Gifted and Talented Maths Day

Today, some of the most able mathematicians from Earl Soham, Bedfield, Creeting St Mary, Helmingham and Sir Robert Hitcham, Debenham, came together to enjoy a day of maths puzzles, problems and challenges.

They calculated how fast they could run in mph and compared their average speed with that of other animals; they built an array of 3D shapes from wood and masking tape, and studied their properties; and they solved some tricky problems to earn crystals in the Crystal Maze.

It was a fantastic day, and a great opportunity for these children to mix with like-minded individuals from their local community and begin to forge friendships.

Thank you to Mrs Lawrence and Sir Robert Hitchams School for hosting the event.

Football Fever

This week in Blue Class we have been in a Football Frenzy as we approach the World Cup. The children were put into groups and assigned a home city around the world. Each group then came up with a name for their football team and designed their kit. With a budget of £70m and a limit of 1500 player points, the groups then had to put together a squad of 15 players.

The groups designed and built their own football stadiums, which had to meet a given set of criteria.

Each day the groups had to put forward two teams, taking into account injured players, to compete in two matches. In each match, the team with the highest player points won.

On Wednesday the groups were given the opportunity to boost their teams with a transfer day. Corporate sponsorship gave them an extra £500,000 per win. Following the transfer window, an additional two games were played on Wednesday.

On Thursday, the children learnt how to write a match report. An example is shown below.

Berlin Bears V  London Lions Results.

No travelling was needed for the Berlin Bears when they had a match against London Lions right in their home, Berlin. They had a match which had the audience on the edge of their seats with a strong result of 2-0.

The crowd was buzzing as we started the match on a rather nice day with the sun shining brightly on the lime green rug within the stadium.

On 13 Gerrard started off through the middle getting at least 16 yards before the Wild Cats’ striker pulled in front of him, forcing to feed Noone his precious cargo.

All of a sudden Noone curled round Davies and nodded the ball successfully into the awaiting net. The spectators went wild, even the 272 from London.

After Michael Solmen shouted for play, this time London’s forward, Cattermole burst ahead passing back and forth with Campbell. Getting too close for comfort for the Growlers Campbell nodded it wide and a disappointed murmur spread across the crowd.

At the next whistle, the players gathered in the center for half time. After that the players trooped into the tunnels.

The long whistle signalled that they had to come out. Whitaker took the center pass and stabbed it straight to Shelvey, Shelvey received it even though  the wild cats’ midfielder Cole gave all his effort to block the pass. So Shelvey was off playing into the space on the right, dodging and sprinting, the ball always in front of him until Cole was back again sending in a slide-tackle within a whisker of Shelvey’s shin.

Despite that attack on the 78th minute Shelvey managed to screw his volley perfectly- Sczensay didn’t stand a chance. That sent the crowd wild- the Berlin Bears were in the lead! 2-0

Now with 3 minutes left in the game the Wild Cats’ center pass went to Jenidae however he only got 19 yards before the last whistle sounded. It was over.

The growlers won and celebration was in store!

by Naomi

By the end of the week, tensions were high as the top teams, Rio Mosaic and Paris Penguins battled it out for first place, while Brahman and The London Lions were trying to avoid relegation.

The final points score looked like this:

Match >	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	Total
The London Lions	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3
Rio Mosaic	3	3	3	3	0	3	3	0	3	0	3	3	27
King Kong	0	0	3	3	0	3	3	3	3	0	0	0	18
Berlin Bears	3	0	0	3	3	3	3	3	0	0	3	3	24
Paris Penguins	0	3	0	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	0	0	24
Majestic Parrots	3	3	3	0	3	0	0	0	3	3	3	3	24
Brahman	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0	3	6

Rainbow Class

As the intrepid explorers set off for the depths of Norfolk (How Hill) on Wednesday...

...those of us left in school came out to wave them off. 

We were left with an odd mixture of year groups: almost all of year six; a couple of year fives; no years fours at all; some of year three; and all of reception to year two. We split into two classes for the week. Mrs Stoney kept Reception, Year one and half of Year two (a combination of Red and Yellow class, which has for some time been known as Orange Class), and I took the remains of the older year groups, plus the other half of Year two. This left us with a dilemma to solve. I had some of Blue Class, and some of Yellow class. We had already named this mix Green Class when teaching Year three to Year six in the afternoons for the past year or so. Now, however, I also had some Year twos...from Orange class. Luckily, I was saved from having to name them Brown Class, by a clever Year two girl, who thought of the name Rainbow Class.

So for three days, we were Rainbow Class and I was Mr Rainbow. We took the opportunity to do lots of art and maths, based around the story Math Curse by Jon Scieszka and the classic poem Jabberywocky by Lewis Carroll.

It was a lovely three days and I really enjoyed working with this great bunch of kids.

Capacity

To begin our latest theme in numeracy, Yellow Class spent Monday morning undertaking a range of practical capacity tasks. I'd like to point out that the water was coloured to make the reading of capacity easier! The class compared a variety of containers to guide them with their estimates as to what their capacity might be. Then they filled the containers with water and poured the contents into measuring jugs to establish the actual capacity.

The children certainly had fun, the weather was incredibly kind and we all learnt something new...

