Photography club trip to stockeld Park

We have the cameras! We have the skills.... Let the adventure begin!

  

Chris the photography teacher briefed the children about light sources and leading lines and then we were off into the darkness.

After many, many discussions about light sourcing, the children snapped some really lovely shots

Safra's best image

Henry's best image

Jack's best image

Theo's best image

Will's Best image

Sam's best image

Zoe's best image

Safra's best image

This was a really tricky shoot, even by Chris's professional standards. The children did a fabulous job applying everything they have learnt. Great work folks!

Don't they look like consummate professionals....

Magnetism Masterclass with Mr.Hammond

 Class 3 have had a fabulous afternoon taking part in a 'Magnetism Masterclass' with Mr.Hammond (Eleanor and Charlotte's grandfather). The class wrote to Mr.Hammond, who is a retired lecturer in science, when we first started our topic.  We had lots of tricky questions we wanted answering about the mysterious force of magnetism and its connection with electricity.

 Mr.Hammond read all of our letters and then created six activities to help us investigate the answers to our questions.

We learnt that the reason that not all metals are magnetic is connected to the spinning of electrons. Mr.Hammond had made models of atoms that we were able to spin to show us how the force moved in one direction.

 Using static electricity we were able to explore atoms and their charge. We had great fun making each others hair stand on end!

 Our floating compasses were made using a magnetised needle and a slice of cork. Each time the needles came to a halt they were pointing north!

 The preparation Mr.Hammond had put into the workshop meant that we had a fantastic afternoon learning all about one of our favourite topics.

Using the circuit he had created we were able to explore the link between magnetism and electricity. Mr.Hammond explained that this force was the basis for all electrical motors.

Using iron filings and magnets we were able to create Faraday's lines of magnetic force.

It was a truly hair-raising afternoon! A very big thank-you to the Hammond's for providing such a great end to our topic.

Strictly Harewood

Come and meet us at the barre! This week Year 4 and Year 5 were lucky enough to take part in a worskhop led by Northern Ballet. The company were on the look out for new talent to join their ballet school and decided Harewood would be a great place to start their search!

 The children were taken through the different positions and many of the exercises that ballet dancers have to practise everyday. We soon discovered just how much strength and control is needed to be a great dancer.

 Cara and Yasmin taught us how to use the dancers technique of 'spotting' so that we didn't get dizzy or lose our balance when we repeated our turns.

 The ladies were impressed with our flexibility and our strength.

 Although we were good, our arabesques weren't anywhere near as impressive as Cara's!

 But we gave it our best shot!

 At the end of the session some of the children who had particularly impressed Cara and Yasmin were invited to take part in five free workshops at Northern Ballet in the new year. This is an incredible opportunity which the children were very keen to take up.

Let's hope we have our very own Harewood Billy Elliott very soon!

Class 4 Space Project - animation video blog (plus 'making of' pics)!

Here are the final animations from the four groups. They may be short but an awful lot of work has gone into them (up to 300 photos taken with movement!) as both the relative distances between the planets and the relative velocity of the planets was calculated to be as accurate as possible. I think this was a very challenging task so I am really impressed that all groups managed to finish a final piece. I loved seeing the problem solving that was involved - the group who chose to place their sun right in the corner of their image for example realised that the orbit they'd drawn was a quarter turn, which enabled them to calculate exactly when each planet would've made a full turn and should reappear in the image - great Maths as well as Science!  

Hope you enjoy the videos! Here are some photos of how they were made: 

Class 4 - Solar System work!

This week in Science we have begun looking at the topic of 'Space'. We started by learning about early astronomy, such as the Greek astronomer Ptolemy who believed that all planets orbit the Earth and that the Earth doesn't move - the 'Geocentric theory'. 

To help us visualise the scale of the solar system we also used a roll of toilet roll to demonstrate how far apart relatively each planet is! The inner planets fitted comfortably in the classroom but we soon had to go out on the yard to fit more planets in and then finally, to include Neptune, we had to stretch out the toilet roll almost across the full length of the school field - from this demonstration we could clearly see why some planets are labelled 'inner' and others 'outer', as well as the relative distances. 

This was the launch, pun intended, for our next piece of work - to draw a scaled representation of the orbits of the planets around the sun. 

We started with some measurements which were all scaled so that the radius of Earth's orbit was equal to '1' - pupils then decided what one unit was worth - they had to be careful though as the radius of Neptune's orbit was thirty times that of Earth's! We took giant pieces of paper and began creating our images. 

 Using chalk and string we were able to construct circular orbits, keeping the radius consistent. This was a great way to bring in the terminology for circles which is part of the new Maths curriculum (e.g. diameter, radius, circumference).

 This group were first to finish stage one of the task. They opted to put the sun in the corner of their work to allow them a larger scale.

 Adding the planets....

 Then we began the next challenge - plotting the movement of each planets using statistics of the orbital velocity relative to that of Earth's. For example, if Earth travels a distance of 1, Neptune would have moved a distance of 0.182 in the same time. This meant that we we could plot the Earth's movement in say 10 cm steps and do the same for the other planets (e.g. Neptune would move 1.8 cms in the same time). Here you can see scaled markings on the diagram to plot the relative, scaled movement.

We hope to take use this piece to create a short animation film demonstrating both how the planets orbit around the sun and how their speed is relative to how far away they are from the sun. This was quite ambitious work but we've done well so far so I'm optimistic that at least one of the groups might take this next step and capture the animated version!