Radio Castle Debut

What an exciting morning! A huge thank you to Radio Castle for giving us the opportunity to be DJs for the morning.

If you didn't catch our show, you can catch up by visiting www.radiocastle.co.uk and choosing Listen Again. The kids were fantastic, but I think these comments, from a parent and another of the station's DJs say it best:

"Please can you pass on many congratulations to all three classes for the best hour of radio I have heard in a long time. I cried, I laughed and I danced! What more could anyone ask for? It was brilliant so please pass on a big "well done" and "thank you" to all of the children, and the staff of course!!

Caroline Smith"

"I am part of the team at Radio Castle and have been listening to the show the children put together that was broadcast this morning. 

I felt I had to write to say what a great job the kids and staff did putting this show together and the clarity and confidence they showed delivering. It was a great and varied programme too - they are a credit to the school and I do hope it can become a regular thing. 

Well done everyone 

Dave Mann"

Debut Radio Broadcast - Listen Live Today at 11:00

Don't forget to listen in to our debut radio broadcast today between 11:00 and 12:00 on Radio Castle. You can listen live from anywhere in the world via their streaming service. Simply visit www.radiocastle.co.uk and click Listen Live. Alternatively you can catch the broadcast later with their Listen Again service. The children will be bringing you performances of their poetry and a collection of their favourite music tracks, introduced by six different DJs throughout the hour. Please tune in and support us!

Getting to Grips with Computing

On Monday, a small group of our most able ICT users in years 5 and 6 joined their counterparts from other local schools at Stonham Aspal for a day of ICT activities. The children were given the opportunity to explore:

• Lego WeDo Construction sets, making programmable Lego creations; 
• Audacity - sound wave editing software; 
• Picasa - Image gallery and manipulation software;
• Scratch - a graphical programming language aimed at children;
• and an Unplugged activity in which the children had to think logically to solve a problem. 

As you can see from the photographs, the children had a great time and took lots of new ideas back to their schools.

The Human Eye Documentaries

In Blue Class this half term we have been working on a video project.

While some of the class were away on the How Hill residential trip, the ten of us who were left created a video sequence about the human eye. We combined video clips, an interview with our headteacher, and stop-frame animation to produce the video element over three days. We also selected music to accompany our videos from www.jamendo.com.

When everyone else returned we worked on writing narration to tell the story. We tried to ensure our narration had a clear structure, that it helped to link the visual elements together and that it formed a cohesive piece of writing.

Finally, we recorded ourselves and combined all the elements to create the videos embedded below. There are nine videos altogether, all using the same video footage, but with different versions of the narration.

We hope you will take the time to look at some of the results of our hard work and leave us your feedback in the comments on our blog.

A playlist of all the videos can be also found in High Definition on our YouTube channel - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL93B2741D27E96F37

Playlist of our nine videos

ICT at SRH Primary School, Framlingham

As part of our work with primary schools in the Thomas Mills High School Pyramid, a group of Year 5 children attended the 3rd session out of 6 aimed at extending children's ICT skills.
The session was originally due to have a 'film making' theme, but due to the inclement weather, this was changed to using spreadsheets. The children were able to collect and collate data, using EXCEL, and then create graphs and charts to which they added relevant images.
Many thanks to Mr Brook at SRH Framlingham for both organising this project and hosting it - we were made to feel very welcome. Good work!

ICT Newsletter September 2010

Open publication - Free publishing - More newsletter

Safer Internet Day

Today saw a range of activities taking place to develop awareness of using the internet safely.
It started with Mr Mansell leading an assembly about different uses of a computer (list being compiled below) and which information was personal, and which wasn't (children below making their decisions a la 'Runaround'!)In Yellow Class, the children used 'Hector's House' as a resource to develop the children's understanding of people not always being who or what they say they are.

They also looked at the different emotions that can be displayed by people at various times and what may cause them.

Finally, they looked at forms of cyberbullying and how important it is to keep our personal information safe so that this cannot be used by others.


In blue class we began the day thinking about what constitutes personal information and what information is safe to share online.

After break we looked at some examples of emails and discussed how we would respond to them. We learnt to recognise spam mail, chain letters and phishing, and talked about how people can use these to obtain personal details such as your bank account number or email addresses of your contacts.

In the afternoon we watched a video about being SMART online. They learnt that to be SMART, you must keep your personal details Safe; You should not Meet up with online friends; Accepting email from people you don't know can be dangerous; People and information you come across online may not always be Reliable; and if something on the internet makes you feel uncomfortable, you should Tell a trusted adult.
The children discussed a range of scenarios and what advice they would give in each situation.
We finished the day by producing posters reminding us of the rules we had learnt.

 

 

Control Technology with K'nex

Children in Blue Class have been working on a project which combines DT, Science and ICT, to create controllable vehicles using K'nex.

The children began by following instructions to make a simple K'nex vehicle. They then worked out how to connect a motor to make the vehicle move.

Alongside this work, they were also learning about circuits in Science lessons, and how to write computer programs using flowcharts (control technology) in ICT lessons.

The children were set a final task of combining all that they had learnt to create their own vehicle, which would hold a FlowGo box.

These boxes could be programmed using Flowol software and have various outputs (e.g. motors and lights) connected, to bring the vehicles 'to life'.

Here are some of the resulting vehicles. Click on the pictures to see larger versions, and scroll down to watch some videos of the vehicles in action.

Year 5 & 6 at TMHS

18 children from Earl Soham visited TMHS for a fantastic day of ICT, Science, Design Technology and Literacy. The children had great fun designing and making a rocket to send out a signal to ensure that their coach arrived to pick them up! They also looked at how to measure the altitude that their inventions reached.
The TMHS staff were excellent and this was matched by the interest shown by the children and their results - the bus arrived on time!