Netherfield CE Primary School

We are so happy to have Mrs Thornton as our new TA in Emerald class and are enjoying getting to know her.  We also got to know her friend Elmo - a real, live dragon in our very own classroom!!

Year 5 had a fantastic week at PGL Windmill Hill.  We climbed, we crawled, we sang, we ate (a lot!) and we may have got just a tiny bit wet or muddy once or twice...

We've been helping our Ruby class buddies get settled at Netherfield, reading to them, playing with them, and helping them to understand how life at our school works.  The other day, we helped them log onto the school laptops for the first time, showing them some fun things to do on Purple Mash and teaching them the basics about e-safety.

A meeting of the Witan Council was held at Netherfield to decide who should take on the role of King of England following the death of Edward the Confessor.  Four determined candidates presented heated arguments to the Council with the help of their advisors.  All was carefully watched by the assembled people.  Our Council, in the end, selected William of Normandy to be King - well deserved due to his excellent credentials and the powerful demeanour with which he presented his case. 

We had a fantastic afternoon at 1066 Target Sports getting lessons on longbows and crossbows.  We are now expert archers, just like the Normans and Anglo-Saxons would have been.

Ruby Class were also studying Space this term so we did this activity together and explained it to our buddies.  We mapped out the distance between the planets by using 1 footstep = 1 Astronomical Unit.  The sun was represented by a bouncy hopper and each of the planets was represented by a fruit (or a peppercorn...or a few different sizes of balls!).  We ran out of space for the furthest planets because we hit the hedge at the other end of the playground.

We had great fun the day that Mr Lawrence came in to do Science with us.  Rockets use chemical reactions to produce thrust.  Mr Lawrence showed us how effervescent tablets and water create carbon dioxide gas.  When this builds up in a sealed film canister, eventually the pressure becomes too strong and the lid flies off...BANG!  It was VERY exciting!

We made paper rockets, basing our designs on pictures of actual rocket designs and thinking about issues like weight and aerodynamics.  We used a Stomp Rocket kit to launch our designs.  Zoom!

Who is keeping warm under the space blankets on the playground?  Oh, it's Emerald class!

Even though our socks got a bit wet and cold, the fun we had playing in the snow made it completely worth the chilly toes.  We even found some carrots for snowman noses!

Can you recognise any of the weird and wonderful book characters that showed up in Emerald for World Book Day?  Fantastic costumes!

We are very proud of our four Emerald Class Science Ambassadors who represented Netherfield at a recent event at Battle Abbey School.  They learned to conduct and explain a variety of great science experiments, did presentations to the various schools on the day, and then shared their knowledge with us back in class.  Well done!

We enjoyed testing a variety of mysterious samples taken from the strange island that we are studying this term.  We tested the samples for their heat conductivity, magnetic properties, transparency, electrical conductivity, and noted any other interesting observations about what we discovered. 

How amazing are our culinary delights created for our end of year banquet?!  Some of us brought in recipes that represent reversible or irreversible changes of state and great examples of irreversible mixtures, solutions, and the impact of heating and cooling substances.  Others brought in amazing creations that represent somewhere on Alchemy Island.  Can you recognise Rainbow Dunes, Silver Shingle Beach, the Steel Mines, Copper Nook, the Mount Furnace volcano, Fogwind Swamp or the frozen Ancient Citadel in the Kingdom of Winterbourne?