I know we say this every term, but summer term, truly has been, the busiest term yet! We’ve managed to fit so many exciting things in to the last 6 weeks, from planning and creating businesses, to singing our hearts out for Aladdin and lots of different sporting activities in between! What a way to end the year!
To kickstart our theme, we entered the Cracking Ideas competition, run by Aardman Studios, famous for their lovable, animated characters Wallace and Gromit. The children were challenged to design a sustainable and creative way to travel around the UK. With their imaginations let loose, they certainly delivered with their design ideas.
Their wonderfully wacky ideas included, a walking house, a car powered by cheese and a hamster style ball powered by solar panels! Who wouldn’t want to travel in one of these? They have certainly proved themselves to be ambitious, capable learners!
The children continue to show their ambitious and creative natures as they were set their next challenge; working collaboratively to create their own businesses. They were challenged to ensure that it was healthy and sustainable ready for their products to be sold at our SJPS Healthy Food Festival in the last week of term. Year 5 we full of excitement, eager to find out whose business was going to make the biggest profit! Not only were they aiming to make profit for themselves but as a year group, we decided to donate a percentage of our profit to Gwent Wildlife Trust too, proving that we are ethically informed citizens, committed to looking after our local environment.
To ensure that their businesses is able to make the greatest profit, we spent some time carrying out price comparisons of our ingredients. Using Google Sheets and price comparison websites, we prepared a ‘cost sheet’. This was of particular importance when they came to the most nerve wracking part of our theme – presenting their business ideas to The Dragons! They had previously seen clips from Dragons’ Den and realised how every part of their business would be scrutinised! Their fears were unfounded, however as they expertly presented their pitches like real professionals, confidently answering any question that was batted to them. The Dragons were so impressed by their entrepreneurship and enthusiasm for their sustainable businesses that they decided that the profits they would normally make from investing in these products, could instead be donated to Gwent Wildlife Trust, to further add to the charity’s coffers.
To help us when planning our business, we looked at how many of our food practices are damaging to people’s health and to the environment and why this is unsustainable in the long run. They joyfully planted strawberry runners, and learnt that we can easily grow strawberries at home, organically and without using single use plastic for packaging. Determined to give their plants every opportunity to develop fruit, they were left outside for part of the day so bees and other insects would pollinate them. This led onto a visit from the beekeeper, Lorne East from Sirhowy Valley Honey. The children completed a variety of activities to explore the complex lives of bees and their importance to our food system. Did you know that bees are critical pollinators, pollinating 70% of the crops that feed 90% of the world? The visit ended with children using the honey extracting machine and sampling delicious honey and honeycomb.
After exploring the environmental footprint of a variety of dairy and plant milks, students received a master class, showing them how to create their own oat milk. They chose a variety of ways to innovate this milk, using bananas, cocoa powder and berries. To avoid food waste, the leftover pulp was used to make Fruit Medley Pots and again, children decided to experiment with a range of toppings, such as coconut and cinnamon.
Throughout the theme, children have clearly demonstrated that they are ethical, informed citizens as well as being enterprising, creative contributors. We definitely have some budding entrepreneurs on the horizon – watch this space!
On top of becoming budding entrepreneurs, we have enjoyed forming the chorus for Year 6s performance of Aladdin. We worked hard to learn all of the songs and sung our hearts out in every practise and performance. Not only did we have some wonderful singers in year 5 but we also have some budding stage technician who worked on the lights, cameras and sound! We are really looking forward to being centre stage at the end of next year for our own end of year performance! We also had some great fun preparing for and performing as part of our ‘Creative Festival’ to celebrate 70 years of SJPS! A fantastic occasion, full of wonderful 1960’s outfits and costumes and a brilliant performance of ‘The Monkees- I’m a Believer’
Just when you thought we couldn’t possibly fit anything else into our term, we have also taken part in some brilliant sporting activities. We had another visit from ‘Forces Fitness’, where we completed some team building activities, worked on resilience and thoroughly enjoyed a class tug of war! We have also had a squash taster session, following which, Lisa, told us that we were one of the best schools she had visited for both skill and behaviour!
Amongst all of this sporting excitement, we cannot forget our sports day! It was lovely to be able to share this event with parents and carers again and all of the children showed brilliant sportsmanship and resilience which led to a brilliantly, hot day, enjoyed by everyone!
We cannot quite believe we have reached the end of the year already! We are so proud of how each and every child this year, returning to ‘normal’ school life with determination and positivity and it has been an absolute pleasure to be their teachers! We hope you all have a wonderful, well deserved summer break and we look forward to hearing all about it in the Autumn term as you start your final year in primary school!
