Wednesday 30 March 2011

Harewood Music Concert

Last night was a triumph! The first ever Harewood Music Concert was a tremendous success. Children at all levels, from those who have only recently started to those who have been learning for some years, played their instruments with confidence and skill.

Many of them were performing in front of people for the first time. We had a wonderful range of instruments; recorders, guitars, saxophones, pianos, clarinets, violins and some magnificent group and solo singing.
All of children performed brilliantly and parents and teachers alike were extremely proud of them.

We are hoping to add more photographs to this Blog in the near future. If you have any photos of any part of the concert, and are happy for them to be used, please e-mail them to headteacher@harewood.leeds.sch.uk.

Friday 25 March 2011

Easter Bonnet Winners (live blog)

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PTA Quiz Night (live blog)


At this moment brains are smoking and brows furrowed as competition is intense at the PTA quiz night.
The winners of the first round are.....
It has gone to a tie break.....It is the Bennett / Pears team!
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Later..... the winners of the final round were the Torrance-Gale / Bishop / Mitchell team. 
Well done to everyone who took part and many thanks to the PTA for all their work, especially Mr & Mrs Jakeman-Johnson for coming up with all the questions. 

Harewood Gets the Golden Ticket!

This morning we all had a very sweet treat - a trip to the Village Hall to see our drama club's production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The children have been working so hard in rehearsals with Mrs. Reynolds. They performed brilliantly. The audience were very impressed.

The performance today was an exclusive for the Harewood audience, if you missed it they will be doing a second performance on Sunday for the Harewood Over Sixty Club.

The acting skills on show were very good - we saw a darker side to some of our Harewood pupils! Don't mess with Veruca!

Mike TV came to a sticky end - despite his quick shooting skills.

Mr. Wonka and his Oompa Lumpas welcomed us to his Chocolate Factory.
Well done everyone, we had a great time and can't wait for next year's performance!

Thursday 24 March 2011

Stop-frame animation!

On our recent excursion to the fantastically-resourced Leeds CLC, we had an amazing time creating our very own stop-frame animations. We began by creating storyboards....
Then we designed and created backdrops, some of which had pop up sections to give a more 3D effect......
Next, we designed our characters using modelling plasticine......


Some of the models were exceptionally detailed......


Next up we began creating our films. You had to take two shots of each frame and it took 15 of these shots just to make one minute of film - we had our work cut out for us to make a 30 second film!

We soon realised how patient you need to be to achieve the best results.

Finally we added sound effects, music and visual effects to our animations and watched them all back - we were amazed by the results! Please come to our celebration assembly to see them on the big screen.





Wednesday 23 March 2011

Biff! Pow! Kerrang!

Harewood is a dangerous place to be - especially if you are the headteacher it seems! Class 3 have been taking out their aggression on the management - or have they?
As part of our work on cartoons and animation, Mr Madeley led a workshop on cartoon fighting. At the start of the lesson we talked about the rules for staging a fight so we were sure that no-one was going to get hurt.
So this punch might look powerful - but it didn't even tickle! Mr. Madeley showed us how to use timing and reactions to stage a realistic fight scene.

We really enjoyed the workshop, even the warm up was fun. We were asked to do the biggest yawn we could, using our whole bodies.

By the end of our busy feature week we will all be tired, but nobody will be yawning!

We can't stop scratching!

Scratch, scratch, scratch! After our trip to the CLC at Allerton Grange we just can't stop! As part of our animation feature week KS2 took a trip to the City Learning Centre to use their fantastic computer suites. Class 3 used an animation software package called 'Scratch'. We were able to program the computer with a series of commands that animated the 'sprites' on the screen.

We had to listen very carefully as the instructions were very detailed. The staff at the CLC said we did really well and concentrated brilliantly.

We took time out in the cafe for a well earned break.

The boys were very interested in the news from Libya that was broadcast on the flatscreen.

Class 4 used the apple macs to create stop animation films. They learnt a wide range of skills including model making, editing and use of the digi blue cameras.

Luckily even this image didn't manage to break the applemac!

KS2 thoroughly enjoyed their day, we even got to play outside in the sunshine at lunchtime. Let's hope we get to visit the CLC again sometime soon!

Media Museum


We went to the Media Museum and danced with the Telly Tubbies.

Monday 21 March 2011

The Blob Monster Dance Party!

Our feature week has got off to a great start. Class 3 had a visitor called Jack. Jack works in animation and he helped us make a short dance film using the techniques of stop animation.
We each made a clay friend and gave it a name. Jack brought all of his equipment with him, including webcams, tripods and apple mac computers. He showed us how to use the software to create our animated films.

All we had to do was pick a start position and then move it slightly to make it look like it's moving. Each clasy model had a different style of dancing, such as street dance, ballet, pop and freestyle.

Our teamwork skills were very important, we had to work together to produce our films. The short films are amazing. Jack edited our work so that we now have one class film.

Everyone was sad when they had to break the models up, but Jack explained it was all part of the creative process - plus he needed the clay back!

It was lots of fun, I hope we can do it again. As for our film, make sure you are at this week's celebration assembly for the grand premiere!
Blog written by Holly Altman and Olivia Torrance-Gale

Friday 18 March 2011

Better luck next time!

The votes have been counted and verified .. and the winner is... Mr. Sturgess!

Despite being in the lead for most of the week Miss King failed to win the gunge vote after some tactical last minute voting. It was very close, but by a nail biting eight votes Mr. Sturgess came out as the 'victor'. The paying public waits to see their man get the gunk.

The children cheered on Mr.Madeley as he prepared to empty the bucket of specially prepared gunk. We're not sure he should be smiling quite that much!

A big congratulations to Mr. Sturgess who entered into the spirit of red nose day and kept smiling!

Doing something funny for money!

Phew! What a day! We've all had a brilliant time 'doing something funny for money' all to raise money for this year's Comic Relief effort.

We had swashbuckling pirates, spine tingling monsters and crazy wig wearers. School was certainly a very colourful place to be.

All our activities in class were linked to the red nose theme. Class 3 made boxes to keep their red noses in after the day is over.
Class 2 iced biscuits complete with red noses, delicious!

Mrs. Reynolds taught Class 2 to dance like Adam and the Ants, they looked very professional. 'Adam who?' asked Byron.

Year 5 arrived back from Cober Hill just in time to watch the video joke reel. It definitely is all in the way you tell them - the pupils who had paid to record their jokes in the joke booth had us all in stitches!
It has been a great day and we expect to raise an impressive final total. Well done everybody!

Thursday 17 March 2011

Nuts for Numicon

Solving problems. Making 2 digit numbers with 3 and 4 pieces.

Finding out number facts for 9 and 5

Exploring pieces and making patterns.
Counting, ordering and matching numbers.