This week the class worked on creating adverts for their Apprentice project inventions.

They filmed and then edited with iMovie and created fantastic, creative adverts.

As always I ask children for permission to post their photo so some people may be missing from the blog!

This week we went a fantastic trip to the National Museum of Rural Life. We took part in a maths workshop, toured the farm and then found about how farm machinery has changed in the museum. Thanks to our parent helpers who made the trip possible and Mr Atkinson for organising.

This week we focussed on instructional writing in literacy. We explored recipe books to see good example and discuss the features, we took notes from an online recipe, then we wrote instructions.

Some of the class enthusiastically wrote down the names of some recipe books; I’m sure all the adults can look forward to being served some delicious meals.

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This week we started our new learning journey focused on businesses and launching new products. The class have been split into companies and in true Apprentice style, their first job was to pick a team name and create logos. Watch out for Valco, Gold Platinum, Sibbles and Co., Alferds, LOCMA, and Perfectly Toxic.

We’ve been doing P.E at Eastwood with the S6s coaching us in different sports. It’s a great opportunity to visit the high school, meet some of the P.E staff and improve our skills in different sports.

We’ve been focusing on art this week. We experimented with shade and highlights using charcoal and chalk to create Tim Burton style portraits. We then looked at the abstract work on Kandinsky and created our own art using shapes and colours to convey emotions.

It’s showtime!

Continuing our focus on drama, this week the class have been learning about how body language, posture and proximity to one another can help with indicating the relationship between characters. The pupils tested this by posing and recreating family portraits in front of the class. There was a lot of hilarity trying to identify the members of each family!  Another activity involved  pupils randomly selecting two words which they had to use as the name of their character and then decide why their new persona was famous. In groups, they then improvised and acted out a chat show scene where the pupils had to stay in character whilst taking part in a short conversations between themselves and the host. Following this, each group sent their main character to the ‘green room’ where all of the personalities had to introduce themselves to each other. At the end of the week the pupils were set the challenge to independently create a short performance of a TV show for a specific audience. I was impressed with the fantastic effort that went into writing creative scripts and application of drama skills to bring their characters to life! Finally, the children used the iPads and iMovie to edit their videos and insert additional features into their recordings including sound, text and images.

It has been a pleasure teaching P7a the last two weeks and I hope everyone has a great holiday – Mr Atkinson

Lights, camera, action!

This week the pupils have been eagerly participating in activities to hone and develop their drama skills. First the children shared their experiences of drama and discussed the different types of TV genres including reality, cartoon, news and comedy. Then the pupils explored how adjusting their tone, volume and pace can help to express emotions. Equipped with this knowledge, the children challenged each other to portray different feelings during conversations and had to guess which ones were being performed. After discovering how voice actors bring to life cartoon characters, the class then made their own attempt by working in pairs to create backgrounds for some unusual people including coming up with a catchphrase and a voice for them. To finish the week, P7A have been learning how to create  ‘soundscapes’ by using their bodies to produce noises.

Hello to all the P7A blog readers, it’s Mr Atkinson here! As you will know this year I am doing NCCT for P7A with a focus on developing Crookfurs Enquiry Based Learning approach so I wanted to give you an update of what we have been doing.

It has been exciting start to the year with the children utilising their new Meta Skills of leading, feeling, adapting and initiative in their sustainability design clothing challenge. First we explored the methods of paying for items in today’s society and then the children drew diagrams of the different stages in the manufacturing process. Equipped with this knowledge the pupils then formed teams and have been collaborating excellently to combine a variety of fabrics to produce a unique piece of clothing. To help them with this they created mood boards by using inspiration from their online research and are now in the final stages of their project. The teams have also applied their understanding of persuasion to create advertisement posters for their products and have written scripts describing their items which they will read out during Crookfur’s P7 fashion show.

I would like to express my thanks for everyone who donated clothing and materials to help with this project!

We’ve been finishing off our mini-topic on historical mysteries. This week the class planned and delivered mini-lessons on a mystery of their choice.

We also had a lot of fun creating a Mayan city from Kapla. It was much more impressive in real life!