Romeo and Juliet, a modern update!

All week the class have been busy writing their modern day retellings of Romeo and Juliet. We drew up a toolkit and then boxed up the original Romeo and Juliet and then our versions. As a class we decided that for our shared write, we would cast the Montague and Capulets as two rival supermarkets, have the two lovers meet at the Capulet ‘Employee of the month’ award and replace the potion with a dodgy horse burger… Glas, melyn and oren took their versions from the ideas inspired by the shared write whereas Porffor and Gwyrdd allowed their imaginations to run free when writing theirs.

Here’s their final efforts (Opens as PDF)

Porffor:

Chloe Yr6 (Was absent for part of the week, so continued from the shared write that day) 

Jack Yr6

Jordan Wa Yr6

Jordan Wh Yr6

Maya Yr5

Shani Yr6

Gwyrdd:

Ben Yr5

Cerys Yr5

Charles Yr5

Rosie Yr6

Sophie Yr5

Tawfiq Yr5

Oren:

Antoine Yr5

Jared Yr5

Jay Yr5

Mikey Yr5

Onyx Yr5

Rebecca Yr5

Glas:

Catherine Yr5

William Yr5

Melyn:

Edward Yr5

Emily Yr6

Joshua Yr5

Bottle Rockets

A bit late editing this together but here’s a few videos of our scientific enquiry into plastic bottle rockets and how they fly. The questions that our thinking groups were investigating were:

Does the shape of a bottle affect how far a bottle rocket travels?

Will a smaller bottle rocket go further than a big one?

Will adding aerodynamic features make a bottle rocket go further?

Does the amount of water affect how far a bottle rocket travels?

Does the angle of the launcher affect the distance a bottle rocket travels?

Friar Laurence's dilemma

We had a drama session today in our class where we looked at Friar Laurence’s timeline during Romeo and Juliet. We created freeze frames of certain scenes for other groups to identify. We then created ‘human fortune graphs’ of his events and finished off with a conscience alley activity, where two opposing sides had to convince Friar Laurence to either demand that Juliet went with him, or let her go in to the tomb to her dead husband Romeo. 

Most important inventions of the 1960s

Our class have been researching the inventions of the 1960s for our topic, More than Mods and Rockers. We cut it down to 9 inventions. We then held a popularity vote for the 9 objects and began to place the low scores at the bottom of our diamond nine. Our results were:

1. Artificial heart
2. Cochlea Implant
3. ATM
4. Ring pull
5. Audio Cassette
6. Hand held calculator
7. Etch a Sketch
8. Astroturf
9. Computer mouse.

Riddle me this...

Year 5/6 are working together to create riddles. Can you work them out?

1. What is tasty when solid, and liquid?
2. What has no eyes, no nose, mouth or body but can be heard?
3. What has arms and legs but is neither human or animal?
4. I have holes but I can still catch things. What am I?
5. I can be made, cut and I have different layers. What am I?
6. What is greater than God and more evil than the devil, rich people need it and poor people have it. What am I?
7. A sheep with no legs or head, changes colour to suit its mood, when it gets angry, you better move, what am I?
8. What's mother is rain and father is sun?

More later!!!

Apollo 13 newspaper reports

This past fortnight the class has been working on newspaper reports using ‘Talk for Writing’ techniques as part of the More than Mods and Rockers topic. They spent the first week orally learning a report about Apollo 11, writing text maps and getting the feel of the text. This past week they have created a toolkit, boxed up the report and then wrote it in full, complete with polishing and publishing.

This is one example: Cerys (Year 5)

Fly-back Forever!

Apollo 13 is back from space.

Yesterday, 17^th April 1970, a date that will spend every second in the dates of history’s diary book, the three heroic astronauts of Apollo 13 returned home. These fortunate astronauts of American descent were called James A. Lovell, John L. “Jack” Swigert and as a last minute replacement Fred W. Halse. The take-off took place in Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, with mission control watching over them in Houston. They attempted to go to the moon but unfortunately they didn’t due to a fault on board their ship. They splashed down yesterday in the Pacific Ocean. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

          Apollo 13 had its launch in Kennedy Space Centre on April 11^th and everything went absolutely within its scheme. All of a sudden, an unexpected explosion punctured the peace of space and delivered pandemonium throughout the electrical structure of their space craft. Immediately strategies were experimented with to mend the error. It was perceived that the oxygen tank had been ruptured and over-heated the circuits. Their lives were now dangling by a thread.

          Scientific professionals experimented and probed into various tactics of solving the dilemmas on board Apollo 13. The astronauts had to pursue asylum in the lunar module. Finally the phenomenal gurus at mission control ameliorated the C02 scrubbers from the command module and into the lunar module. They were now able to come home. They flew through the friction scorching, fiercely burning hot atmosphere and splash landed in the Pacific Ocean. The USS Iwo Jima was on hand to retrieve them.

          Upon being regained by the adventurous heroes on board the USS Iwo Jima, mission control emotionally chuckled, “We show you on the screen. You’re looking great!”

          Eventually the rollercoaster like journey was over. All three men who had left planet Earth had returned home harmlessly. Will anyone daring enough join NASA in attempt to return to the moon again? Who knows!

Dr Ferret and his bad medicine

Llanharan Primary School today received a visit from performers from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama for a performance of the school opera, 'Dr Ferret and his bad medicine'. Children from years 1 up to 6 all sat in the hall and enjoyed the performance from the many opera students. There was laughter, screaming and wet faces all around (mostly from the water pistols). The plot of the story involved deaths, naughty children and magical medicine.

