The rules of the blog...

The Porstwood Blog has been set up to allow children from Year Six at Portswood Primary School to reflect and comment about their experiences in the classroom.
Everything that you see written has been written by them. All their writing is proof read before publication but apart from checking for sense and spelling it is pretty much unaltered. The photographs are all taken and uploaded by the children themselves and what is chosen to be snapped is their own choice.

The rules for writing on the blog given to the children are:
1) Write your blog, letting everybody know what has been happening in school.
2) Do not include any names (pupil or teacher), even your own.
3) Include photographs of things not people.
4) Do write well - remember your writing is representing the whole school at large to the whole world, if they want to read it!
5) Be honest. People want to know what you think of things, but be fair. The Internet is not the place to air your bad feelings!
6) You must have your work read by an adult before it is published. This adult must be a teacher from Year Six and not a supply teacher.

Afternoon Artwork

This afternoon, during our art lesson, year 6 worked on our 3D stages (and their backdrops) that we had started to work on yesterday. For most of us it was a short task because we had nearly finished yesterday. Also, most of our designs were fairly simple making it an even quicker task.

Because we are preparing to perform the play "Joseph and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat", at the end of this term , it was an enjoyable task since I felt that my work was contributing to the end of term project. Moreover, to make the task at hand even more fun to do, we created a structure made of straws to support our backdrops.

Once we were satisfied with our finished product, we then moved on to create small stage props that were also drawn and painted onto other parts of the model. Overall, I thought that all of the 3D stages were very colourful and would all make an excellent backdrop for our performance.

On the other hand, I thought that it was fairly difficult to construct the supports and they took too much of the time that I could have spent sketching or starting to paint my backdrop. However I still managed to finish my painting and I am pleased with the final painting I produced today.

Audition day!

During the day so far, we have done a wide range of activities. The first thing we did was practicing our Joseph songs, we are getting better. Then, after that, we split up into two groups: the children who wanted to audition for the parts of the brothers in our Joseph peformance and the other children who went off to create comic strips, including there thoughts and feeling about going up to secondary school.

The auditions, prepared by the children alone, went very well and everyone got a chance to show off the performance skills. On the other hand, the children who participated in the ICT aspect of the morning, had a lot of fun and they also got to know the rest of the people who were going to the same secondary school.

After that, the whole year group split up into their literacy sets. Not many people were looking forward to literacy, but when we found out what we were doing, that all changed. As a project that all primary schools are doing, we started to read the book called Abomination by Robert Swindells. Then, we had to predict what we thought was going to happen in the rest of the book. All of our work that we do on this one book will go onto our secondary schools for the future.

Today in year 6

Today in year 6 the whole year group completed our Nile projects in the morning. In the after noon we are painting and building Egyptian landscapes to help with the backdrops of this years performance(Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dream coat).

Yesterday we began our projects on how is/was the River Nile used and today we finished the work, in our groups.Although some groups were not able to finish, most of the work was successfully completed. Then we evaluated our work according to our success criteria; group cohesion and time and resources management.

Over the next few days the children of year 6 are creating miniature 3D stage settings. Today one class is drawing the backdrops while the either is building small 3D pyramids for the scenery. For the proper performance, some ideas will be taken from the designs and used for the real backdrops.

The Farmy Assembly

Today has been an amazing day, so far, because we were asked to witness the year R assembly which was just superb because it was full of farm songs which the receptions sung in almost perfect harmony.

We came into school at 9:00 and the day went well but the teachers were not in such a great mood. After a few minutes of being given examples of how some people could improve behaviour, we were politely interupted by some year 4 pupils who kindly invited us to come to an assembly hosted by the reception pupils.

Approaching the junior hall, the restless children awaiting us were eager to watch the assembly. The second the receptions welcomed us, the whole of year 6 were sighing at how cute the year r's were. What I would give to be 4 again! Suddenly young reception stood up, seemingly unphased by the vast number of junior pupils, and introduced us to the assembly. Soon a few other young pupils popped up and began to show us how talented they really were. The whole assembly was based on some children who wanted to go to the farm and it involved several songs. For example: Old Macdonald, Bingo and the Floppy Scarecrow. Reluctantly we stood up and left the room to begin the day.

Soon after leaving we resumed our efforts at our Nile work Which are turning out great! So far nearly every one has finished and I can't wait to see the final result due to the high expectations from myself and the teacher. From what I have seen so far today we are set for a really good day!

This is an exaple of some of the work we have done.

River Nile focus day

This is a crocodile made by one
group to represent the animals
of the Nile.


This was a half finished hippo that
everyone agreed was brilliant.

Today, we based all our work on the River Nile and how it has been used and how it still is used. To start, we all brainstormed what it has been and is used for. Once we had a wide range of ideas, everyone split up into groups and thought of activities we could perform to represent each leisure or requirement the Nile provided. Once we had a vast range of options, each group decided amongst themselves what their group would do. Choices ranged from building a model of an Ancient Egyptian boat, to representing transport, or a pop-up book representing Ancient Egyptian life near the Nile. Once we had each planned: the success criteria, the learning objective, activity and Equipment needed we began to perform the tasks we had set ourselves. Almost everyone has enjoyed the day so far.