Willow recreate the digestive system!

Today, Willow experienced a once in a lifetime opportunity: recreating the digestive system, using simply a bowl full of mashed up food (which the children struggled to comprehend was JUST food), a masher, a pair of tights and a polystyrene cup. Not everyone can say they have done that can they?

As you can see below, there were some pretty diverse reactions. From the squeamish, to those who embraced the smell and willingly dug their hands in.

However, squeamish or not, it was fair to say that by the end of the lesson the children were able to correctly identify the journey food takes through our body and explain how it is eventually deposited at the end of this process. As always, great work Willow!

Christmas Leaflet Competition

A big congratulations to Ketty Omwanghe in Sequoia class, who won our Christmas Leaflet Competition. Ketty has made sure that her picture is related to the story for our Christmas Concert and has obviously put a lot of effort into making her picture look bright and colourful. Keep your eye out for her beautiful picture, which will be used on the front cover of our Christmas Concert Leaflets.

Willow class battle for the rainforest!

To conserve or to develop on rainforest land? That is the question.

This term in topic, Willow have been exploring the rainforest. Specifically, they have been investigating why animals are becoming endangered! In line with this, they have been researching why the rainforest is so important, revealing that: the rainforest provides 20% of the oxygen we breathe, many medicines (25%) have origins from plant derived sources in the rainforest and that much of the food we eat also stems from the rainforest! At this point in their learning, it seemed almost unjustified to destroy this unique ecosystem.

However, Willow soon shockingly discovered that 50 football pitches of rainforest is being destroyed every second. As Samanyu Handoo correctly calculated, that's 100 football pitches in 2 minutes! The question being: Why?

To truly understand and grasp why some people want to obliterate precious acres of flora and fauna, Willow took on the role of four different characters and sat in the hot seat: being interrogated, questioned and challenged by their fellow audience.

After this, Willow took part in... THE BIG DEBATE: To conserve or develop on the rainforest land? Although they hoped to reach a conclusion, they soon found that this proved difficult. 

What do you think?

Birch get Messy in Science

In today's science lesson, Birch Class discovered the journey that food makes once we eat it!

We mashed our food up with our teeth (the masher), then it was transported to the stomach (ziplock bag) when the enzymes (orange juice) helped break down our food molecules. From there, the good nutrients of the food was passed through the walls of the small and the large intestines (a pair of tights), then the waste was passed through the anus (polystyrene cup).

Have a look at the photos below - can you tell who is doing which function? Apologies for any dirty clothes - it did become pretty messy once we reached the small intestines!

Year 3 Spellings - w/c 5.12.16

Please find below Year 3's spellings for the week:

Can't stop Jess now!

Jessica Simpson has truly outdone herself: carrying out numerous work at home, challenging and capitalising on her learning and making her teacher especially proud! It's always great to see that children are not only extending their learning in school, but out of school as well. Jessica has exceeded this, creating her own work on the rainforest, a balanced argument and time in maths. She's more or less covered the curriculum! Keep up the great work Jessica, it is no wonder you are doing superbly in school!

Willow class star writer

This week, Willow are proud to announce Lea Cerqueira as our star writer! Lea, your writing has  improved significantly and you have made astounding developments and progress, particularly evident in your version of the utterly bizarre poem... The Magic Box.  Crazy, yet realistic you successfully incorporated the poetics devices we were aiming to use: onomatopoeia, personification, alliteration and similes. I particularly liked 'I will put in my box... A fairy flying frantically across a blanket of coal.' Not only did you use alliteration and an adverb, but you also challenged yourself to include a metaphor to describe the midnight sky. Keep up the fantastic work Lea!