Year 4 film - "Making a Difference" 2009

"Water - Making a Difference"

Class 4D were set a task to make a short film using the subject of “Making a Difference” as the theme. The children in Mrs Dorling’s class came up with the main idea of “why we all drink lots of water in school”. They discussed why it was important to keep the brain hydrated and how they use the school water bottles to make sure that they always have drinking water available in class.

Mrs Dorling set a weekend homework task for the children. They had to find out fascinating facts about water and how it is important to human life.

Four children from the class were then chosen to write a film script based on the information from the class homework task. These children also learnt how to use the school video camera equipment and how to transfer the film to an iMac PC and edit the footage using iMovie software.

The children wrote their script using the whiteboard and saved it as a Smartboard file. They had to consider where they would film each section, what would they say, who would be in front of the camera and who would be the camera crew.

The children were also keen to make a short animation using the school water bottles. They filmed a short stop frame sequence using the digital camera and transferred this into Windows Movie Maker. This was then filmed from the screen using the digital video camera so that it could be transferred into iMovie for editing.

They also used Dance EJay software to create their own original music score. They thought about the topic and searched for sound clips that would represent the theme of water.

The children worked together at all times in a friendly co-operative way and were full of ideas on how they wanted to make their film. During the course of filming they were only supervised by adults when they had to move the equipment and props as some of it was heavy, especially the tripod.

The finished result is an extremely professional film and everyone has been impressed at their achievement. Well done to the film makers!

Click here to watch the Film

Active Week - Monday 8th June - Friday 12th June

Active Week

Active Week is a whole school activity where the emphasis is on being more active through a range of physical activities which are cross curricular with other subject areas.

Monday - 8th June

Years 3, 4 and 5 took part in a Skipping Workshop where they learnt co-ordination and different routines using a skipping rope. They had to work as individuals and in pairs.




Mr Tredoux's Maths group (Year 6) did an activity in the form of an orienteering session, where they had to work in groups solving word problems at different stations around the school field.

Tuesday - 9th June

All year groups were very busy taking part in physical activities throughout the school which included curcuit training and team games.

Mr Tredoux took 10 boys to take part in the Redbridge cricket tournament. They won 3 of the 4 matches they played. Everyone had a very enjoyable afternoon.


Wednesday - 10th June

Today we held a whole school fund raising event called Speed Mark. The children were sponsered for breaking the speed barrier with their immense goal shooting abilities. Each child had three attempts to see how fast they could kick the ball into the goal. Their speeds were electronically recorded and the fastest boy and girl in each class received a medal. The funds from this event will be used to purchase new sporting equipment for the school. Mr Tredoux would like to thank everyone who contributed to this cause. The children thoroughly enjoyed this activity.


The Year 4 children took part in an active afternoon. They played a variety of games including parachute games.

Thursday 11th and Friday 12th June

One Thursday Year 5 went over to the Redbridge Sports Centre for a whole day of activities, which included football, hockey, basketball, street dance, tennis and squash.

On Friday the Year 6 children also went to the Redbridge Sports Centre where the took part in a range of activities.

It was a very enjoyable day. The children took part in activities that they do not usually have the opportunity to try. Both year groups received positive feedback from the Centre on their behaviour and the way they worked co-operatively within their groups.

Microsoft Movie Maker and Advertising

Advertising – how to turn a poster into something more exciting!

The children in Class 6T were asked to plan and create their own advert for a sweet. Their work was to be presented in the form of a poster.

In ICT we discussed how we could transfer this into a short movie using images, effects, transitions, titles and sound.

The children had to create 3 pictures based on the information from their poster and then save these as .jpg files.

They opened Microsoft Movie Maker and imported the pictures. These were then transferred to the timeline.

An opening title and an end credit were added. The children looked at the animated effects they could add to these titles and also the options to change the font style and colour.

They also added animated text to the pictures.

They considered whether or not to add a video effect to a frame and also if a video transition would be appropriate between the pictures.

Lastly they recorded a narrative track to accompany the pictures in the movie.

The children spent an extremely enjoyable afternoon creating their advertising movies and they have commented that they now have a greater understanding of how to use Movie Maker and will be able to use this software at home.

Click on the Posters below to run the movies:-

Advert by Chloe

Advert by Georgia

Advert by Joe

Scargill Infants (Havering) and Parkhill Juniors (Redbridge) Video Conference

Follow this link for more information.

http://www.scargillandparkhill.blogspot.com/

Fronter - Year 5 Homepages

Fronter MLE

We have been using Fronter MLE at Parkhill for approximately one year.

Click here for more information on Fronter.

Our approach to introducing this learning environment was to enrol one year group at a time, starting last year with the Year 4 children.

These current Year 5 children have become accustomed to using Fronter to support ICT and Cross Curricular topics, sending messages, voting, taking on-line tests and participating in forums. It seemed a natural progression to give the children a homepage so that they could publish their own individual ideas to share with the rest of the year group. The children know that they must be careful when publishing any work and must take note of plagiarism and copyright.

This has proved to be extremely popular and Fronter has provided the children with their own safe social network where most of the work on the homepages is published when the children are working on their own home computers.

The children update their homepages regularly and post notification of changes on the Homepage Forum. We have now introduced a “Homepage of the Month” system where the children nominate their favourite homepages and then vote for an overall winner.

Click here to read some of their work:-

Homepage 1

Homepage 2

Homepage 3

Homepage 4

Homepage 5

Homepage 6

Keep watching this post to see the “Homepage of the month” voted by the children.

Year 6 Video Conference with Cranbrook School

The Year 6 story tellers have been video conferencing again with another Redbridge School.

On Friday 6th March the children read their “ Traditional Tales with a Twist” to the reception classes at Cranbrook School.

The stories read were versions of:-
Cinderella
The Three Little Pigs
The Hare and the Tortoise
The Three Billy Goats Gruff

(Click on the links above to read the stories in full).

The children at Cranbrook School were celebrating World Book Day and had dressed up as their favourite book characters. They were able to show off their wonderful costumes and tell us at Parkhill all about World Book Day and their favourite books.

It was a great morning and everyone at Parkhill thoroughly enjoyed the link.

Science Week 9th – 13th February 2009

Science week was a whole school activity week. It aimed to encourage children to embrace all aspects of science through fun hands on activities.

This year the topic for Science weeks was based around “Science that you can do at home”.

Monday

The Amazing Exploding Custard Man demonstrated a wide range of fascinating investigations that the children could do at home and he also blew some custard up!


Year 5’s also began their challenge to balance the largest number of pupils on 4 balloons.

Tuesday

We saw the first of a range of activities supplied by Science Alive. To find out more about Science Alive visit their website on http://www.science-alive.co.uk/. Today the children were learning about the power of water and air and used a robot arm powered by hydraulics.


The Year 3 challenge was to design the largest free standing tower that they could using only spaghetti and marshmallows.

Wednesday

The Science Alive activities for today involved building bridges using only paper and sellotape.

In the afternoon Year 4 were “solving the world’s energy crisis” by building electrical circuits powered by citrus fruit!

Thursday

The school was due to be visited by the Rock Man who was going to helpthe children investigate the different properties of rocks and minerals via a range of fascinating practical activities. Unfortunately the guest speaker had a car accident and was not able to get into school. He will be visiting soon.

Science Alive investigated how to drop eggs without breaking them and compared how this relates to car safety.

Year 6 investigated how to fire projectiles using only vitamin C tablets and water.

Friday

The whole school reviewed the week and shared their investigations with other year groups.

Science Alive repeated favourite activities from the past week in the front entrance hall for everyone to see.