As part of our DT topic, Year 2 were asked to create a healthy option to be added to the lunch menu. We had to make sure we included the different food groups from ‘The Eat Well Plate’ and followed our design to safely and hygienically prepare a simple dish without heat.
Asda community Champions came in to help us make our wraps and make sure we followed our design briefs.
The children in Year 2 have been looking at IT (Information Technology – computers or things that work with computers) in our everyday lives.
Scanner finding the items and telling the item finder.
Item finder searching for the prices of each item and adding them together to make the receipt.
This week they were looking at barcode readers in supermarkets. In a role-playing activity, one child took items with barcodes to a table with 2 people on it – who took the role of a scanner and till. The scanner had to find the correct item to the bar code, and then tell the item finder which items there were scanning. The item finder had to then find the price of each item and add them to make a receipt.
At the end of the lesson, the children found that adding up without IT was slower and could make easy mistakes.
Our first computing topic is all about the internet. We explored how a network can share messages with another network to form the internet. We have also explored what can be shared on the World Wide Web, where websites are stored and how the World Wide Web can be accessed on a variety of devices.
The children have used their non-chronological report about the Ancient Maya to create a podcast – demonstrating their speaking skills to show expression.
Working in groups, they decided on their roles (hosts, experts, professors, priests) and came up with a podcast name to suit the style of show.
After spending a lesson editing out (most of) their mistakes; adding music and sound effects; and altering the volume of different tracks of audio; the children completed their podcasts.
So please listen and enjoy.
Fantastic Facts – Jaycob H, Jack P, India F, Theo R and Riley H
History’s Mysteries – Ruben B, Ben W, Holly B, Sienna D and Eve R
Maya Disappear – Ava M, Scarlett B, Nathan P, Lillie Mae C and Eoghan C
Mysterious History Show – Sapphire M, Isla H, Ava P, Alfie J and Harrison H
After a week of work, the children have competed in their STEM week competition. They delivered their presentations to a panel of judges – including the Economic Inclusion and Career Development Coordinator for South Tyneside, a representative from the National Centre for Computing Education and the deputy head, Mr Donnelly. The children came back from presentations full of energy and enthusiasm. Their ideas got feedback such as ‘that’ll be tough to top’ and ‘this could work in the school yard to create energy’.
They have also took part in 3 robot games – which involved running their code to complete as many tasks as possible to score the highest amount of points. There have been some jumping with excitement and some hands covering faces in disappointment – but with some amendments and improvements, fun was had by all.
The semi-finals of the robot game took place in the afternoon (after an impromptu quarter finals because of a 7-way tie for 4th place), with the 6 top scoring teams competing in a knock out. The top 3 teams went through to the finals to compete for the robot game trophy.
To end the day, the children enjoyed the trophy ceremony. Each of the winning teams received a trophy and were celebrated by their peers in the sports hall.
The winners were:
Robot Design – Brick-otatoes (6F)
Core Values – Game Changers (6T)
Innovation Project – Brainiacs (6A)
Judges’ Award – Super Septuplets (6A)
Robot Game – Rotten Robots (6T)
Champions Awards (and overall winner of the week) – Energetic Energy (5L)
Based on the output of work, dedication to coding and overall enthusiasm from the children this week, the staff would like to think that STEM week was a roaring success!
On Wednesday we began to create our presentations in groups and we also built our innovation models. We needed to develop the coding on SPIKE and we conducted further research to help us with our presentations for the end of the week.
Yesterday we built all of the models we needed for the robot game and did some research into different types of energy, and today we started coding and planning our invention!
In our teams, we chose which missions we would like to complete and worked together to code the robot to make it move and turn where we wanted it to go. We even built some attachments for the robot to make it easier to lift, push and pull different mechanisms to achieve the missions.
We also worked in our groups to think about our innovation project – what different ways can we make renewable energy? We have some fantastic ideas already which we will be developing over the next couple of days.
Tuesday was the second day of our Lego Challenge STEM Week. Each class was split into 4 teams. The first task was to come up with a team name – some were unusual to say the least! Then it was time to code the robot to carry out tasks on the models which were built yesterday. There was also an innovation project to start in which a sustainable energy invention was designed.
The children were busy all day, and even though it was very noisy, there was some amazing STEM work taking place.
Once again, the children of Harton Primary School have blown the judges of the Primary Engineer Leaders Award away with their innovative ideas to answer the question ‘If you were an engineer, what would you do?’ Over 30 children from our school were shortlisted for the final round of judging and Bonnie was awarded winner of the north east of England! She had her award presented to her at Sunderland University. We are incredibly proud of all of the children who took part and can’t wait to see what ideas they come up with next year!
The Shields Gazette wrote an article about the fantastic achievements of our pupils in this competition over the past few years.
Year 5 pupils shortlisted.
Year 4 pupils shortlisted.
Year 6 pupils shortlisted.
Bonnie – Y4 winner for north east England
This morning we learned about renewable energy and hydroelectric stations that generate electricity through moving water. We then built a range of models before conducting our research on the energy of the model we had built.
This afternoon we learned about affordable energy and how electricity is transferred to network grids before being distributed to customers before building models linked to this such as an oil platform model, fuel tank model, hybrid car and ramp model, a power plant and a smart grid.
We have had a great first day and have shown excellent collaborative working skills.
