Christmas comes to Harewood

 Phew! Christmas is finally here - and what a hectic final day of term we had. Santa found a window in his busy schedule to call in and give out gifts to everyone that has been good this year.

 Santa was heard to say that he was very impressed with how the children had behaved - so looks like we might be in for a bumper year!

 The children also put the finishing touches to their Christmas gifts and cards. We all agreed they looked very professional - especially the Christmas cakes in Class 2 which would make Betty's jealous!

 The day started with our Nativity performance. The choir were in fine voice. The soloists were particularly impressive - it is not an easy thing to stand up in front of such a large audience and sing. Well done everyone!

 The Reception children were brilliant in their Nativity roles. They all enjoyed taking part in re-telling the Christmas story.

Merry Christmas everyone! Have a fantastic holiday and we'll see you in 2013!

Den Building

A fantastic time was had by everyone that took part in Wednesday's den building workshop. Chris showed us the importance of teamwork and co-operation. We had a great time playing in our completed dens. What a shame we had take them down again so soon!

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

This week the children in Class 2 have been performing their Autumn Term production which this year is an adaptation of the Wizard of Oz.

Dorothy and Toto set out on their amazing adventure.."Oh my goodness where am I?"

The Lion,Tinman and Scarecrow made a great team on their way to the Emerald city to meet the Wizard of Oz. "We're off to see the Wizard...follow the yellow brick road"

But first they had to cross the field of Poppies. Don't be fooled by their sweet innocent faces, they are working for the Wicked King!

The Wicked King is determined to get the Ruby Slippers from Dorothy. He is prepared to go to any lengths to get them. "Those Ruby slippers belong to me!"

They also need to get past the Bouncers and the Wizards Helpers before they can see the Wizard of Oz. "You can't come in, you're not on the guest list, now GO AWAY!"

Luckily for Dorothy the Good King is on hand to give her all the good advice she needs to get back to Kansas...there's no place like home, there's no place like home.....

Let's Celebrate Christingle

This week we have been celebrating Christingle and supporting the Children's Society by having our very own Christingle Assembly in school.







 On Monday Class 3 made the Christingles in R.E. They made enough Christingles so that everyone in school could have their own to take home. It was quite tricky getting the sweets onto the cocktail sticks.

Then on Wednesday afternoon we had a whole school Christingle Assembly which Class 3 presented.We sang a hymn about Christingle and said prayers to help vunerable children and young people.

Class 3 also explained what each part of the Christingle represents. The orange represents the world, the red ribbon is the blood of Christ, the sweets and dried fruits are all the beautiful creations God made and the candle represents Jesus the Light of the World.

Then we lit the Christingles and sang Shine Jesus Shine with the light out so that our candles shone brightly in the darkness.

Everyone has taken home a money box candle to help to raise money for the Children's Society. We will be making a donation to the Charity in January. Remember to ask your family and friends to put some coins in your box over the Christmas holiday.

Brilliant Behaviour Week by Jaya

In Class 4 this week we have had a competition to write the best blog entry to be posted on the school blog. We have been emailing comments and feedback to each other before finally emailing the teacher with reasons for why one particular blog should be chosen. The winning blog was by Jaya - well done! Here are some of the email comments in support of this choice:

"The person I have chosen is Jaya Panesar because her blog is very interesting and not too long; it's also very descriptive."

"Hi, my vote goes to Jaya because of the language she uses."

"I think the winner should be Jaya P because it looks like a blog and has good vocabulary"

Here it is:                                              

Brilliant Behaviour Week

Monday

To start brilliant behaviour week Mr Madeley did a poetry session with us about how it feels to be bullied, using similes and metaphors.

Here is a poem Jessica Scruton did during the lesson.

I am a punching bag full of hurt, thrown on the ground, like a piece of dirt. My phone keeps bleeping, there’s no escape just leave me alone for goodness sake! I’m a hollow shell lying on the floor, loved once but not wanted any more.

After the poetry lesson we all had to think of an experience when someone was either kind or mean to you. When everyone had chosen one we took turns sitting in the hot seat telling our experiences to the class.

Tuesday

While years 5’s were out swimming the year 6’s got a head start and recreated their experiences in a freeze frame. Here is one of them:

When the year 5’s came back we did a bit of English. Our task was to write our experience with brilliant vocabulary. If we finished that we had to use a thesaurus and find better words for sad and happy.

Wednesday

As well as doing English we also did ICT work. Everyone’s freeze frame was uploaded into pupilshare were everyone could access. Next we got our picture and used the software ‘Paint’ to cut ourselves out into a white silhouette so we could move onto task two.

