Junior School Newsletter Friday 31 January 2020
DEAR PARENTS The official newsletter of
@SibfordJS
El Dorado High School teachers
Following the excitement of last week, we continued our STEM fortnight, cramming as much engineering and technology into the week as possible. This has involved lots of work in the individual classes along the theme, as well as some bigger events. On Monday some of the Key Stage 2 classes were treated to two fascinating parent presentations. The first, from Rai Wahlen, detailed his work in elemental analysis and it was wonderful to learn about some of its applications in real life. This was followed later in the afternoon by a session with Jason Somerville who told us about his work with aerodynamics within Formula 1 – we even got to hold a piece of a car! Tuesday saw the whole Junior School have a chance to learn about optics and sight as Jonathan Walford talked to us about his work as an optician – I’ve never seen quite so many contact lenses! Splitting into House groups on Wednesday, we had a Vertical Learning Morning where we rotated between four activities. These included using our eco-bricks to begin making a new wall around the raised beds, making recyclable bags out of newspaper (the best designs held over a kilogramme), constructing bridges from spaghetti and investigating electrical circuits using special playdough. Throughout the morning there was some excellent investigations and no small amount of teamwork. Thursday saw the visit of Peter Samain (Lottie’s grandad). As well as telling about his 45-year career in engineering and showing us some of the projects he has worked on, he also brought in a range of tools to demonstrate to the younger pupils. The main part of his visit, however, was to help us launch our eco-project. Over the next two weeks, the children have been given the challenge of designing and creating a model of an energy-efficient Eco-classroom. The best designs will be shortlisted to be presented to a judging panel on the 14th February and, who knows, may result in a sustainable school of tomorrow!
@SibfordOxon
@SibfordOxon