brity’ - Kim Kardashihen
There was a competition between 2 eggs to see which one would be the 3rd chick to arrive……and the winner was ‘Shelley’ (Winters)
The next chick arrived during the first lesson. It was named ‘Egg Sheerhen’ due to its quiff of feathers.
Miss Perrin had a surprise when she arrived into work as our first chick had already arrived and was waiting to greet her!
Miss Watkinson, one of our site team, was the first to find the chick so she named it……Shellock Holmes! What an apt name as the chick was very keen to investigate the mystery of what was in the rest of the eggs and helped them escape.
And so started our theme of ‘cel-egg-brity’ names!
We are very fortunate to have some new arrivals expected at school in the very near future. A hatching station has been delivered to school with 10 eggs that are expected to hatch within the next 2 days and they will be with us for the next 10 days. We will post updates on their progress on the science blog for you to check on. We can’t wait to see them and some children are already thinking of names to call them.
Keep an eye on our Science page for updates!
Stanford School had a fantastic day for World Book Day! From amazing, creative costumes to designing and creating their favourite character onto a wooden spoon- well done to you all!
Well done to all our winners- Best Spoon Design and Best Costume!
A fantastic day was had by all pupils in Key Stage 2! They worked collaboratively with their peers and rotated around the four different activities in the morning. From creating positions, to using drama skills all linked to a variety of different books.
Star Anise’s activities were based on ‘Voices in the Park’ by Anthony Browne. The book is based on a story told from four different perspectives. We read the story, questioned the different voices and then worked in small groups to create freeze frames as one of the perspectives from the characters in the books.
Pupils from Key Stage took part in our first Gymnastics competition with other local schools. The pupils performed brilliantly with fantastic routines, skills and confidence to impress the judging panel.
Overall we had one of the year 5/6 team place 4th… a fantastic achievement at our first event! Well done to all the pupils who took part, they all have fantastic gymnastics skills where we hope they can showcase these off further in the future, Well done!
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“The Pebble in my Pocket” describes the journey of a pebble from lava, at the beginning of the world, until modern times. The children were given different time periods throughout the prehistoric period and were asked to create a freeze frame to show how the different prehistoric creatures have interacted with the pebble throughout this time.
This term the school are focusing on the work of Michael Rosen, a fantastically, funny poet. Each Class was asked to recite a poem at the ‘Community Thank You’ afternoon, where we take the opportunity to thank members of the community who help out at the school in various ways.
Poppy class chose a poem called ‘Fast Food’, Everyone was impressed with how we had remembered such a long poem.
We hope you enjoy it!!
When Matt came to Poppy class we worked on a poem about animals called ‘Have you seen….?”
Have you seen a HAMSTER?
Fat cheeks, tiny body, soft fur.
Have you seen a DOG?
Wet nose, sloppy kisses, waggy tail.
Have you seen a PENGUIN?
Flappy wings, funny walk, black ‘n’ white body.
The children then worked on their own verses thinking about their favourite animals.
Matt was really funny and the children enjoyed working with him.
We were really lucky to have a poet come to school to share his work.
He spoke to us about why he decided to be a poet and where he gets his inspiration from. He was really funny and we had a lot of fun joining in. After that he went into the classrooms and helped us to write poems.
The children listened to a piece of text and thought about the words which painted images in their minds. They read the text and highlighted descriptive phrases and then used these phrases to create a picture of a volcano with one half erupting and the other showing the aftermath. They then annotated their drawings with the phrases that had inspired them.
Today the school took part in a Colour Run to raise money to support the NSPCC. It was a great start to the day and the children enjoyed taking part.
Today we investigated the different properties of rocks.
Density: will it will sink or float?
Permeability: does it allow water to pass through it?
Durability: does it wear away easily?
Hardness: can it be easily marked?
After this the children tried to group the different rocks together according to their properties.
We had lots of fun with all the different investigations.
Linking to our English book and our learning about rocks we arranged for a geologist, Mr Evans, to come and talk to us about rocks, volcanoes & fossils. He brought some of his collection of different types of rocks and fossils for the children to look at and handle.
The children really enjoyed this experience and had lots of questions for him. He was very impressed and surprised by our knowledge of rocks and the questions that the children asked. The children loved handling the fossils and the different types of rocks.
Can I model the different types of rock formations?
The children were so excited to find out that everyone was getting Starbursts but unfortunately these were not going to be eaten. We have been learning about the different ways rocks are formed and one fabulous way is by modelling this with sweets.
Sedimentary rock – This is created when several layers or fragments of rock are put under pressure until they become one piece of rock. We recreated this in 2 ways.
First we put 3 different coloured Starbursts together and then squeezed them until they became one sweet-rock.
We then created sedimentary rock by cutting the sweets into fragments, mixing them together and squeezing them until they formed one sweet-rock.
