The Plague comes to Brooklands

18th November 2014V Holloway

On Monday, year 5 arrived at school and they were transported back to the year 1665. Boys and girls were separated into different classrooms, with the teachers being very strict, much like in a Stuart era school. The morning started with the boys and girls learning, in silence, an extract from Shakespeare’s Macbeth which they then had to recite to the class.

For the remainder of the morning the girls learnt valuable skills such as sewing and baking, ensuring they were well prepared to be housewives! They baked gingerbread biscuits and also practised their handwriting.
The boys also practised their handwriting and spent time playing games such as chess and draughts. Mr Peters was very strict!
However throughout the morning we noticed Miss Courtney coughing a lot, then she started scratching and big red boils appear on her arms! As she spread her germs, the illness started affecting some of the year 5’s and they came out in red ringed rashes! Eventually, we decided to quarantine those who were displaying symptoms and called the Doctor. The doctor confirmed that they had the Plague so a red cross was put on the door to warn others that it was contaminated with the Plague!
After lunch, to help protect us from the Plague we made herb bags just like they did in the Plague in 1665. We used cloves, rosemary and thyme, along with some mint and rose essence. Also, we made silhouettes of rats to decorate the corridors with!
Finally, because our final product is to make a Horrible History episode about the Plague, we watched some episodes of Horrible History.
Year 5 had a fantastic time igniting the Plague and can’t wait to continue their learning about it in order to create their Horrible History documentary.

The Plague comes to Brooklands!

17th November 2014V Holloway

As year 5 arrived at school this morning they were transported back to the year 1665. Boys and girls were separated into different classrooms, with the teachers being very strict, much like in a Stuart era school. The morning started with the boys and girls learning, in silence, an extract from Shakespeare’s Macbeth which they then had to recite to the class.

For the remainder of the morning the girls learnt valuable skills such as sewing and baking, ensuring they were well prepared to be housewives! They baked gingerbread biscuits and also practised their handwriting.
The boys also practised their handwriting and spent time playing games such as chess and draughts. Mr Peters was very strict!
However throughout the morning we noticed Miss Courtney coughing a lot, then she started scratching and big red boils appear on her arms! As she spread her germs, the illness started affecting some of the year 5’s and they came out in red ringed rashes! Eventually, we decided to quarantine those who were displaying symptoms and called the Doctor. The doctor confirmed that they had the Plague so a red cross was put on the door to warn others that it was contaminated with the Plague!
After lunch, to help protect us from the Plague we made herb bags just like they did in the Plague in 1665. We used cloves, rosemary and thyme, along with some mint and rose essence. Also, we made silhouettes of rats to decorate the corridors with!
Finally, because our final product is to make a Horrible History episode about the Plague, we watched some episodes of Horrible History.
Year 5 had a fantastic time igniting the Plague today and can’t wait to continue their learning about it in order to create their Horrible History documentary.

R.E. Day

17th November 2014V Holloway

Year 5 have had a fantastic day exploring Christianity through lots of different activities. We have learnt about the Bible and how Christians use it to teach them about God and the world, the 10 Commandments and about influential Christians like Desmond Tutu and William Wilberforce.

We did lots of fun activities including research on the iPads, lots of discussion, drama, making comic strips and presenting our learning!

The Final Push

10th November 2014V Holloway

As the Volkswagen deadline draws nearer (Wednesday 12th November!) year 5 have been working extremely hard to ensure their final product is of the highest quality, ready to be shown in Volkswagen headquarters this week!

Today, we identified Volkswagen factories around the world. Andrew, a manager from the Volkswagen group, came in to explain how Volkswagen decide where to produce their vehicles and parts. We looked at the graphs which showed us how expensive it was to build in each country, how many cars are sold in each country and also the quality of living in each country. All of this information will help us to decide where we would like to build our car!

We have also been car designers today. We have been peer and self assessing our designs so that we can edit and improve them. Many of us have completed our final designs, there have been some excellent innovative ideas from voice control to roof mounted cameras to take photos!
We can’t wait to share our designs and ideas with Volkswagen!

