One World Week

It has been a remarkably busy week to end a jam packed half term. With all we’ve done, it’s hard to believe it was only 8 weeks ago we started this new school year.

This week we celebrated One World Week by learning about Brazil. The children brought in a range of impressive home learning to show what the found out from their research. We focused heavily on the geography of the country and made interesting comparisons to our ongoing geography location, Scandinavia. Year 5 not only identified how they were physically different but also compared their human geography.

In addition, Year 5 looked at deforestation; an important issue facing the Amazon. The children were able to identify the effects of human actions on this landscape. One way we did this, was through an experiment involving examples of land with vegetation, and one without. By pouring on water to simulate rain, it was possible to see the land erosion and the contamination of the water that exists when man removed all vegetation.

In art, year 5 created  pictures of the famous Rio landmark, Christ the redeemer. These were created through mixed medium. The background used water colours whilst the statue itself was drawing with different shading pencils. I’m sure those of you who saw them at the celebration morning today will agree that they are amazing.

For a sweet treat, brigadeiros were on the menu this week as the children made the common and popular children’s confectionery from Brazil. There were a lot of chocolate smeared faces walking out of the door on Thursday!

As we are a fair trade school, we explored it’s impact in Brazil. We learnt about coffee farmers and the safety being a fair trade farmer provided. The children were quite stunned to hear how much the farmers earned.

A real highlight of the week was welcoming parents into class. Firstly, for our mass on Wednesday. The children were reverent throughout and reflected beautifully on how we treat our planet. Thank you to father Shaun for leading us in celebrating and reflecting on this important issue. We would also like to thank Michael, our seminarian. He put in a lot of time to make sure the mass and children were prepared. We are very lucky to have him as part of our school and parish community.

Finally, celebration morning. It was great to see the children share their learning with you and take you on in a Brazil themed quiz. We had some very proud looking year 5s as they discovered they were victorious and we were quite surprised at how many parents I could see cheating!

The children have worked incredibly hard this half term and deserve their well-earned rest, There is no home learning over the break.

Have a wonderful half term

Mrs Lines and Miss Clapp