Metamorphic rock – this is where existing rock is heated and pressure is applied. We got our 2 examples of rock and used the heat from our hands to warm them and squeeze them. They both changed, the colours blurred together to make one new colour and it looked totally different. It had metamorphosed into a new type or rock.
Igneous – this is where rock is heated until it becomes molten and it is then allowed to cool. An adult put our Starburst rocks into the microwave s that they boiled and cooled.
Can you tell which type of rock is which?
In Key Stage 2 we have been discussing Fundamental British Values and what it means to us. This week we focused on 'Individual Liberty'.
We ranked different statements about Our Rights in order of importance;
'This was a really difficult task - how can you say one is more important? They are all important and everyone will have a different idea of what to put first' - Charlie, Year 6
'My group all disagreed, we couldn't decide so had to have quite a debate about it' - Lucy, Year 5
'Every group had a different idea of what order they should be in. None of us agreed, all of them are really important' - Finley, Year 3
Children enjoyed their debates, giving reasons for their opinions and understanding that there was no right or wrong answer, everyone has their own opinion, which are all respected.
As we are exploring how the world was formed in English, as well as across the curriculum, we thought it would be fun to create some of our own eruptions & explosions. We did this using Coke & Mentoes in one investigation and bicarbonate of soda & vinegar in another. The children also tried to make their own fake volcanoes.
The children were able to see what an eruption looked like and saw that some were more intensive and explosive than others. As with any investigation we were able to look at how we could improve some that were not as spectacular as others.
I don’t know why ………but the children enjoyed the coke investigation the most which completely soaked me through!!
Perhaps that was payback for the Coprolites earlier????
Please do not feed the Neanderthals!
On our hook day the children were given the opportunity to dress as explorers or Stone Age people.
As ever you have astonished me with your enthusiasm and creativeness.
The children had such fun on the day and (thanks to you) they looked great! I am sure you will agree !!
Archaeologists and historians have been able to find out about the diet of man throughout the ages through inspecting Coprolites or in layman terms ‘fossilised poo.’
We were lucky enough to ‘find’ coprolites in the Nature Area at school so I set the children the challenge to figure out which ones belonged to Stone Age Man and which belonged to Modern Man by looking at the contents of the coprolite.
After their initial reaction, the children enjoyed measuring and investigating the coprolites. They were able to find: fish bones, nuts, fruit, beans, seeds and intestinal worms in one and sweetcorn, broccoli, green beans, oats, carrots, rice and exotic fruits in the other. They could correctly identify which coprolite came from which age of man and explain their diet.
Stone Age man would live off fish, other meats & gather nuts, fruits, seeds and berries. Modern man has a wider diet as foods are shipped from around the world and there is a wider variety of choice for us to eat.
The children had lots of fun investigating this……but were hugely relieved to find out that I had been playing a trick on them all along and the coprolites were actually pieces of playdough that I had made a few days before!!!!........Naughty Miss Perrin!!!!
I am so proud to announce that Poppy Class is the Attendance Cup Winner….. for the 5th consecutive week!!!!
I would just like to thank you parents for ensuring that the children are here every day, ready to learn. Thank you so much for your support!!
The children had lots of fun at our Christmas party. We enjoyed traditional games like pass the parcel, musical statues and pin the nose on the Rudolph.
The children had the most fun with a game called ‘flap the fish’ where they had to waft a paper fish back to the pond by just using a newspaper. I hope you enjoy the photos of their festive fun.
Stanford School have enjoyed their Christmas trip, watching Cinderella! A great time was had by all
Poppy class were given the opportunity to take part in a choral event, where schools around the local area could come together and sing collaboratively. The children loved practising the Christmas songs and were very excited to sing with a live band.
The children were extremely well behaved and, as ever, made me very proud of them.
You have obviously heard how brilliant they were as the tracks are on the B side of our Christmas calendar/album.
Well done everyone - beautiful readings, lovely singing and excellent class performances. Thank you to all those who supported this lovely event.
The children had the chance to spread a bit of Christmas cheer to the residents of Cloverdale. We walked down to visit them and sang a few Christmas carols which the residents enjoyed singing along to. The children enjoyed mixing with the residents and wishing them a Merry Christmas.
Each year the school take part in an Enterprise scheme where the children make items to sell at the Christmas Fayre with the profits going to the class to be spent as we seem fit.
This year Poppy Class drew up a Business Plan and the children worked incredibly hard producing a variety of items to sell.
We decided to make different Christmas decorations – personalised wooden baubles and Christmas angels from lollypop sticks. We also sold our Egyptian Cartouches and made Olaf lollies from marshmallows.
After the event we looked at how our products had sold, the profit made and whether these would be good items to be sold the next year.
The Christmas Angels & Cartouches were the most profitable and popular items.
