Welcome to the third issue of ‘Central Express’, your

window into the life of the school. This has been created by

the reporting teams from Year 6. They have been getting in

to the swing of the year’s topics so far, finding out what’s

been happening in and around the school. We hope you

enjoy reading the articles they have done.

‘The Reporting Team’

In This Edition…

News Item Reporters Don’t Stop the Party Sophie and Cole

The Jolly Roger Kiera and Megan Bloody Bones Georgina and Ellie

The Big Dip Joe and Leah Potty Potions Naomi and Jessica Vile Viruses Mia and Daniel

Young Voices

Central

Express

Year one’s topic was the carnival and they have

worked so hard this year. Mrs Shaw and Mrs

Parkinson said they could host their own carnival

for their parents/guardians. Just in case you don’t

know, a carnival is a celebratory street party and

parade. A carnival typically involves a mix of a

circus, masked parade and party. Some of the

public dress in costumes to join in.

Musicians helped Y1 to learn carnival rhythms and

samba music. They made head dresses of animals in honour of the Carnival of Animals. The Carnival

of the Animals is a musical suite of 14 movements by the French romantic composer Camille Saint

Saens. Year one made the masks for their carnival and decided carefully which animal they wanted

to be.

Year 1 used only everyday materials (such as cardboard, paper and plastic) to create these masks.

With no help from the teachers, the children did their best and their carnival turned out a success.

All the teachers are hoping their next topic will be even more of a success.

The Jolly Roger

The Jolly Roger had has set sail to Balby Central Primary School and crash into Year 2,

spreading the pirate spirit.

Pirate Tales

The wonderful pirates from year 2 have been writing fab

fact files and adventure stories. They have worked really

hard to make them the best they could be. They wrote

adventure stories about pirates and their crew sailing the

world and finding hidden treasure! They put in a range of

information to make their fact files over flowing with facts.

Take a Trip To The Deep

As you may or may not know Year 2 went on an

amazing trip to the Deep. As they were doing a

topic about pirates they needed to know about all

sorts of creatures lurking underwater. There had

been an exciting discovery by a marine biologist.

They found an egg of a baby shark that was being

bred at The Deep. People who went on the trip

asked staff what it was called but they had not

thought of a name and are still looking for one. A

child from Y2 said her favourite part of The Deep

was the new lift that went through a fish tank.

They had a great time by the sound of things.

Bloody bones In Year 3 the children have been learning about blood, bones and gory bits. They made

Frankenstein puppets and they made a song in music that relates to their topic. The children

brought in some fab homework, for example:

Hanna has brought in a box with information about blood bones and gory bits.

Max brought in a statue of his body with his organs on like the heart intestines and

others.

They wrote down things they know already about the topic.

This is an interview with a pupil from Violet class.

Is the topic exciting? Yes because we have been doing a booklet on Frankenstein.

What have you worked on so far in your topic? We have learned about Frankenstein and watched some little movies about him and his wife.

What’s the most exciting part of the topic you have done?

Writing a diary pretending we were Frankenstein.

What’s the main part of your topic? Frankenstein! Healthy eating In year 3 they made healthy eating charts and learned about which foods are good for them and which foods are bad. They found out what foods they should eat and how much they should eat every day using the ‘Healthy Eating Plate’ diagram.

Frankenstein says:

Our topic was Blood,

Bones and Gory bits.

The

Big

Dip Year 4 have been looking

at the topic called ‘The Big Dip’.

Amazing Art

In art they worked on models of 3d gardens at home for homework and also in class. In

assembly the Year 4 teachers asked some of the children to show their fabulous models.

They worked very hard to design and complete them. They have also painted a portrait of a

lake with fish of a range of different types and colours to put up on display.

Wonderful Writing

During writing, the children wrote information texts - also Mr Houghton’s class wrote stories

and viewpoints of creatures that live in the water. Miss Hicks’ class also wrote some

persuasive writing.

The Year 4 Trip

Year 4 has been on a trip to the Austerfield

Study Centre to look at pond life and have

their own Big Dip with nets etc.

Marvellous Maths

During this half term both classes were doing

investigation problems that the teacher had set, which the children found quite difficult but

fun at the same time. This half term both classes have started learning doubling and halving.

RE

This terms topic has been Sikhism, with Miss Cantrell. They painted portraits of Guru Nanak

and discussed his life. They collected information about Guru Nanak which they then used to

make a PowerPoint so they could share the information they had found.

Lately Year 5’s topic has been Potty Potions.

Literacy

They drew and coloured their own potion designs and explained what

was in the potion and what you could use it for. They had also been

been reading ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’ and re-writing the parts

where George creates the potion and when Grandma takes the

medicine! They worked on using adverbs and adjectives to describe

how Grandma and George reacted.

Science

They created potions from oil and water and observed what

happened. They also went outside to try mixing cola and Mentos to

make an explosion and what a mess it made!

ICT

In ICT they have been working on spreadsheets. They have been making spreadsheets

about the ingredients that would be included in a potion. They used the program to calculate

the capacity of all the ingredients mixed together and what each would cost if they changed

some of the ingredients of changed the amount of each ingredient.

Chinese New Year

Year 5 did an assembly about

Chinese New Year. They told

the other children about all the

different animals and the story

of the race of the zodiac. They

told us about the different

things that the Chinese do to

mark

the

New

Year like giving red envelopes with money inside and the fact that

they always clean the whole house at this time (this is where we

get the saying ‘spring clean’ from).

Art

They started off by making potion bottles from glass bottles and painting

them in their own style. They also made them from clay in pottery.

