STEM week has been a great success, with a range of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths activities and learning, experienced through the school. Every year group investigated this year’s national STEM week focus of Time. Please read on to see a snapshot of how everyone explored the theme. Thank you to Miss Riddiford for leading the organisation of the week and everyone for their enthusiasm. Thank you also to the visiting STEM ambassadors who shared their knowledge and provided workshops.

Year 4 walked to St Georges to listen to a special brass quintet concert in the hall just for schools, with a focus on exploring the science that’s going on in and around us when we listen to music.

Mr Campbell organised a Comic relief fun challenge for everyone today, in the school hall. We have raised £270 thank you for your donations.

Year 6 walked to the Church to learn about the Easter story in an immersive experience of activities. Thank you to Pastor Ruthy, Emelye and the team for providing this for us.

On Thursday 28^th March at 10am we will be walking to the Church for our whole school Easter celebration. All are welcome to join us, it is always a special ending to our term. Children come to school at normal time on this day and we will meet you at the Church. There will be refreshments provided and also the café will be open. We look forward to seeing you there.

Online Safety

It is always a good idea, every so often, to stop and think whether parent controls are in place on devices that children can access. Do you know if these are in place when your children visit friends and family? Or have you recently got a new device that may not have the controls set up? Advice and support can be found here.

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/parental-controls/ 

Inset and Academy Days:

Monday 22nd July - INSET day, children not in school

Tuesday 23rd July - INSET day, children not in school 

Monday 2nd September - INSET day, children not in school 

Tuesday 3rd September - INSET day, children not in school 

As is the tradition here at Christ Church School, Comic Relief was honoured with energy, enthusiasm, fun and some outstanding beats. The children demonstrated some quite sensational speed, awesome agility and breathtaking balance to complete the indoor circuit. To accompany the workout, there was also some dazzling dance moves to the beat of the music. Well done everyone - we've raised £270 for this worthy cause.

.

.

Second hand uniform sale & collection will take place next Friday 22nd March.

Donations: - 8.30-9am by the Car Park/ Shine gate (or drop at shop)

Sale:

- 9-10am only

- Mary's Living and Giving, 24 Regent Street BS8 4HG

We're always looking for helpers to sort/fold/label uniform. If you're able to help, please drop us an email with your contact details at [email protected]

It was STEM week and we had some fantastic talks from Mr Jeans and Mr Firmin who are both engineers. We listened well and asked some really great questions. Thank you both, so much, for visiting us! We also learnt what STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and understood how these often work together.

On Tuesday we read the book Biscuit Bear by Mini Grey and we all really enjoyed doing some lovely activities that linked to the story like designing our own Biscuit Bear or making one with playdough.

As it was our STEM week we did a super biscuit-based experiment. As a class we looked at our method and then made a prediction together. We loved observing what was happening to the biscuits in different liquids and were very surprised by the results!

Time has been the theme of STEM week this year. We discussed what is meant by time and how we can observe time in the world around us. We have enjoyed making clocks and using stop watches to time activities. We were very excited when we got to see a time capsule left by the year 6 children in 2006! We discussed what we would put in our own time capsule and got to work doing lots of activities for things to include. We drew around our hands and feet and also filled in a sheet with information about ourselves! We are so excited to look back on these when we are in Year 6!

What a time we have had!  As a reception child said when asked “What is science?” “It’s something a bit like magic!”

Wow what a week its been! Year 1 have fully embraced STEM week and all its had to offer. We began the week with a paper aeroplane masterclass from Airbus. The engineers explained how planes fly whilst we joined in with actions to demonstrate the meanings of words like drag, yaw and roll as well as telling us what it takes to be an aerospace engineer. We had some great questions for them including: Why does the cockpit have so many buttons? Do pilots need to check the weather forecast before a flight? and Why is a plane called a plane? They could almost answer them all!

The theme for STEM week was time, so for our project we decided to measure and record the change in weather from winter to spring over a certain period of time (one week). To do this, we planned, designed and made a wind vane and a rain gauge. Just like real scientists, we had to consider how long it would it would take to collect the data as well as how we could ensure our weather measuring device was as sturdy and effective as possible. Once we finished making the devices we placed them in the playground and have been checking them each day to see how the weather has been changing as we edge closer to spring (take a look at the photos to see children keeping a close eye on the rain gauge collecting rain).

In maths this week we have been learning about time to fit with the STEM theme, specifically looking at time to the hour and half past the hour. Using a clock, we noticed how many seconds in one minute and how many minutes in one hour. We also used stopwatches to record how many times we could complete certain tasks in one minute as well as timing ourselves to see how quickly we can do everyday activities.

In geography we worked in pairs to create our very own weather forecast. On a map we drew weather symbols to represent the weather in each of the four countries in the UK and after some practice, we presented the weather just like a real weather forecaster.

Well done to all the budding scientists, mathematicians and engineers for all their hard work this week!

