Welcome back to the final term of this academic year.

This week Hollinwood Academy primary was invaded by pirates! This was a whole primary ‘hook’ for learning for the new term’s topic, ‘Pieces of Eight’. The primary classes want to share with you all what they got up to on Tuesday. Let’s find out about the fantastic day they had, starting with Mr Rawson’s class..

This week we had ‘Pirate Day’ on Tuesday, the staff and children came dressed as pirates and we had pirate themed lessons..

The class had Pirate Yoga, then we did English and the class read chapter 1 of Treasure Island before drawing their own pirates and using adjectives and verbs in their descriptions. The class also wrote messages to Miss Parkinson’s class and placed them in a bottle, then we did Pirate Maths which consisted of the children having a booty bag of jewels and 5 gold coins each. They had to use the jewels to make the values up off the board and if they got a question wrong, they forfeited a gold coin (this really focused their attention!!)..

Mrs Lomax’s class..
Wow, what a fantastic start to the Summer term. Our classroom was awash with pirates! We took part in lots of pirate challenges where we had to work with our ship mates to complete a task. During the day we created a super long chain from newspaper..

..and then together we tried to measure it..

We danced to some sea shanties and played ‘Captain Says’, whilst also enjoying an opportunity to pull some scary pirate faces in our port hole photo booth..

Some pirates were scarier than others!

At the end of the day we enjoyed joining the other classes to join our part of the chain with theirs and the chain went all the way from the Reception classroom to up the stairs at the end of the corridor. We have really enjoyed the day and loved working together.

Miss Shin’s class..
To begin our new topic, we shared everything we already know about pirates and asked questions that we would like to find out the answer to during the topic..

Next we used recycled materials to create a huge paper chain, we measured the pieces and at the end counted that our paper chain was 110 pieces long..

After play time, we worked on our map skills. We drew maps of the class and hid a piece of treasure each in a secret location. We added an X to mark the spot of our treasure on the map. Finally, our partners had to read the maps to find the hidden treasure. After lunch we paused our usual class book to read a pirate story! Next we wrote letters to all the children in Mr Corrigan’s class to tell them all about our day as a pirate. We made a treasure chest to put the letters in and hid it outside Mr Corrigan’s classroom for the children to find. We also had a surprise delivery – Mr Corrigan’s class had left us some lovely pirate pictures in a bottle..

We also found time for a quick photo shoot..

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Miss Parkinson’s class..
The children absolutely loved our ‘hook’ for learning day (pun intended!) and it was great to see them engage and become so enthusiastic about their new topic of pirates. Each class was given the challenge to create a chain for our ‘Anchors away!’ activity at the end of the day… the chain had to be made out of recycled materials and it was great to see some really ‘original’ recycled items!
My class were given the challenge to measure the entire chain… the children loved it. We all estimated how long we thought it would be before we started measuring..

We used a variety of measuring equipment and converted and added up our totals..

I can now confirm that Hollinwood Academy’s anchor chain measured an impressive 8160cm (81.6m)!!

Mr Corrigan’s class:
On Pirate Day we had a swashbuckling time; singing sea shanties, reading pirate poetry and building our pirate ship.

We also used our ICT lesson to make our ‘message in a bottle’ for Miss Shin’s class and we made an anchor chain out of recycled materials. We then measured the chain and joined it together with the rest of the school..

Mr Heap’s class:
Ahoyyyy matey, in Captain Heap’s class we had a fantastic Pirate Day! We had a treasure hunt in soft play and searched for and explored a range of pirate items. ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH, shiver me timbers, we also worked on our addition and subtraction using pirate coins as counters. We all showed amazing team work by building a very long chain and finally some of our class had amazing costumes that they would like you to see!!

Miss Loudon’s class also had a wonderful day, as you can see..

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Reception and AB4:
Early Years and AB4 had an amazing time on Pirate Day and were joined by some very special shipmates! Thank you to all the Mums, Dads and Grandparents who came along and joined in all our exciting activities, the children had a fantastic time and we hope you did too! We started the morning with a very active Pirate story where we discovered that Mrs Dunsdon’s impression of a pirate is not dissimilar to that of a West Country Farmer!! The story will form the basis for our Talk 4 Writing this half term. After the story we all went into the hall for a dance and drama session where we were joined by Mrs Preston and the students from Lumenus. We played pirate games..

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..tried some sword fighting..

..and even sat in a boat..