Here are some quotes about the opera performance from Year 5/6:

"It was entertaining and good fun for children of all ages, even though it was scary at times" Chloe

"It was fabulous in every single way." Jordan White

"I liked it because it looked like all of the performers were having such fun!" Jack

"It was kind of creepy as all of the performers had mad staring eyes with black make up around them." Joshua

"My favourite part was when Dr. Ferret pretended to be Matilda's auntie." Jordan Watts

"It was very interesting at all times but our favourite part was the fire engine scene. William & Onyx

"I found it really amusing, a little creepy, especially when Henry was dieing and looked like a zombie." Antoine

"It was fun, exciting and my favourite part was when Jim got eaten by a lion." Ben

"I thought it was spectacular. The most amusing bit was the surgery scene" Mikey

"Henry's string looked oddly tasty!" Cerys

"My favourite part was watching the George on the scooter." Edward

Here's a photo slideshow of the performance:

And here's some brief video clips of  some of the performance:

Man lands on the moon - part 2

We have been breaking down the text of the moon landing down into individual paragraphs in our 'More than mods and Rockers' using Talk for Writing strategies. They had a copy of the text and wrote their own text maps and added their own actions to help aid their retelling of it as a whole group. They also then moved on to playing games such as Word Tennis and Babble Gabble to help improve their recollection of the text. A few even tried word tennis back to back without the text map! Here’s a video of the group retelling the final paragraph.

Eisteddfod 2013

We held our St. David's Day Eisteddfod in our school hall this afternoon. For the second year running, we attempted to tweet the Eisteddfod live via our school account @llanharanps and our Year 5/6 account @lps140club. We used the hash-tag #LPSMarch1. The WIFI signal was not great so we used this blog to keep everyone up to date.

Here are the updates posted live on this blog during the afternoon.

• Nursery & Reception have been singing about our favourite topic, y tywydd (the weather).
• Year 1&2 have taught everyone about the aderyn melyn and various other exotic birds of many colours!
• Some wonderful duets from the juniors including two brave boys, the only boy duets today, da iawn Antoine and Charles!
• Sketches on the go now, it's like a dentist waiting room in here... I'm nervous just sitting here! Hope there's no drills!
• Everyone is in the midst of enjoying a merry jig as the juniors treat us all to a cheeky bit of country dancing!
• The final competitive acts of the day, the junior choirs!
• I'll be singing these songs in my sleep!

Ennillwr:

Pre Nursery & Reception

Arlunio: 
1af - Rhys Newth

MEITHRIN:

Arlunio:
1af: Thomas Parsons
2ail: Mitchell James & Murrin Deighen -
3ydd: Zack Fletcher, Ava Mae O'Connell.

DERBYN:

Llawysgrifen: 
1af: Nikoli Lopushansky
2ail: Connor Jones
3ydd: Autumn Halse

Arlunio:
1af: Dylan Ayoub
2ail: Ellie Ann Cogbill

BLWYDDYN 1:

Llawysgrifen: 
1af: Kian Lewis,
2ail: Maisie Rees,
3ydd: Ellie May Jones

Arlunio:
1af: Dylan Case,
2ail: Phoebe Battersby,
3ydd: Daisy Bamford

BLWYDDYN 2:

Llawysgrifen: 
1af: Eliza Bayliss,
2ail: Melissa Morgan,
3ydd: Laetitia Whiting

Arlunio: 
1af: Lucie Durham,
2ail, Joshua O'Neill,
3ydd: Corum Battersby

BLWYDDYN 3:

Llawysgrifen: 
1af, Samuel Mifsud,
2ail: Tilly Russell,
3ydd: Eleanor Hibbits-White & Cassie-Jane Lewis

Arlunio: 
1af: Ryan O'Neill,
2ail: Tilly Russell,
3ydd: Bethan Edgar

BLWYDDYN 4:

Llawysgrifen: 
1af: Natasha Batacan,
2ail: Ellis Stroud,
3ydd: Gracie Green & Malea Stroud

Arlunio: 
1af: Karina Roberts,
2ail: Gracie Green,
3ydd: Katie Scarrott

BLWYDDYN 5:

Llawysgrifen: 
1af: Cerys McKechnie,
2ail Sophie Bowden,
3ydd: Ben Duggan

Arlunio: 
1af: William Anthony,
2ail: Jared Williams,
3ydd: Catherine Sargent

BLWYDDYN 6:

Llawysgrifen:
1af: Shani Williams,
2ail: Rosie Evans,
3ydd: Emily Jones

Arlunio: 
1af: Shani Williams,
2ail Chloe Coleman,
3ydd: Jordan Watts

DEUAWD:

1af: Ty Gwyn,
2ail: Ty Gwyrdd,
3ydd: Ty coch

SKETCH:

1af: Coch,
2ail: Gwyrdd,
3ydd: Gwyn

DAWNSIO GWERYN:

1af: Ty Coch,
2ail: Ty Gwyrdd ,
3ydd: Ty Gwyn

COR:

1af: Ty Gwyrdd,
2ail: Ty Coch,
3ydd: Ty Gwyn

ENILLWR CYFFRIDENOL:

1af: Ty Gwyn 166 points
2ail: Ty Coch 123 points
3ydd: Ty Gwyrdd 103 points