Task two: If people finished cutting out ourselves they would move onto using that white silhouette and writing the better words for sad and happy depending on their experience. Instead of just writing words we got to make it more fancy and make the words suit the colour and font.

Thursday

Poetry, English, ICT, Art and now Drama. Mrs Reynolds did a drama session where we were put into three groups and had to act out the 4 O’clock rap.

After the session we used our white silhouette person and had to write our experience around it. It was tricky because we had to put our drawing of our freeze frame in the printer so when we printed out our words it would be on our picture but if you didn’t tell when you were putting your work in the printer someone would print and ruin your work. Also we had to make sure our words didn’t go over the drawing. This took loads of time before everyone had theirs done.

Friday

The task today was to finish everything. Everybody had finished all the ICT work it was just colouring in around our white silhouette on paper and choosing the right colours to match the mood. If people had finished that they started on practising the poems, rap and preparing a PowerPoint presentation all to show in assembly. Here are some of the the end results:

Class 2 Tree Planting Challenge

The children in class 2 have been planting some new trees in our school garden. We planted Hawthorn, Hazel, Holly, Dog Rose and Dog Wood. They are a welcome addition to our school hedgerow and the children enjoyed planting them withMrs Collings.

We recieved them from the Woodlands Trust as part of the Jubilee Woods Project. They are to help us remember the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

The saplings have been grown from seed and gathered from Royal Estates.

We are looking forward to watching them grow over the next few years.

RJC dance finals (written by Year 6)

This term as part of our P.E lessons we did a dance project called RJC. Two RJC judges called De- Napoli and Boomer came to give us instructions on what to do. The first day they came in they gave us a long warm up and told us our theme (water sports) and gave us some basic moves. After that we were asked to think of the starting moves for our dances; other schools had also been visited and taught their moves. Since that initial visit, we have been developing our routines until today - the RJC finals! 

(introduction written by Caius)

Whilst year six were putting together finishing touches to their fantastic routines to perform at the Leeds town hall, the year fives were putting together the scrap book of our RJC experience. It contained pictures of the Year 6 practising their dances, and pictures of water sports that fitted with the dances. The year 5 worked very hard on this aspect and therefore it looks brilliant. Year 5 also created their own dance routines although they weren't eligible to perform in the final show which is for Year 6 pupils.  

(written by Alex W and Jacob)

 Year 5 pupils performing their routines - can you see evidence of the theme?

 Considering costume in design lessons - thumbs up!

Some of the costume designs were excellent - here is one for 'Devil Divers'!

On Wednesday the 14th of November judges Booma and Naps (from RJC) had to decide between 2 year 6 groups to perform at the Leeds Town Hall. Pyscho Swimmers danced first then Unnamed Divers. Decision time.... Naps and Booma chose Unnamed Divers as the winner!

Hannah ‘I felt really proud of my group when I heard we had been chosen to represent our school!’

Jaya ‘Even though my group didn’t get chosen, I still was glad I got to have an experience doing RJC.’]
(written by Hannah and Jaya)

 Year five performed their routines to the judges first and were given great feedback.

Then it was the turn of 'Psycho Swimmers', the first Year 6 group.

This was followed by the 'Unnamed Divers' performance.

The judges, after some deliberation, chose 'Unnamed Divers' as the winning group, chosen to represent the school at Leeds Town Hall today - the 21st November 2012!

First we were called up to get ready for the performance. Olivia-‘I felt a mixture of excitement and nerves’. Abbas-‘I also felt nervous but when I got on stage all the nerves went away.’ When we got on the stage we got into our starting positions and got ready to dance.


The music sounded quiet because the speakers were pointing to the audience but when practising at school it was quite loud because the speakers were facing us; they were on full blast and the school hall is very small so the sound didn’t have to travel as far.

When we started to perform it was quite nerve wracking because there were tons of people staring at you. However, as the performance carried on we got more into it and were less nervous.
(by Abbas and Olivia - two of the stars of 'Unnamed Divers')

 Pictures taken during the rehearsal - we weren't allowed during the actual performance.

As a member of the audience the show was extremely entertaining and exiting. It was also very interesting to see what the other groups had come up with and listening to the different music tracks. Everyone’s costumes were fun and imaginative. It was enjoyable, especially when the teachers were dancing, and the dance professionals called 'De-koyy'.

Despite the fact Collingham won, we still had a good time!

 (written by Scott, Sandro and Gea)

 I would like to add that whilst the teachers' dance segment was sort of mortifying, it didn't detract from how proud I was of the brilliant behaviour, not to mention performance, of Harewood pupils - well done!  Mr S

Finally, here are 'Unnamed Divers' - I won't name them for obvious reasons (!) but you did us very proud today - well done!