It’s not as often as we like that we go on school trips, but today children from Otter BR went to various places in space! Some children visited the moon, other Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and Neptune!
You can see how they got on by clicking on one of the videos below. There are more of them on the “Space” page.
Well done everyone!
Last week the children were asked to reply to a letter from Bob Rocket for their extended writing task. The letter invited the children to put themselves forward as a young astronaut candidate, giving reasons as to why they should be chosen.
We spent lots of time discussing our personal qualities and talents. Talking about what curriculum areas we were good at, those we particularly enjoyed and activities we do outside of school. We then decided what we though Bob would be looking for in a young astronaut.
The children wrote their replies to Bob and were extremely persuasive with their reasons why they should be the young astronaut! I would make them all young astronauts.
Here are just two of the fantastic letters written by Otter BR
Ben's Letter
Thomas' Letter
In science we have been looking at forces and gravity. Today we were finding out about air-resistance by making and launching parachutes. Children worked in teams to design thier parachute and then we tested them by Miss Wilkinson launching them off the top of a tall ladder! We found that the bigger the surface area of the parachute, the more air-resistance was created and the slower it fell.
One finished design
It’s almost time to go home, but about an hour ago I looked out of the window and saw the playground was full of pied wagtails!
Pied wagtails on the playground
I crept out, took a few photos and then looked behind me to see hundreds more all sat on the roof! As I watched more and more flew over my head and landed there. I wonder if they’ll roost there tonight… They were very hard to count as they kept moving around and it was getting dark, but Miss Taylor and I thought that there had to be more than 200 of them altogether.
Just a few of the pied wagtails on the roof
More pied wagtails...
Margaryta and Thomas have just written this report about the birdwatch:
Otter BR’s Big Schools Bird Watch
On Tuesday 17th January 2012, Otter BR did a bird watch for the RSPB. It was a sunny day, but really, really cold! We dressed up in our warm coats and took our bird watching check lists and binoculars.
First, we looked around the school wildlife area. We had to move away from underneath the tree, because we thought that the rooks on the branches above us might poo on us when they flew off! We saw some blackbirds, common gulls and wood pigeons. It was very hard to identify some of the little birds which flew over, but our binoculars helped us to see them.
Then we made our way around the back of the school. We saw starlings on the roof of one of the houses and two blue tits on a window ledge.
When we got to the school field, we could hear lots of birds singing. We slowly walked towards the hedge, trying not to scare the birds. In the hedge we spotted three song thrushes. They were singing loudly to each other.
We stood quietly and still outside Young Ones Nursery and counted twelve house sparrows on the roof and in the gutter. Then we walked up across the field and down the path by the allotments. During our walk we ticked off all of the birds that we saw on our check list.
When we got back to school, we put all the information into the computer on the RSPB website. It made a bar chart which is in our big book. The next day, we all drew pictures of the birds that we saw and have stuck them in our book.
We all enjoyed the bird watch very much, even though it was rather cold. We have learnt how to recognise lots of birds and how we have to be very quiet and still when we are bird watching! We would really like to do the Big Bird Watch again next year.
Great tit by Margaryta
Song thrush by Chloe
Magpie by Andrew!
Completing the birdwatch on the school field
This morning Otter BR took part in the RSPB’s Big Schools’ Birdwatch. This was our third year taking part and we had the most species yet! We managed to see seventeen species of birds around the school grounds.
One of the best places for spotting birds turned out to be the feeders outside our classroom: we had a great tit, blue tits, chaffinches, woodpigeons and a greenfinch before we’d even left the warmth of the classroom! We then dressed up warmly with gloves, coats and hats and collected lots of pairs of binoculars that the children had brought in from home. Outside in the “Wildlife area” we saw more blue-tits, starlings, rooks, crows and wood pigeons. We then moved onto the school carpark as there are some little trees that regularly have goldfinches, but unfortuately they didn’t turn up in the ten minutes we were there…
Watching bluetits outside the classroom
We then went on to the playing field. We could hear amazing bird song coming from the hedge row by the allotments but couldn’t see anything. We spent a little while using the Bird Guides app on my phone to see if we could identify the song, but eventually I managed to spot three song-thrushes with my binoculars. As we approached two of them moved up onto the top of the brambles, finally enabling the children to see them.
