Year 2 Natural Art

Year 2 are making their own sculptures using natural materials from the local environment. This is one example of the children's homework project. What a wonderful creation!

Year 2 at The New Forest Wildlife Park

Year 2 enjoyed a day at the New Forest Wildlife Park today. They saw many different animals and learnt about their habitats. They loved seeing the otters swimming and the lynx prowling up and down. They thought the wild boar were smelly and very messy. Some of the children saw the joey at the wallaby wood and were amazed when it jumped out of its mother's pouch. Well done Year 2 for being so well behaved. Your sketches of the animals were very detailed and precise and Robin and Mandy commented on how quiet you were while sketching. We had a wonderful day and the rain held off.

Year 4 invigorates garden!

As part of our Green Week pursuits, year 4 were particularly eager to improve our garden area. The garden went from this:

To this in an afternoon! They all worked really hard and I am sure all enjoyed it. As well as transforming our garden area, the class took it in turns to plant some plant and vegetable seeds. We are looking forward to collecting our harvest of carrots, radish and lettuce. Mmmm!

Bitterne Bistro jingles

Year 5 have been creating jingles in their music lessons to advertise Bitterne Bistro. We studied jingles to find out what sort of information needed to be included, before writing our own! Here are a few examples of the finished jingles!

Year 6 get busy measuring in the grounds!

Year 6 have been investigating perimeter and area in the school grounds.
Did you know the area of the playground is approximately 720 square metres?

Year 2 had great fun at Itchen Valley Country Park today. They made sculptures using natural materials. Take a look at some of their creations.

Year 5 ready for Bitterne Bistro!

Year 5 have been testing out their french skills this week, putting together conversations ready for the launch of Bitterne Bistro! We have been using finger puppets to help us do this!

Zoo Lab

Today was Zoo Lab day! The children were learning about all sorts of clever creatures that are suited to their environment in various different ways and got to handle them as well - if they wanted to! Including this corn snake that was having a stretch of its legs...if it had any...on our hall floor!

PCSO Visit

Green week had a visit today from two of our local PCSOs - Karen and Andy - who were in school to lead a discussion about their role in protecting the environment. Children were able to ask them questions about what the law says and how it is enforced in our community.

Hampshire Waste Education

Today, we welcomed to Bitterne Manor Jean & Loretta who are education officers for Hampshire & Southampton Waste and Recylcing departments. They visited classes today and led discussions about how we can reduce, recycle and reuse! Today was also our no waste day and each class has been measured according to how much they threw away today - results on Friday!

Green Spaces!

Green Week is proving to be a chance for pupils to get out and about and take an active part in improving their environment! Here are Year 4 transforming their outside space into a garden with flowers and vegetables they've planted themselves. It looks really nice, too!

Hawthorns Urban Wildlife Centre

We welcomed Hawthorn Wildlife Centre's Ian Bailey to our school to talk to us about the biodiversity in our school grounds. Ian led groups of children in activities and discussions about recognising and respecting the living things that we share our school site with. We would also like to advertise a clean-up taking place this Saturday, 26th March, at Chessel Bay, from 10 till 2, that Ian is organising - for more details ring 02380671921.

Eco Frames

Thanks to IKEA - each pupil in the school is being given a small wooden photo frame to keep. They will be decorating their frames with a 'Green' themed message as part of Green Week activities and get to take them home. Here are Year 2 hard at work on their frames.

Celebrating Year 3 topics!

Last week a crowd of Year 3 parents came to join our 'mini carnival'. The children performed 'jump up' to steel pan music and wore the printed tabards and masks they had made. The colours and designs were very striking. A range of poems were performed too - our own limericks plus poems from the Power of Reading book we'd been studying.

This week we are undertaking market research at Toys R Us, investigating toys that use magnets and springs and what makes some toys more eye-catching than others!

The Environment Centre

Today we were visited by the charity 'tEc' from Southamtpon. The Environment Centre provides practical support for companies, schools, community groups, the public sector, organisations and individuals. Their mission is to provide practical support to individuals, communities and businesses wanting to enhance their environment, reduce their use of natural resources and improve their lifestyle and local economies through:
Raising awareness of environmental issues within all sections of the community.
Promoting the principle of individual and collective responsibility for the environment.
Facilitating sustainable change through informed decision making

Our pupils were given a challenging quiz in assembly and then Year 3 and 4 had an in depth session exploring ideas for energy and water saving in homes and school. Here's a picture of children making a solar powered device:

'Sparky' from Ikea

Earlier this year, we took the school councillors to Ikea to meet 'Sparky', the stores environmental officer, and we were so impressed with the work he was doing we thought it would be great to invite him to come and talk to us during Green Week. Sparky also donated 210 wooden frames for the children to decorate this week and take home - for which we are very grateful! Next time you are in Ikea, look out for the environmental information on display in the store and think of Sparky!