The winners of the Enterprise are chosen looking at the profit made compared to the number of pupils within the class and this year Poppy Class were the winners of the Enterprise scheme……..watch out Alan Sugar here we come!!!!
What a fantastic Christmas Fayre - thank you to all those who supported it and to the pupils for showing their enterprise skills through designing, making, evaluating and selling their products. Well done everyone.
Today the children had the opportunity to share their wonderful learning with parents and carers. We are extremely proud of the work they have done.
The children have enjoyed learning French and have learnt a lot in a very short time. Here they are showing off their linguistic skills
Around the globe people are remembering those who gallantly gave up their lives in the line of duty. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.
At Stanford School the children have taken part in several activities to reflect on this important anniversary. Today we came together to reflect on those who gave their lives for their countries and shared the work we have prepared.
Seedlings Class Blue & Yellow
Sunflower & Pumpkin Class
Poppy Class
Juniper Class
Star Anise Class
Barley Class
In addition to this Mrs Amos has created some beautiful poppies from plastic bottles which have been placed as a stunning addition to our Peace Garden.
Shoebox AppealWe had a representative from ‘Operation Christmas Child’ come to the school to talk about how we can help children less fortunate than ourselves. Some children throughout the world live in deprivation, in cold areas and have little to call their own.
The Shoebox Appeal sends a box of 'love' to these children so they can have something to open as a Christmas Gift, to make their lives a little easier and most importantly to make them smile.
The items in these boxes do not have to be brand new, as long as they are in good condition, and are a perfect opportunity to pass on 'pre-loved' toys, winter scarves & mittens.
We are hoping that we can increase the number of boxes donated last year and bring Christmas cheer to even more children.
To finish off our investigations into magnetism the children looked at how magnets are used in everyday life. They were the set a challenge to use their knowledge of magnetism to create a game. They had lots of fun creating and playing them.
A cartouche is a nameplate that was used by the ancient Egyptians. A cartouche had the person’s name written in hieroglphyics and was usually placed on a sarcophagus. The ancient Egyptians believed that it was important to have your name written down and recorded otherwise you might disappear in death and not find the underworld.
To make a cartouche first we had to find out how to write our names in hieroglyphics. We then made our cartouche out of clay, scribed our names on them and left them to dry.
When they are dry we will paint them so look out for the photos of our finished products!
In our learning we have looked at forces including magnetic forces. Today we looked at how magnets have poles called North and South. We investigated what happened when you put the different poles together and found out that if the poles are the same they will repel each other however if they are different they will attract each other.
We had lots of fun working together with magnets.
Because we have so many fantastic pieces of art we have decided to set up our own art gallery. Each child has a piece of work displayed that they are proud of. We will keep on adding to this and posting more blogs to show the different pieces that we have created. We hope you like them.
The word ‘paper’ comes from the word Papyrus. In Egyptian times the people would use the Papyrus plant for many purposes. They would tear the stem of the plant to make strips which they would lay in a criss-cross pattern. They would beat the sheets so the strands of the plant would knit together, put weights on it and leave it for several days to dry. They would then polish them with stones to make them smooth. The Egyptians were the first civilisation to develop and use a portable form of ‘paper-like’ writing materials.
To replicate this we tore strips of brown paper, dipped them in glue and laid them in a criss-cross pattern. We then left them for several days to dry. After that we used the paper to draw Egyptian Gods on them. Egyptian Gods were believed to be part animals and could transform into animal form. They were always drawn facing one side and were drawn using bright colours. We used drawings of Egyptian Gods as an inspiration for our drawings.
In our RE unit Remembering we have been looking at why different faiths have celebrations. They have them to celebrate people and remember special events. We have looked at different Islamic celebrations and have found similarities to those celebrated by Christians, as both remember Moses and Noah. We then looked in more detail about the celebration of Ramadan & Eid and found out that Eid is a lot like the Christian celebration of Christmas. Christians celebrate Christmas as God gave Jesus to the world. Muslims celebrate Ramadan & Eid as that is when they were given the Qur’an to guide them how to live their lives.
We were fortunate as some of our parents came to talk to the children about why Ramadan & Eid is important to them.
In Ramadan the Muslims fast so they can appreciate how lucky they are to have things such as food, they give money and food to others who are not as fortunate as them and they use this time to connect with Allah and their families. At the end of Ramadan they have Eid where they decorate their homes with tinsel and other decorations, they dress in their best clothes, have a feast, give presents and visit their families.
They brought a copy of the Qur’an so the children could see Arabic writing and how beautiful this book it. They also spoke about the Pillars of Islam and how they guide the Muslim people to try and live a better life. They also brought some Henna and showed the children how they decorate their hands for special celebrations. The children loved learning more about the Islamic faith and had lots of interesting questions to ask.