On Monday year 2 received a visit from the team at Airbus. First we were told about the job of an engineer and we learnt that so many useful and impressive things are the result of engineering. The planes and cars we travel in, the bridges we cross and even the plumbing systems in our homes are all possible because of engineering! We then focussed on planes in particular and we were able to ask questions about how and where they are designed and manufactured. Our workshop ended with a crash course in paper airplane making. We were put into groups where we made different variations of paper airplanes. We were then able to fly our airplanes and see which designs were most successful. We had so much fun and no doubt some future engineers will have been inspired by the visit. 

Our big project for STEM week was to work in teams to design and make a space shuttle, with a difference.....our space shuttles were designed to safely transport an egg from a metre high whilst ensuring it had a cushioned landing to prevent any breakage. We were inspired by Nasa's Curiosity Rover which was successfully dropped on Mars and despite its large size, the expensive equipment on board was undamaged. Don't our designs look fantastic?

We have been excited to share this newsletter with you…so many amazing activities have taken place. This week was STEM week. A celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths. The theme this year was ‘time’ and we focused on the recording of time through history. We began by creating our own sun dials and the history of the invention. Unfortunately we are having to test them next week as the weather has not been on our side! This was a great learning point however as this flaw in the sun dial led to the creation of the water clock. We made our own ‘Clypsydras’ using a variety of house gold objects and experimented with the size of the outflow hole, string length and amount of water. A messy but fun session where we learnt so much!

We travelled back to modern day and used our school Micro:Bits. We created our own circuits to make a reaction game where we tested our reaction times and hit foil buttons when a light popped onto our Micro:Bits. This recorded our times and we got rather competitive!

Finally, all year groups were lucky enough to have a STEM ambassador visit and run a workshop. We were visited by a civil engineer who talked us through his role, examples of his work and ended with a tower building competition and the winning team were awarded a trophy!

Year 4 have had a fantastic STEM week thinking about all things TIME. We looked at different ways people have told the time in History and had a go at making our own water clocks and sundials. Unfortunately, the sun has yet to appear for us to test our sundials, but all in good time! We also used micro:bits to record reaction speeds in milliseconds. 

At the beginning of the week, we were very lucky to be joined by a civil engineer from Griffiths who educated us all about the importance of civil engineering in our every day life and all the cool projects you could work on if you wanted to become a civil engineer. 

Year 4 have been busy being biscuit designers! This involved market research: tasting existing biscuits and considering factors such as flavour, shape, texture and packaging. They designed and made attractive packaging to reflect the brand identity and appeal to the target market.

This week 4LC made their biscuits and then decorated them. Next week they need to discuss costs of biscuit ‘production’ and think about ways to reduce existing costs. They will also consider consumer feedback

Year 5 and 6 have had a fantastic STEM week full of incredible scientific thinking and engineering skills. We have been thinking about electricity and drawing electrical circuits, investigated static electricity and put our skills to the test designing steady hand electrical games. 

We had a fantastic workshop about climate change. Jonathan from Frazer Nash came to talk to us about different types of energy and he also spoke about how we can be greener in the future. He challenged us to create a wind turbine and then we put all of our turbines together to create a wind farm. It was a lot of fun – especially when Jonathan made them all turn by blowing them with a hairdryer!

Building on their knowledge of circuits this week, Year 6 have worked in groups to create a "hand electronic wire game". Afterwards they evaluated the effectiveness of their game against their design criteria. Then had fun allowing ‘players’ to navigate a metal loop along their twisted wire without touching the wire itself. If the loop touched the wire, it completes a circuit, triggering a buzzer to indicate their mistake. Next steps could be creating an electronic timer or a light as an additional indicator of a mistake. Well done Year 6.

Year 6 throughly enjoyed the ‘Easter experience’ at the church. Thank you very much to Pastor Ruthie and all the church helpers who made this event possible.

A very wet week at the Year 5 girls football tournament this week. This however, did not matter to our girls who absolutely smashed it…our first goals of the tournament were scored! You may have heard our screams of celebration back at school. Not only that, we had our first win of the tournament 1-0 and an incredibly close match ending in 2-2. Girls your enthusiasm, perseverance and slightly wild energy is infectious and we were immensely proud of you. Keep up the great work!

Tasty, roasted cauliflower and butternut squash graced the Tasting Table on Tuesday this week, but were also accompanied by a yummy cannellini bean dip. Thank you Mrs Richardson for all your hard work on these dishes. It has been lovely to see all the uploads of the children trying the vegetables. Don’t forget the class with the most uploads will attend a special banquet in the final week of term. All you need to do is take a photo of your child eating the spotlight vegetables, log on to Google Classroom, and drop it into the correct assignment. There will be eleven assignments for the eleven different vegetables – simple!!!

The Year 6 children are raising funds to support their end of primary school journey acitivities in the summer term. 

Easter Egg Hunt on Tues 26th March after school

Easter Egg Raffle, drawn on Thurs 28th March (20plus eggs to be won!)

Tickets will be on sale in the playground at drop off and pick up.