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It was very energetic – one Nana commented that she wouldn’t be needing the gym on that day! As we were all really hot we went back to class for a glass of ‘rum’ (juice) and some snack. Our final activity of the morning was the Pirate Stroll and we all had to search around the grounds for Pirate pictures. We had 10 to find and some were pretty well hidden. We took part in activities such as ‘Walking the Plank’, ‘Avoiding the Sharks’, and ‘Feeding the Parrot’..

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All the pupils managed to find the hidden pictures and all received a special Pirate Stroll Certificate..

At the end of the morning we said good bye to our shipmates and in the afternoon we enjoyed sensory activities; hunting for jewels on the beach of a desert island and searching for gold at the bottom of the sea! We also all made a Pirate hat which we took home with us at the end of our adventure..

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Thank you to everyone, especially to the families for making our adventure so great by joining us and helping the children with fantastic costumes and props.

This week I asked Ms Horsefield, the TA for KS3NNL class, to share what the boys have been up to..

Firstly in Maths, we have moved on to the topic of ratio and proportion and this week have been learning how to simplify ratios in context and sharing money and other units between ratios. We have also used our knowledge of converting between units like mass, length, capacity and English currency to help us solve harder questions. Mrs Needham has also introduced the application Showbie, an app on the iPads where assignments and homework can be exchanged and shared between teachers, students and parents. We all completed area mazes which are our first task on the app, a problem solving activity. Showbie has also been used in Music with Mr Bloska where we have been starting to plan and create sound effects for movies and games.

In PE with Mr Lawrence, we have started a new sport: badminton. To begin we tried to keep rallies going and then played ‘king of the court’ to see who is the best player in the group. Jack, Connor and Callum all ended up on the top court at the end. Furthermore, we learnt how to set up the nets and put them away correctly and safely.

On Friday, Connor and Thomas have received their certificates for their Functional Skills Mathematics Level 1 exam which they took in February. Thomas and Ethan have also received their peer mentor certificates for completing their training. They will find out who their mentee is soon!

Mrs Potts’ class also wanted to tell you what they have been up to this week..

We have had a successful few weeks in swimming with Jamie, James, Ryan, Ryan, Taylor and Logan all managing to get themselves on the ‘Swimming Hall of Fame’ by swimming at least 500m – that’s a great achievement, congratulations boys!

In PE, the topic has moved on to to Badminton from Tampolining and there has also been an option where some of the group opted to do Dance with Miss Clancy and some of her form..

In Music the group have been looking at the different sound effects and experimenting with them..

In Science with Miss Daniels, the class have learnt how to wire a plug..

Miss Daniels was very impressed with everyone’s efforts..

In Living Skills the class made bread, although unfortunately it all got eaten before we had chance to take a picture!!

As you can see, the first week back has been very busy and jampacked with learning which has definitely engaged our pupils. Now on to our Primary SEAL Superstars and our Stars of the Week:

• Mrs Dunsdon’s class:
  Star of the Week: Lewis for fantastic behaviour and participation on Pirate Day..

SEAL Superstar: Madison for being able to say who her family are..

• Miss Grimsley’s class:
  Star of the Week: Ijaaz for trying really hard on Pirate Day and joining in all the activities
  SEAL Superstar: Fatima for learning and saying the children’s names in her class
• Mrs Lomax’s class:
  Star of the Week: Farrukh for identifying the colours by correctly reading each word and using this to complete the worksheet
  SEAL Superstar: Tyler for returning back to school after the Easter break and showing a fantastic attitude to friends and learning
• Mr Corrigan’s class:
  Star of the Week: Essah for trying his best in the dining hall at lunch times..

SEAL Superstar: Harrison for talking about his feelings after his family got a new dog..

• Miss Louden’s class:
  Star of the Week: Mariam for keeping calm when others weren’t
  SEAL Superstar: Rahmeen for talking about people who are important to her
• Miss Parkinson’s class:
  Star of the Week: Eden for fantastic participation in our new topic
• Mr Heap’s class:
  Star of the Week: Lucas for fantastic work in drama
  SEAL Superstar: Thomas for being kind and being a lovely friend
  Our new ‘Marvellous Meerkat’ is Caelan for fantastic subtracting in Maths. We hope you and Meerkat have a fantastic weekend and we can’t wait to hear about your marvellous adventures!
• Miss Shin’s class:
  Star of the Week: Josh for fantastic work and behaviour all week
  SEAL Superstar: Rhys for settling in well into his new school
• Mr Rawson’s class:
  Star of the Week: Donte for great effort in all classes

Well done to all our stars who have made an excellent start to the Summer term!

Letters have gone home to families with details of our next Holiday Club – don’t forget to return your form by Friday if you would like to request a place for your child.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Jaina

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