Today we focused on the Latin American artist Frida Kahlo whose troubled life produced fueled incredibly powerful artwork. Our young artists learnt about her life and explored some of her famous surrealist paintings. They then tried different techniques with oil pastels before produced amazing mixed media artworks based on Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird. All the adults in Year 5 are incredibly proud of the children today for their focus and creativity.

This morning, Y5 attended an assembly with Severn Trent Water. We recapped the water cycle and looked into how water is cleaned to make it “potable” in the home. The children also thought about how to stay hydrated and how to spot the early signs of dehydration.

Today we had a fantastic gymnastic demonstration with Jason Tucker, a Commonwealth Games gymnast and his budding protégé Harry. They discussed the need for repetition in practise as well as how to deal with high pressure situations.

Well done to the Code Club today for creating games where you had to find and click a sprite to open up the next level. Advanced coders were able to modify the code, sprite and backgrounds and add in a variable that counted the amount of time it took to complete the game.

Star Coder this week was Brandon!

As part of Healthy Lifestyle Week, Y5 were lucky enough to have a Q&A session with professional footballer Harry Flowers. He spoke about working hard to achieve your goals and developing a positive attitude to following your passions. He spoke about the importance of developing skills across different areas.

The children listened really carefully and asked some really thoughtful questions.

Today pupils from Y5 and Y6 were lucky enough to enter a planetarium inflated in the school hall. They had the chance to watch immersive videos about the solar system and potential life forms in other galaxies before asking questions to a Space expert. This really helped spark the children’s imaginations and helped them retrieve learning from the Year 5 Space unit of Science.

What a fantastic start to Code Club today! The children logged created log-ins to Scratch by using the QR scanners on the Chromebooks. They programmed projects based on a sample code and many children put their own creative spin on this. My particular favourite was from our Coder of the Week, Soumil, who created an animated baseball themed story which you can see below.

I also loved Niamh’s safari scene, Evie’s space code and Travis’ complex code involving colour changes, sounds and movements. We discussed how to add “events” to make actions start within our programs. The children worked really well to tinker and modify their programs and debug when necessary.

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/703257160  (Click “See inside” to find out how to run the sequence)