Our next venue was outside the local nursery which always has lots of sparrows feeding on the corrugated roof. We found 12 at any one time, although there were probably a lot more! It was very hard to count them as they kept moving around and there were more around the side of the building that we couldn’t see.
Finally we walked round towards the allotments. We saw lots more little birds that flew off before we could identify them, but a dunnock was moving around in the hedgerow and there were lots more sparrows and blue-tits.
Graph from the RSPB's Big Schools' Birdwatch "Create-a-chart" tool
I was really pleased that we saw so many species of birds today, but was slightly disappointed that overall numbers were slightly down. One bird that was completely missing was the robin, but it was great to see “new” birds like dunnocks, greenfinches and song thrushes!
For a long time I’ve wanted to set up some videoconferencing with France. Today, after lots of phone calls and emails, we finally had our very first conversation with a class in France! It was amazing to see a real class in France. There were lots of things that were different, but also lots of things that were the same!
Otter BR were extremely excited before the conference began, and it all got a bit stressful as I had to rig up the equipment, enter all of the details on the website and then hope that it worked. However it was first time lucky: we heard the phone ring over the computer, an automated voice talking in French, and then suddenly we could see into the other school’s ICT suite! Madame Noel had her class sat in rows so that we could see them, just as we had our children sitting in our classroom. We all waved, said “Bonjour” and then the French children said “hello” back. Forty minutes whizzed by with a combination of songs in both French and English, showing off our counting skills, asking questions about each other and our schools and finally a joint rendition of “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” in English, complete with actions on both sides!
"Head, shoulders, knees and toes...."
".... eyes and ears and mouth and nose!"
This was my first experience of videoconferencing with a class in France and I loved it. We spoke a mixture of French and English so that we could practise our skills and also enable them to practise theirs. Although we had a rough plan of what we hoped to do, the whole thing just seemed to flow. The children were fascinated by the school uniform, or lack of it in France, but I think the most amazing thing for me was showing the children that we’re learning French for a real purpose: it’s not just something we do at school, but it’s a living language that people use all the time in France. If we want to talk to people there, we need to be able to use it too!
The children are buzzing after the experience and we can’t wait until next time…..Thank you Ecole la Fontaine!
I took this photo from the school gate as I left this evening. As I looked over the field towards the oak tree, the horizon glowed and one huge star shone out. I thought it looked beautiful, but especially so when our topic is about Space, and the ‘star’ I could see was really two planets (Venus and Neptune) one behind the other!
Venus and Meptune over the school field
This week we’ve been learning about our solar system. The children have drawn some amazing pictures and have learnt how to memorise the order of the planets. We learnt a mnemonic to help…
Miss (Mercury)
Veronica (Venus)
Eats (Earth)
Mauve (Mars)
Jelly (Jupiter)
Sitting (Saturn)
Under (Uranus)
Newspaper (Neptune).
I’ve taken some photos of the work we did:
The solar system by Jessica
The solar system
The solar system by Chloe
The solar system
I’m really excited by our new topic. Throughout the whole school we’re all learning about Space and we’ve got lots of exciting things planned!
One of the events I’m looking forward to is running a star-gazing evening. I’m hoping we’ll all be able to come back to school one clear evening to spot as many stars as possible. There will be a few telescopes but it’s amazing what you can see with a pair of binoculars as well.
Look out for more information to follow, but in the meantime if you want tohave your own star-gazing evening, have a look at http://www.cpre.org.uk/what-we-do/countryside/dark-skies/update/item/2666-star-count-2012, find out about the Exmoor Dark Skies Reserve, look at the Sky View on Google Earth or download Stellarium on your computer. Tonight there’s a full moon which is good to look at, but makes seeing stars a bit more difficult. However with a pair of binoculars see if you can spot any of the craters that we saw on the NASA photos last week. If someone in your family has an iPad or iPhone see if they can load ‘Skyview’ to find out exactly what you’re looking at when you’re outside. You might even see the International Space Station going over!
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