Maths Investigations

This week, in maths, Blue Class have been focusing on investigation skills. The children were challenged to solve a series of mathematical challenges by working systematically, thinking through a problem and choosing the equipment they needed to solve it.

It was great to see the children experimenting with different ways of representing mathematical problems.

Even the Teaching Assistants enjoyed trying to work out the solutions!

A Sweet Introduction to Fractions

This morning Yellow Class started out on their latest Numeracy theme, fractions. The children all has a bag of 20 Jelly Tots (other jelly sweets are available) and were asked to organise them in a methodical way. There were some links to our previous data handling work, but the key was to develop an understanding of what a fraction actually is ( the number out of the whole amount) to enable the class to be able to work out fractions of shapes and amounts as the theme progresses. It appears that recent multiplication and division work will also come in rather handy...

Designing the Olympic Site

Last week during our Olympic Theme week, the children in Blue Class were set the task of working in teams to design the site for the London Olympics. These photographs show some of their work in progress.

They gave group presentations on Friday to present their ideas and showed some impressive thinking and design skills.

Thomas Mills Armada Day

Today year 5 and 6 headed off to Thomas Mills for a fantastic cross-curricular day all about the Tudors and, in particular, the Spanish Armada.

We were joined by pupils from Dennington Primary and divided into two groups by year group.

Year 5 began the day in the DT room, building a model of an Elizabethan English warship. In under two-hours, the children were able to create a superb model, using a range of tools that are not available to them at primary school.

Meanwhile, the year six pupils learnt about the Spanish Armada and how they met their downfall due to a combination of good English tactics and superior ships and weapons, mistakes on the part of the Spanish, and most importantly, the good old British weather!

This was followed by a maths session in which the children played a board game. Their aim was to successfully sail their ships (this time in role as a Spanish flotilla) from Spain to the Spanish Mainland to collect Aztec and Incan treasure for King Phillip.

After lunch the groups swapped over and completed the other activities. It was, as usual, an excellent day that all of the children (and staff) thoroughly enjoyed.

Building a Roman Fort

Over the last three weeks, we have been busy in Blue Class building our own Roman fort, based on Garrianonum (Burgh Castle) which we visited earlier in January.

First we studied the construction of the walls at Garrianonum, and produced designs of flint and tile on polystyrene, which we used to print a pattern for the walls of the fort.

We then cut out and folded the nets which Mr Mansell had designed to build the walls and turrets. Making the corners was quite tricky.

We each produced a building from a net, adding our own decoration based on research from books about the Romans. We made barracks for the soldiers to sleep and train in, granaries to store their food, and forums where they could meet and hold discussions and debates.

On Thursday afternoon we worked together to put all the pieces of wall together and planned the layout of the interior of the fort, using books to help us.

 We hope you like our finished fort. Our plan for next week is to complete the trebuchets we are making and test them against our fort! I wonder which will be the strongest?

If anyone would like to build their own Roman Fort and would like to use the nets, please contact me - I would be happy to share the plans. jamesmansell@earlsoham.suffolk.sch.uk

Maths Share Day

On Wednesday and Thursday, parents and grandparents joined in with maths lessons in Blue and Yellow Classes. Blue Class were learning the grid method of multiplication (examples of which are shown below) and Yellow Class were learning about angles. 

Feedback from the parents who came has been very positive and the teaching staff were all pleased to be able to involve so many parents in their children's learning. 

Plans will be under way soon for another similar event. In the meantime, please enjoy the photographs below.

Grid Method Multiplication

Maths SHARE Day - Red Class

This morning our first ever 'SHARE' day was held in Red Class. We were delighted with the support received from all parents in setting this up and it was pleasing to see so many able to attend. The main focus was on subtraction with a number of activities set up both inside and out. The children were delighted to have so many adults to share their learning experiences with and we hope that this is the first of many opportunities for parents to fully take part in the classroom experience!

Properties of 3D shape

In Blue Class this week we have been learning about the properties of 3D shapes. A group of children were set the task of making a short film about a shape to explain its properties. While not all of them got it exactly right, they clearly understood most of the properties. Here are some of their films.

Practical Capacity!

Yellow class made the most of the fantastic weather to undertake some work on capacity as part of their numeracy.

Some children were estimating how many cups of water it would take to fill a range of containers, whilst others were using measuring equipment to work out the capacity of different containers.

Some of us managed to stay dry!

World Maths Day

Blue and Yellow classes started by warming up with the traditional logic problem of the farmer needing to get his chicken, grain and a fox across a river. The farmer is only able to ferry one item at a time to the other side, but needs to ensure that none of the items are left unattended which may eat another item! The children wrote down their ideas for how this could work and then acted them out.

They then undertook the 'Only Smarties Have the Answer' challenge. This involved the children working in groups of 3 or 4 investigating the contents of a fun-size box of smarties.

The children started by counting the contents of their own box.

Then they added the totals of the contents in their group together. This enabled them to work out the mean average per box within their group.

The different colours in each box and group were then sorted and this information was then transferred into a graph which could then be interpreted. This information was then shared with everyone else in large tables. The children also measured Smarties and then worked out the total length if they were placed side by side. The three most effective leaders were then awarded with a rather 'funky' calculator each for their sterling efforts. It had been a great morning for everyone.