Volkswagen Week

28th October 2014V Holloway

It has been an amazing week in year 5, the children have been buzzing about Volkswagen week.

Yesterday, we worked in groups to research and create a timeline for the Volkswagen Beetle. We then presented our timelines to Andrew, who is a Manager at Volkswagen! He even told us some more information about the Beetle which we didn’t know already. Here are some pictures of us sharing our learning with him:

Today, we learnt that the Volkswagen Beetle was the most popular in the 1960’s! To investigate why it was so popular we compared it to the Ford Cortina, which was another family car produced in the 60’s. We soon realised how different and quirky the Beetle was and also how cheap it was compared to the other cars at the time. Finally, we looked at some Beetle adverts from the 60’s to explore how Volkswagen persuaded people to buy the Beetle, some of the adverts were quite funny!
Year 5 have had a fantastic week with some amazing learning taking place, I think it is safe to say that everyone (including the teachers) have grown in their learning this week. We hope you all have a lovely half term, but please don’t forget to do your homework! If you have lost or misplaced your homework sheets please look at the year 5 homework page on the website which will give you the details!

Igniting Volkswagen!

21st October 2014V Holloway

WOW

What an exciting start to our Volkswagen project. Yesterday we had the privilege of becoming part of the Volkswagen group as the company set each year group a project question to answer!

In year 5 our project is:

How can we rebrand the Volkswagen Beetle to make it popular in 2014?

To ignite our project we have had several exciting activities going on. First of all, the playground became a car park when Volkswagen kindly bought along some of their cars and vans for us to look at! This included an electric Golf, Audi’s, VW Scirocco, campervans and most excitingly a 1970’s VW Beetle! We enjoyed climbing over the cars, playing the stereos really loud and beeping the horns! The most popular car was definitely the campervan which even had a bed in it!

Today the excitement continued as Year 5 were visited by an experienced member of the Volkswagen team. We looked at the history of Volkswagen and the history of the Beetle, we asked our expert lots of interesting questions to grow our learning and understanding of the Beetle, how and why it began being produced and why it was such a popular car. The knowledge and expertise we have gathered today will be extremely useful as we plan our re-branding of the beetle.

And finally, we also got the opportunity to explore breakdown vehicles as we were visited by the AA and VW roadside assistance! We spoke to the engineers about the calls they respond to and how they fix some of the cars.

We will now be working hard on our project so we are ready to share our findings and ideas with Volkswagen in November. We look forward to sharing our projects with you too!

VW have arrived!

20th October 2014Mrs c Hern

Years 2-6 are currently sitting in an assembly presented by Laura and  Lara, from VW.

A range of cars are currently arriving in the car park as I type.1413793064066

The atmosphere in school is amazing! We  are all looking forward to working together on our exciting whole school project.

All of the children are especially looking forward to working with the VW staff and welcome them to our school.

 

 

 

 

 

The great Year 5 bake off!

8th October 2014

This week we have turned into mini Mary Berry and Paul Hollywoods and have grown our baking talents! On Monday we spent the afternoon measuring, mixing and pouring ingredients to make flapjacks and cakes for our curriculum tea on Tuesday.  We had great fun! On Tuesday we really enjoyed decorating our cakes, making icing and covering them in sprinkles. We then made a variety of sandwiches.  Here are a few pictures of our finished creations!

An Icy Trip Back In Time

5th September 2014V Holloway

Today year 5 went back in time to discover the Ice Age when they ignited their Frozen Planet Project with a trip to the Natural History Museum to see the Mammoth Exhibition!

We had a fantastic time learning about how Mammoths survived during the Ice Age and we were lucky enough to see the best preserved Mammoth in the world! We collected lots of facts about the Ice Age and the animals that lived during it to use in our Frozen Planet Project this half term.

Thank you to all the adults who helped us on this trip.

Every child was a star and were excellent ambassadors for Brooklands Farm! Well done year 5!