The Big Birdwatch

Year 2 really got involved in this. They set up a bird watch area near the window in class and made bird feeders and logs to see how many diferent types of birds they could see!

National Story Telling Week and World Book Day

We love joining other year groups and working together across the whole school. For national Story Telling Week, we wrote extended stories and read them to a friend in another year group. Reception Class joined their buddies in Year 5 and Year 1 children joined their Year 6 buddies. It was great!

Showtime! Goosnargh Showtime Spectacular!

What a great week we spent preparing to perform for the local community. Our children were amazing and we enjoyed performing band pieces -with a little soloist!

 

Science Week 2017

STEM Education – THE SQUASHED TOMATO CHALLENGE!

St. Francis Champions!

Today we were invited with a number of local primary schools to take part in a STEM activity at Longridge High School. STEM is curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The children were put into teams within their schools. 16 TEAMS took part today.

The problem: In Nepal many farmers living on the mountainside grow fruit and vegetables, including tomatoes. To earn a living they need to sell these at the local market. The problem is getting to market involves a long, dangerous walk down the mountain side and over a river, at the end of which the tomatoes may well be a bit squashed. The challenge: To design, build and test a way of moving tomatoes that won’t squash them!

 

Each table was supplied with a clamp, some K’nex, masking tape, scissors, 5m of string, a small box and a design sheet.

Each team had two hours to come up with a design idea, construct it, test it, improve it, then wait patiently for the judging panel. The panel then came to each table with a box of cherry tomatoes. The teams were given one minute each to transport as many tomatoes as they could. Marks were awarded for working as a team, communication skills, design, stability, and finally the numbers of tomatoes.

Our children, as always, are a credit!

Hovercrafts and friction

As part of our Science week investigations, we made hovercraft using CD’s and balloons. We discovered that the air from the balloon reduced the friction between the CD and our desks to make a great smooth-moving hovercraft….perfect for a game of air hockey!

We also looked at friction in other situations. Here is our paperback book challenge…. we were amazed to discover how difficult it was to pull apart two paperbacks held together by only their interlocking pages and a bit of friction!

Fairtrade Fortnight with a visitor: Steph Slater Paralympic Gold medalist

We were truly inspired to meet Steph and hear of her story. Her determination gave us great strength and reaffirmed our belief that we can do anything we try hard enough! Steph spent time in all classes. You can see the newspaper report on our Sports Page.

 

Making our Christmas CD

We had a great time coming together as a school community in making our Christmas CD. We also recorded Beacon Class readin ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ and it was amazing! Our PTFA burned the CDs for us and sold them at the Carol Concert and Infant Nativity. We raised £300 to help our school development plan regarding the extension of the infant and EYFS outdoors area.

 

 

To Infinity And Beyond!

Mr Allcock from the Tim Peake Primary Space Project came into school to do a workshop with us about space and the International Space Station. We entered a competition to be a part of this project and we were chosen to undertake and host a space training evening for staff from our own and other schools. We were amazed to hear about life on the space station and enjoyed organising ourselves into the order of the planets using huge inflatable planets!

 

Harry Potter Book Study

We wrote and delivered Dragon’s Den style presentations using persuasive language – we definitely have some budding entrepreneurs in our class! We also used persuasive language in a ‘Sorting Hat’ activity – we persuaded the sorting hat to put us in our choice of Hogwarts house!

Year of Mercy Pilgrim Statue Icon

We have undertaken a range of active initiatives to support those less fortunate than ourselves. Have a look on our ‘Year of Mercy’ webpage to see more!

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN…

St. Francis’ has celebrated the Queen’s 90th birthday with a street party!

As our British Values remain close to our hearts, it was humbling and very powerful to have one of our trumpet players starting our celebration by playing God Save the Queen. There was a real sense of unity and we were delighted to welcome all within our community to join us for such a very special occasion.

 

Click the flag to see the National Anthem played by Can

OUT OF THIS WORLD

Our NASA experiment

 Beacon class have been given a very important job… to grow seeds from outer space.

St Francis’ won the opportunity to take part in an experiment that NASA are conducting. They send Rocket Seeds to outer space on the International Space Station with Tim Peak. They have sent us these seeds together with Rocket Seeds that haven’t been in space, to selected schools around the world. We have no idea which seeds are which and we are treating them all equally to see if there is a difference to how they grow or what their outcome will be. The results will be assessed by NASA and a report will be published in September this year.

14/03/16 Science and Engineering week!

SCIENCE WEEK!

A question for you. What happens to a fresh egg when you leave it in vinegar for a week? We have had some wonderful predictions. We will tell you the answer next week.

 

Challenge two: To drop a fresh egg from a height, without the egg breaking.

The children chose from a selection of resources to create protection for their eggs. We had some fantastic creations and some amazing results. The eggs were dropped from 10 cm to 3 mtr – if they have survived!

The winning egg survived a fall from 3 metres!

The other competitors…

  

We had some worried faces as the children checked to see if their egg had survived to take another fall…

  

We had a few messy moments too…

  

I know, not very flattering. Getting in to the spirit of things as my egg takes another fall… a cracks!

Some of our finalists…

  

Challenge one: In teams to design a roller-coaster 4m longer that contains one loop and a hill and will carry a marble down. To add to the fun, the teams then compete against friends to see which is the fastest.

           

The teams fixed together pieces of foam tubing with masking tape. When they were happy with their design and had tested it worked, they used a stopwatch to time how long it took for each marble to complete the ride.

A big thank you to Mrs Tina Gornall for coming in to school today to work with the children and setting them this challenge.

Fun with magnets!

Before being taught about magnets, children need time to explore with them. Look at the awe and wonder in their faces.

   

  

   

  

Parachutes…

The children were set the task to design and produce 3 different parachutes. They were measuring the area of each parachute to detemine wether a larger surface area created a greater amount of force.

Temperature, Sound and Light…

Using Data Loggers, Beacon class conducted several experiements. We even recorded thoughout the night, to collect data within the classroom. Children could record and review their results with some interesting anomalies.

 

Science with Mrs Gornall

Thank you to Mrs. Gornall. The children had a fantastic morning learning about forces. They were set the challange of creating their own roller coasters, using foam tubes, a set of marbles and a stop watch. Take a look below at what the children produced…

‘Chick, Chick, Chick, Chick…. Chickens…. lay a little egg for me…

Catherine Yarwood, the very kind lady, who is going to be lending school the equipment to hatch our very own Bantum chickens has been into school to do a talk.

The children had lots of fantastic questions and were egar to find out as much as they could, to increase their knowledge, to help and look after our chicks. We saw a video of a chicken trying to hatch and we saw an unltrasound of a chicken in an egg. We will be able to do this on our eggs. We also met some Bantum chickens and they were very good and let us hold them…

Meet… Zazu and Clio…