Basketball Tournament

On Tuesday 18th January a group of Year 5 children were selected for a basketball tournament at Boston Spa High School. We had only managed to have one practice but we were very excited at the opportunity. When we arrived at the school we entered the sports hall, it was massive. There was one team there already throwing the ball to each other and shooting. So we started practising too.

Soon 6 more team came gushing in through the doors. Suddenly a man called us all in to the middle of the sports hall and went through the rules. Finally, he let the games begin. For the first two games we didn’t do so well, but the next game we improved our play. We drew that one and won most of the rest of our games. Ending the tournament, the man announced the results. We listened anxiously. 8th position, not us, 7th position not us, 6th position, 5th position, 4th position, not us. He finally told us that we were in 3rd position!!! We narrowly missed out on qualifying for the finals but returned back to school really pleased with our performance.

Over the rainbow

Look at our fantastic rainbow!

Over the Christmas holidays Class One acquired some new resources for the classroom which are designed to help develop their creativity, imagination and thinking skills. Children are blessed with a huge capacity for creative thinking. These these knew "intelligent" resources encourage creativity in a similar way to the empty cardboard box they choose to play with instead of the expensive gift it contained. Of all the new resources our definite favourite at the moment is this amazing rainbow.

There are no instructions because there are no right or wrong ways to enjoy this beautiful piece of equipment.

Theo's slide, Sam and Martha's cave and Jerram and Koutaro's volcano are just some of the wonderful things we have created. We've only been back at school for a week and already the rainbow has been used independently and incorporated with other resources - making new connections and developing new ideas and skills.

The children describe their rainbow as beautiful and amazing. Below are some of the photographs they have taken independently.

Death to the Tudors!

As an excellent way of finishing off our Tudor topic Class 4 watched the final outstanding (in both senses of the word) Tudor presentation. The group was made up entirely of boys who followed suit by focusing, like most of the other boys in the class, on the gruesome or grizzly aspects of Tudors!
The presenters came equipped with some fantastic outfits and props!

They also used models of their own designing to illustrate a variety of execution methods as shown above. The detail is quite excellent and the models all had moving parts to demonstrate their function!

Then we were treated to a video explaining in detail about the execution types as well as the many and varied weapons the Tudors used - very informative!

The presentation was executed superbly and a final interactive quiz brought our topic to a rather brilliantly gruesome end - good work!

God Jul!

'God Jul!' That is how they say 'Merry Christmas' in Swedish!

Class 3 have been working all week preparing for their International Christmas Party in the school hall. It took all of us a lot of hard work to get ready in just one week. Miss King took lots of pictures of us.
We had lots of fun. There was food, games, languages to learn and lots, lots more! My group was Sweden. We dressed up in the traditional costumes worn by boys and girls in Sweden - don't we look good?! We also had cookies and decorations from our country too.

There were nine countries. I think the best country was Germany, which was Ross' team, because they had lots of information. I had a great time.

'Amazing team work,' said Mr Madeley, one of our many visitors. We hope you all enjoyed the celebrations - and maybe we'll see you again next year! God Jul and Feliz Navidad!

Blog post by Alex Sykes

Beware the Belgian chocolate - it's addictive!

Shine Star Shine

No day like a snow day!

Here at Harewood we've been playing a lot in the snow. Look how cold we are! We are turning into snowmen.
On Tuesday, when the first snow fell, we all went outside in the afternoon onto the field. We were all so excited because there was lots of snow and nobody had touched it.

Class 3 took this picture in the garden to send to our friends in El Salvador because some of them have never seen snow.

Run!!!! Class 3 are coming to get you!

We even took time to make snow angels. We are looking forward to getting even more snow this winter - but I don't think our parents are, their cars might not work!

Blog entry - Oscar Reynolds

Let's go fly a kite!

Come on and celebrate! In Class 3 we used our International Celebrations Week to look at all the kite festivals that take place around the world. There are so many festivals held for so many different reasons.

We researched the festival of Basant which takes place in Pakistan to celebrate the coming of Spring. The people of Lahore sharpen their kite strings with ground glass and try to cut each others kites out of the sky. We made kites of our own, but left out the sharpened strings! Here we all are with our kites - don't they look great!
Kite festivals are also held in Japan. Sandro taught us how to write the Japanese phrase - 'Taco Kichi' which means 'Kite Crazy'!

We were amazed at how quickly Sandro could write the Japanese characters - it took us a lot longer!

We also studied the 'Barriletes Gigantes' festival of Guatemala, which means giant kites in Spanish. The villagers of the highlands of Guatemala build the giant kites in teams. They believe the kites help them fly messages to the spirits. They fly them on the Day of the Dead which is celebrated on the 1st of November every year.

Class 3 worked together in teams, just like the villagers, to design and make their own Barriletes Gigantes. They used their knowledge of shape and symmetry to create some fabulous designs.

We also wrote kite shape poems, created mini kites and filmed information videos. By the end of the week we were all 'tako kichi'!!!!