Climate Science

As part of Green Week, we had a visit from Dr Holliday, who is a climate scientist at the University, to talk to the pupils about what they understood about climate change. Children were asked to think about how climate change might affect them and took on the roles of scientists and politicians to ask questions about the effect of climate change.

Climate Challenge!

Green week has begun! We started with an assembly where all the Green teams fed back to the rest of the school about what they had been doing over the last six weeks. Classes then took part in the Climate Challenge - a task that was part of national Climate Week.



Pupils competed with over 100,000 other people from schools, colleges and workplaces across the UK, in the country’s biggest environmental competition. The Climate Week Challenge, launching on the first day of Climate Week (Monday 21st March) was for teams of five or six. It requires pupils to use their creativity and innovation to generate ideas that will help to combat climate change.

The exact challenge was only revealed at 9am and tasked the teams to develop a green idea to save or make money. The school’s winning teams entry will be put forward for the national competition. National and regional winners will now be selected by a celebrity panel, covering six categories for Key Stages 1 to 4, Sixth Forms and workplaces. The winners will be announced on Friday 25th March.

The Climate Week Challenge kicked off the UK’s inaugural Climate Week, a new national occasion backed by the Prime Minister to inspire millions to combat climate change.



These are pictures of our KS1 teams presenting their challenges.

Year 6 become forensic scientists!

Year 6 enjoyed a fantastic day of forensic science last week. They were taught some of the skills used by scientists to try to solve crimes. These included taking and analysing finger prints, making casts of shoes and testing substances. Criminals should watch out for us!

Forensics in year 5!

Yesterday, year 5 became forensic scientists for the day. The aimhigher team from Solent University spent the day in year 5, teaching us about forensic science. We learnt about techniques such as finger printing and foot print casting! We also learnt about how chemicals could be used in forensic science. All in all, we had a fun day and learnt lots!

Year Four Second Visit to Botley and Southampton

Another wet trip for this group. Despite this we enjoyed looking at the buildings in the different places. We managed to carry out people and traffic surveys in Botley, but the paper and our data collection did get quite soggy...as did we!

And it was Red Nose Day!!!

Botley/Southampton

Today, Thursday 17th March, the first group of year 4 children went on their geography trip. The last time we went on a trip, we got soaked.....today we suffered the cold! The second group are hoping for warmer weather tomorrow! We enjoyed getting out of the classroom to find out more about local places and talking aboout how they are similar and are different. We undertook traffic, shop and people surveys in each place so that we can compare them. We also took turns in taking photographs....this is just a selection!!!!

Biodiversity

Our Green Team work is almost finished! Last Friday, biodiversity group went out into the school grounds and started to find suitable places for their mouse mansions and beetle hotels. Here are some pictures to show what we've been up to...

Year 6 go potty for pottery!

Following on from last week's sketches of Ancient Greek pottery, Year 6 have made their own small-scale pots. They used the coil pot technique (which is very tricky!) to build pots of all different shapes.

Pizza Express!!!

This week, year 5 visited the Pizza Express restaurant in Oxford Street, Southampton. The trip was spread over two days, with half the class going each day. We had lots of fun! Everyone got the chance to make their own pizza, including Mrs Mitchell, Miss Starling and Mr Puckett! The children were much better at pizza making than the adults! Next week, we are going to use our experience of making pizzas in our literacy lessons. We will become TV chefs and be writing instructions for our viewers!

Praise Board

Welcome to our praise board! In our hall there is a special board where children get a chance to write down a well done to someone who has helped them over the last week. Each week, the councillors choose a few of those people to be recognised in assembly for a little public praise!

Groovy Greek pottery!

Year 6 have started to find out about the Ancient Greeks. They have been sketching pottery in preparation for making their own pots, looking carefully at shape and form. We created a mini gallery with the fantastic charcoal and pencil drawings!

Green Team - Biodiversity

The Biodiversity team are busy at work constructing minibeast mansions, hedgehog hotels and other shelters to encourage wildlife into our school grounds. Once finished, we'll place them in a 'Green Zone' in our school grounds safely away from the playground.