The children have had great fun with the enrichment activities suggested as a part of the home learning. They have been really creative. I am sure that the parents have had as much fun as the children creating some of these masterpieces. Well done!!
Key Stage 2 children enjoyed taking part in a harvest celebration in St Margaret’s Church, as ever the church looked lovely with its decorations created by the congregation.
The children enjoyed singing hymns and performing harvest poems and songs.
The children have been fantastic at learning a new language. So far they have learned how to say “Hello” and “Goodbye” in different ways. They can say what their name is, how they are feeling and how old they are. We have started looking at numbers to 31. To make it fun we had a game of Bingo so the children could practise their numbers. ‘Les yeux baissés pour une salle comble’……..eyes down for a full house!
Today the children learnt that there were different types of magnets such as bar magnets, button magnets, horseshoe magnets and cylindrical magnets. We decided to investigate which magnets had the strongest magnetic field. We did this by trying to make a chain of paperclips held together by magnetism. First the children predicted which magnet would be the strongest. Most children automatically chose the largest magnet and were surprised to find that the size of the magnet did not indicate how strong it would be.
The children have been very excited to start the Year 3 & 4 Minecraft Club. It is a great environment for the children to work together to build their own creations in a safe on-line environment.
We will post photos later in the term to show what they have made.
Over the last few weeks we have been creating our own versions of Egyptian necklaces. First we researched them and we found out that rich people had necklaces made of gold and poorer people had necklaces made of beads. They liked to have bright colours on them and they often had eagles on them to represent the God Ra. We created designs and then we made them using paper plates, cardboard, paint, pasta and beads. It was quite tricky painting the pasta & beads and getting them to stick onto the necklaces but I think we did a good job. What do you think?
We have been learning about magnetism and how magnets are used as a part of the recycling process to sort out metallic materials.
We tried to have a go at this ourselves. We had a bag of mystery objects and we had to sort them without looking in the bag or picking them up with our hands. The children were surprised as some things looked metallic but were actually plastic. We were also surprised to find that some coins were magnetic and others weren’t. We looked at the types of coins and the dates that they were issued and we concluded that the method of making coins had changed over the years as some had magnetic cores and others didn’t
Well done Poppy class!
Juniper, Seedlings (yellow) & Poppy class all had no lates and 100% attendance. Thanks to the parents & carers for helping with this and I hope we win the cup again very soon.
‘The Egyptian Cinderella’ is a version of the traditional tale Cinderella. In this version Rhodopis (Cinderella) was kidnapped as a child and sold as a slave in Egypt. An Egyptian God Horus steals her slipper and takes it to the pharaoh. He decides, as this is a gift from God Horus, he must marry the person who fits it. When he finds Rhodopis he falls in love with her and tells her that he is going to marry her.
We discussed the ending of the story. Whereas Cinderella gets her Prince Charming, Rhodopis has never met this man who is pharaoh and she is told she is going to marry him. She is not asked whether this is what she wants and is not given the opportunity to refuse.
The children were given slips of paper stating facts about the ending and Rhodopis’ s future. The children had to decide whether these were good or bad for Rhodopis. When we looked at where we had placed them half of the facts about the ending showed it was a good thing for Rhodopis but these were balanced out by counter arguments about why Rhodopis could still be unhappy.
After this we took part in a debate to see whether Rhodopis actually did live happily ever after.
As a part of our learning in Science we have been looking at forces. We have learnt that forces act on objects such as pushing and pulling things. This week we have been leaning about the force called friction. Friction is a force that holds back the movement of a sliding object. You will find friction everywhere that objects come into contact with each other. The force acts in the opposite direction to the way an object wants to slide.
To help the children understand how brushing against something can slow things down we walked through a ‘human’ corridor. It was easy until everyone put their hands out and they brushed against us as we walked.
We then conducted an investigation to see how different surfaces and friction can affect the movement of a car. We used wood, bubble wrap, a towel, a carpet and sandpaper. The children felt the different surfaces and made a prediction about which surface would stop the car from moving by causing the most friction.
Look at how high the ramp got when testing the carpet before the car actually started to move!!!
We concluded that the carpet caused the most friction as it stopped the car from moving until the ramp was 80 cm high.
Poppy class has a wonderful morning launching our learning about the Ancient Egyptians.
First the children learnt about how the Egyptians were the first civilisation to start writing on a form of paper called papyrus.
We tried making our own version of this. It was very messy!
Keep looking out on the blog for these as we have great plans for them once they are dry.
The Egyptians liked to look good and most of the wealthy people wore necklaces as they were a status symbol. They liked them to be made of gold with lots of bright colours and beads on them. The children started to design their own necklaces which we will be making shortly, so keep checking the blog to see the finished results.
The children looked fantastic dressed as Egyptians, Mummies and Explorers.
Thank you for all the effort you put into making the children look so fabulous!
