Returning to School Y6 and Y1

Altered Reality at Inspire2Learn

We spent time learning and exploring Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. During the morning we worked as a co-ordinated team to create a new settlement on a new planet far in the future. We decided on individual tasks and using Minecraft Education Edition, created and then presented our new world. We then explored Virutal Reality using Google Expeditions, Oculus Go and the HTC Vive kit. We spent time under the sea on a shipwreck, in a prehistoric world and visited Mount Everest and the Great Pyramids in Egypt. We discovered the importance of such environments in real world applications as well as the fun gaming side and understood how important virtualisation is and will be in the future, in our lives and future careers.

Animex Animation Workshop with the University of Teesside

Children visited the University of Teesside to take part in an Animexperience workshop, part of the Annual International Animex Festival of animation and computer games. Working with game animators, we discovered how animated movies and characters from cartoons and computer games are created. We created a story board, built a set, characters and props, recorded sound effects and used stop motion animation techniques to produce our own film. The completed films will be premiered at a special screening during the Animex Festival in May, which be attended by International animators and speakers, potentially from Disney, Dreamworks, Epic, Guerrilla Games and Microsoft Rare.

Our fantastic eco team have been busy over the last few weeks thinking about environmental and community projects that will improve our school and local area.  They have been working closely with Groundwork North East and the #iwill campaign.  The children wanted to be involved in a big school litter clean up and have started clearing up our school grounds to ensure it is litter free!  They are going to be continuing their good work by becoming involved in a litter pick around the local area and designing posters to encourage our local community to put litter in the bin.  Other projects are to plant a herb garden, plant fruits and vegetables in our school allotments make homes for local wildlife and create a playground for our school chickens!

In February, the eco warriors also took part in the RSPB Big school bird watch.  We found out that lots of starlings and blackbirds like to live within our school grounds.  The children are now thinking of different ways to attract different species of birds into our school wildlife areas.

Football

Our year 3/4 boys’ team had a big competition at the beginning of March, playing in a football league with some of Stockton’s strongest football teams. During our first few matches, our nerves got the better of us and we drew both matches. As the competition continued, our flare and skills came out and we went on to have fantastic wins with some magical football being played.

Gymnastics

This half term many children throughout the school have taken part in gymnastics competitions, competing against many schools in area. The children are taught a set routine, working on forward rolls and teddy bear rolls as well as apparatus work for the older children. In all key stages the children have performed well with many individual medals being won!

Swimming

A group of year 5 and 6 children took part in the biggest swimming competition of the year! The 5 competitors had shown great talent in the local heats and progressed as a team onto the finals, which take place at Billingham Forum. Here the children had to race against the best swimmers in Stockton. We had individual races in front crawl, backstroke, breaststroke and even butterfly, which is a very difficult stroke to master. Finally, we swam as a team in the medley and freestyle relays. We left the competition with one silver medal and some amazing memories. What a fantastic achievement!