We discussed the topic name 'Code Name Bananas' based on David Walliams book and used clues from the front cover to predict what our new topic would be. We used our predictions to generate questions about we want to find out and what type of activities under the new areas of learning we would like to do. 

Here is our planning / topic map. 

Below are activities linked to our topic and from our topic planning map. 

We discussed how the soldiers would have been feeling during WW2, fighting for their country and risking their lives. We used pastels and charcoal to show the emotions of the soldiers. Mrs Smith was very impressed with our work! 

Welcome to our art gallery - click on image to enlarge. 

One of the main questions when planning together was 'What was life like for children during WW2?' In groups, we researched evacuation, watched historical clips, listened to radio interviews with evacuees, read letters, researched using books and websites and watched an interview about Maureen (Mr P's Nan) who was evacuated. We learnt that some children had good experiences and others didn't. We used Maureen's experience to write our letters home. 

As part of our two weeks back in the classroom, we had to solve the mystery of Rhodri's missing eggs by completing maths clues, which led us to the 4 Easter jokers who hid Rhodri's egg. Can you guess who they were? 

We completed our week with an Easter wreath competition run by Mrs Spencer and Miss Bowen. Mr Dennis judged and chose the winner for each class. Then, we made some delicious Easter Cakes!! 

We enjoyed reading the poem 'The store full of Magical things' by Rutendo Taverngerwei from the Book of hopes. We used the poem to create our own, then read our poems to each other using a green screen background. Hope you enjoy watching. 

For Comic Relief Day 2021, we watched Ethan's story and found out how the charity 'Steps', funded by Comic Relief, helps Ethan. We also discussed superheroes, thinking about heroes in our daily life e.g NHS, School staff, parents / carers, after school club staff, police, firefighters etc and then designed our own Superheroes. 

We finished our day with a laugh-a-thon, we hope you enjoy our jokes! 

Our topic for the 2nd half of the Autumn term was based on Theatre Na Nog's production 'Eye of the Storm' we watched the show and planned our own learning as a class. We wanted to find our more about tornadoes around the world, learn about forces and how weather and people can affect the world we live in. Here are some examples of the work we completed during the half term. 

Our planning ideas

We were very lucky to be involved in the Storyopolis 'Change Makers' project. We worked with artist, Laura Reynolds, using water colours and print making to design a protest poster and badge thinking about the affect climate change and humans have on animals around the world. 

We then worked with artist, Bill Taylor-Beales, creating a protest pledge and used recycled materials to make a beat for our pledge. Then, in pairs we used chatterpix app to present a haiku poem. 

Our work was on display in the Volcano gallery in Swansea, you can see our work below and watch our final media art work. 

We loved watching 'Eye of the storm' by Theatre Na Nog. We discussed the main character Emmy and how brave, kind, hardworking she was... everyone was pleased that she was able to live her dream in the end! We used show stills to predict what would happen, made our own tornadoes in a jar, completed film reviews, used the world maps to locate the countries that have the most tornadoes, and also looked at the US map and learnt about Tornadoes alley! 

As part of forest schools with Mrs Welsh, we designed and created our own tornadoes using clay. It was a lot  of fun!!

In our groups, we created a film review and sent them to Theatr Na Nog. Watch one of our reviews below.

Using j2code through our hwb accounts, we learnt simple coding to make our tornado move on repeat between two sets of co ordinates, we also added a person and set coding algorithms to make the character move up, down, left and right when the arrow keys were pressed. 

Some pupils added a speech algorithm. Our target is to learn how to use the sensing algorithm and add variables such as points. 

We really enjoyed debugging and problem solving. 

Mrs Arnold worked with us to create Tornado soundtracks for a clip from 'The Wizard of Oz'. We watched the clip carefully and thought about what the music should sound like. Using GarageBand we created our music, then we used iMovie to put our soundtrack together with the movie clip. We watched our completed work and evaluated, thinking about how we could improve next time. 

Here are some examples. 

PC Craig Hadley visited and gave us an important message about how to keep Cyber Safe. Lots of sensible class discussion, PC Craig was very impressed with how responsible we are and with our answers to his questions. We made some posters to show what we had learnt.