Numeracy

In maths they have been doing investigations to do with their topic such as capacity conversions and

measurements of capacity.

P.E

In P.E they did tag rugby. They have learned how to play the ball, how to hold the ball and the

different ways to throw the ball such as the 6 o clock pass and the spin pass. They have been playing

games like ‘rob the nest’ where you take balls from the middle and when they’re gone you steal them

from other teams until the time is up and the team with the most balls wins. For warm ups they set a

course of different obstacles such as ladders, hurdles and cones. With the ladders they found

different ways to move across them (eg. hopping or single foot). For the hurdle they either hopped or

ran through them. Lastly, for the cones they side stepped from cone to cone.

Young Voices

On the 20th January the school choir took part in a wonderful event called ‘Young Voices’. They had

been working really hard to accomplish perfection in all the songs they were proud to sing. The event

took place at Sheffield arena between 7 and 9pm. The children arrived home at 10pm bursting with

happiness from their experience. They sang ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ with Stacey Solomon on the

day. Everyone really enjoyed every song.

“I enjoyed the event very much. It was absolutely amazing. I loved every minute of it” said Jessica.

They sang 11 songs, full of happiness but concentration about moves and lyrics. The songs were:

The YV, Mr Blue Sky, The Lord’s Prayer, Pop medley, Folk songs of England, Weather Medley, You

Raise Me Up, Hallelujah, Family Film Fun, Son Of A Preacher Man and Oh He Thinks You Can Think.

We opened with ‘The YV’ and ended with the grand finale ‘pop medley’.

This term Year 6 learnt about germs and the body. What

do you know about vile viruses and bloody bones? Not

much?... well read on to find out more on the body and

horrible diseases.

Brain Busting Maths

In maths year six have been creating different types of

graphs, i.e. bar graphs and line graphs in Microsoft Excel

spreadsheets. The graphs were about their pulse and

heart rate. Mixing P.E with maths, they created

information on the beating heart. By doing many exercises every two minutes, to bring the

heart rate up, they then counted the beats and put the data

they collected in a line graph to show how it changed when

they exercised.

Writing

Year 6 in writing have been learning about the plague. They

have been writing about life as a plague doctor and what it

would be like to be the doctor when the plague was around.

They wrote a diary of a girl who has been locked up in her

house because her brother had the plague, and

unfortunately her mother came down with the symptoms.

Also to relate to their topic Skin Deep, they wrote victim

diaries of the plague. The teachers made up a story for them about 100,000 children

catching a virus, they had to then make up a name for the virus, make a leaflet, news report

and a newspaper report all about it.

ICT

In ICT used a program called Pivot Animator and

made animations to learn how to animate correctly,

then they moved onto a more advanced program

called Stop Motion Pro (Aardman Animations who

made Wallace and Grommit also use this program!)

to create a practice animation and then plan using

storyboards to film their real germ featured

animation. When finished they added titles and credits etc. using Microsoft Movie Maker.

They also made quizzes on micro-organisms using Microsoft PowerPoint.

P.E

In P.E they have looked at balances and sequences with partners and groups. They also did

fitness tests and they didn’t forget about warm ups so they didn’t stretch cold muscles. We

learned about symmetrical and asymmetrical balances.

This term was very hard for Year 6 as they work hard towards their SATs test after Easter.

Attendance News Well done everyone, school attendance has improved considerably this year. The school is currently

at 95.6% attendance so far this academic year, compared to this time last year when it was 93.3%.

Our target for the year is to stay above 95.5%, so we need to keep working hard to keep our

attendance levels high.

Here is a breakdown of the attendance level for each class this half term:

CLASS % MORNING NURSERY (most improved!) 94.3

AFTERNOON NURSERY 93.1

EMERALD 94.5

SAPPHIRE 95.7

WHITE g 95.8

PURPLE g 93.2

CRIMSON 97.5

SCARLET 96.6

VIOLET 96.6

RUBY 94.1

BLUE 97.1

INDIGO 96.1

GREEN 96.5

YELLOW 96.3

RED 97.5

ORANGE 94.2

Whole School Total this half term 95.7

This half term, 135 fabulous pupils achieved 100% attendance, and 161 pupils have had 100%

attendance for the entire Spring term, congratulations!

Well done to Crimson and Red for having the best attendance this half term and jointly winning a

non-uniform day on Friday 11th April!

Please remember…

…to phone us before 9.30am to let us know if your child will not be attending school.

…to keep your contact details up to date.

…we are unable to authorise holidays unless they met the criteria set by the Government.

Well Done to

Morning Nursery for

the most improved

attendance this half

term

School Clubs

We will be continuing to run our very popular afterschool clubs next year for the following

year groups. If your child wants to re-register for a place or apply for a place, please call to

reception for an application form.

The clubs starting from Easter 2014 are:

Monday Year 6 – Drama &Football

Year 5 – Drama

Tuesday Year 2 & 3 - Multiskills

Year 4 – ICT

Wednesday Years 5 & 6 - Tocks

Year 2,3,4,5 & 6 - Choir

Thursday Year 1 – Get Baking

Year 3 & 4 – Tocks

Year 5 & 6 – Dance

Comments Children have made about our Clubs:

Lets get Baking – I

love cooking.

Dance Club – Its fun and Miss

Bates is really good at

dancing!

Choir – Good but it’s hard

learning songs but great

going to Young Voices.

Football – Its good fun and

lots of things to do and play

ICT – I love staying with my mates,

having fun and learning computers

Multiskills – I really

enjoy the sports we do

TOCKS – Really good fun and a

good place to hang out with my

friends.