A Magical Ignite

13th January 2015V Holloway

Last Thursday, Year 5 went on a magical adventure as they went behind the scenes of the Harry Potter films. As soon as we stepped into the Great Hall we were transported to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. We saw the costumes worn by Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) as well as costumes of many other characters.

The props were also on show for us to see, this included the Triwizard Cup, the Gryffindor Common Room, the Potions Classroom. We also had a sneaky peek at how they filmed the flying scenes and even got the opportunity to ride a broomstick ourselves!

Butterbeer was a must have on the day, with many year 5’s gulping it down, only to realise it was extremely sweet! We learnt a lot about how they filmed the mythical creatures and how they filmed Hagrid…but we wouldn’t want to give all the secrets away! Walking down Diagon Alley was very exciting, we got see the shops used in the films including Olivanders and Gringotts Bank!

Finally, the highlight of the tour, seeing Hogwarts Castle. Due to the time of year we were very lucky to see it covered in snow. We were all amazed by the detail and scale of the model, it was certainly a very magical moment!

Year 5 behaved beautifully, despite being so excitable, and were proud role models for Brooklands Farm. The year 5 teachers would like to say a massive thank you to all the parents/carers that came on the trip with us, we hope you enjoyed it as much as the children did. We are now looking forward to creating magic with our Harry Potter project!

Day two of Lake Town Construction in 6b

6th January 2015admin

After a morning of reading, maths and writing, year 6 were given an hour to carry on with their ignite ‘Lake Town’ building which they started yesterday.

The buildings, which they are making from wood, straws, paper and card , are being constructed at this moment. The children are deep in conversation about how to join their materials together and how to make their structure stronger so that they can continue to assemble the buildings as they had designed in their specifications.

Look at how they are coming along…

 

6b Ignite ‘Different Worlds’ by being architects

6th January 2015admin

Welcome back 6b! I have really enjoyed hearing all about your Christmas and Christmas presents in our circle this morning!

Today we have been igniting our new project called ‘Different Worlds’.

Before Christmas we watched part of the first Hobbit film. In the second film, a new setting is introduced called Lake Town. For our ignite today, we have been designing and making Lake Town our own miniature, class Lake Town!

Year 3 Ignite visit to Birmingham Botanical Gardens!

1st December 2014D Gray

We had a fantastic time visiting the Botanical Gardens! We investigated different foods that grow in the rainforest and were lucky enough to have a chance to hold a few animals! We also spent some time in the hot, humid tropical house to get an experience of the rainforest climate.

All the children thoroughly enjoyed themselves and now have some brilliant questions to bring to their project learning.

 

Apologies for the lateness of this post – technical difficulties with the photos!

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A Frosty Day in the Woods – Rushmere Country Park Trip

25th November 2014

We went on our trip to Rushmere Country Park to watch our Christmas tree being chopped down and ignite our learning for tree week.

It was a great day where we learnt about different changes in nature such as; the lifecycle of a butterfly, the different seasons and changing trees.

The children were brilliantly behaved and listened well to our ranger and really enjoyed listening to ‘The Littlest Christmas Tree’.

 

Year 3- Botanical Gardens -a view of the Rainforest.

19th November 2014admin

Year 3 had an amazing Amazon adventure at Birmingham Botanical gardens last Friday. They saw some incredibly tall plants with enormous leaves as well as seeing insect eating plants as well as getting up close and personal with some Rainforest creatures! The weather on our journey certainly got us in the mood for the Rainforest climate-it poured down with rain! The people at the gardens were very complimentary about our behavior and how we tidied up our lunch room. A big thank you to those lovely parents that came with us to help us with our learning. We appreciated your support and the fact you gave up your precious time to come with us on our adventure.

Cadbury’s World

18th November 2014Mrs L Odell

Today we ignited our chocolate project with a trip to Cadbury’s World! The children learnt about the history and origin of the cocoa bean and how it is used today to make delicious chocolate treats! We will be continuing this learning in class, but thanks to the trip the children are well and truly inspired and excited to get this learning journey started!

Huge thanks to Mrs Ashington, Mrs Mentha, Mr Morrison and Mr Pugh for helping with this trip. I hope you all had a great day?!

Thank you to all parents who volunteered to help with this trip.

Here are a few photos of today’s adventure.

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.

Year 6’s Silverstone (Home of British Motor Sport) ignite trip!

7th November 2014admin

Over the past two days, year 6 have been visiting Silverstone, home of British motor sport! This was to ignite our learning for our next project ‘Aerodynamics’, which coincides with our last project for VW.

The children had a tour of the Silverstone grounds, including looking at a map of the different areas of the track and the history relating to those different areas, a tour of the pit lanes, the control centre and we even got to stand on the podium!

We has an exciting tour of the Porsche Centre and even got to sit in some Aston Martins, Ferraris and single seater race cars! We finished the morning by having a tour round a working garage.

After lunch, we had an exciting workshop afternoon making balloon powered cars and improving our cars to make our cars the fastest! We even had a race at the end!

What a fantastic day! A special thank you to the two parents for helping us on this day, it is very much appreciated. Another thank you to Victoria at Silverstone for a well run and fun day out out. After this exciting start, we can’t wait to see where our next project takes us…

Year 3 Ignite Day!

28th October 2014D Gray

A few weeks ago we had a fantastic visit from History off the Page and we watched as Oddyseus voyaged through peril and difficulty to eventually come home to his wife, over 10 years later. He was part of the battle in Troy, warred with a Cyclops and met the dreaded Hydra!

Year 3 used this day as an engaging hook into their new topic of the Ancient Greeks!