The Year 5 children had an exciting opportunity to Skype with children in India, at a school called Bhojwas, showcasing work they had all produced in response to the theme Cuisines around the world. They demonstrated their presentation skills with a short PowerPoint and a video of themselves cooking different dishes. The children were brilliant at communicating and sharing ideas with those who speak a different language, thousands of miles away.

Year 5 has also had some visitors who came to talk about Ethiopia. One demonstrated and taught the children how to cook some traditional curries! They thought they were yummy (although maybe a bit HOT); they also dressed in traditional clothing and learned about Ethiopian ceremonies.

Back in the technology world, year 5 had a rather exciting live coding lesson from the BBC which taught them how important coding would be for many of their future jobs. They even got to look at how The Voice chair works and hear from Will.i.am.

The Year 6 children have been working hard on the Global Enterprise Challenge, for which trading came to an end on 9 March. The teams have put together a final company report which will be shortlisted according to the quality of work and total profit. Shortlisted teams from around the world will be judged by Mandeep Atwall and Mark Sparvell from Microsoft and technology journalist Merlin John.

The winners will be announced after the Easter holidays, and will be sent to America in April to collect their prize. Good luck to the children who have taken part all over the world!

The Year 4 children had a day in Exeter city centre during March, when they were treated to lunch on Cathedral Green before enjoying an informative and interesting tour of the city with the Red Coats. The guides really inspired the class with stories from World War II and the Exeter Blitz including the George Cross awardee Nurse Knee and the heroic Mary the Pigeon!

They also had a mystery visitor, through the power of Skype, whom they had to identify with careful questioning. Their guest was Museum Curator at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, US, and she took them on a virtual tour of the museum including the famous Spitfire and Higgins Boats before answering lots of questions about America’s part in the war.

The children loved going on a hunt around school to find ten escaped dinosaurs. They learnt about compass directions and used their compasses to follow directions around the school to find the escapees! They also identified various features around the school located at different compass points and they gave each other directions to follow to get to key locations around the classroom and school.
As part of World Book Week, Year 1 children had the fantastic opportunity to join in with a Skype call with a school in Missouri in the US. The children loved talking about their school and life in Exeter and Broadclyst and comparing the similarities and differences between where they live and Missouri. The call included a lovely opportunity to read a story together and to talk about our favourite books and authors.

A highlight of the term for Year 3 was World Book Week. The children, who dressed up as characters from their favourite books, were visited by authors Tanya Landman and David Lawrence. In addition, groups of children worked together to write a story from a starting paragraph by a professional author – in fact the whole school joined in with this Write Path project.

Other activity for the week included writing book reviews about My Brother’s Famous Hot Cross Bottom by Jeremy Strong, and staff joined in the fun by dressing up themselves, on a theme of Alice in Wonderland. 

Head Teacher's Blog 9th March 2015 from Broadclyst Primary School on Vimeo.

Today is World Book Day! In school all the children have been dressing up as their favourite book characters, sharing stories and writing fiction together. There have been various exciting book-related projects going on all week and tomorrow we will be able to share the outcomes of some of these with you. Here is the whole school together - what a colourful bunch we are!

Head Teacher's Blog 3rd March 2015 from Broadclyst Primary School on Vimeo.

Today was the first assembly in our new school hall. It was an exciting event, and gave the staff and pupils alike a chance to see the building as well as look at the climbing wall, projectors and cameras, theatre-syle sound and light and the new staging.

Mr Bishop led the assembly, discussing 'Fortune Favours the Brave', the school moto, and how this relates to trying hard and persevering even when you are nervous or unsure. We watched Chloe W climb the wall, as well as held a skype call to a class of children in Israel who are also participating in the Global Enterprise Challenge with our year 6 pupils. Mr Bishop also explained that this was the first time the school has been able to hold a whole school assembly for twelve years!

A teacher/parent band accompanied the the hymn 'This Little Light of Mine' with live instruments and then the chamber choir performed 'Winter Wind' at the end on the new staging. Look out for the recording of the assembly on clickview this week.

We can finally let you know that we (Year 6 in particular) have been working with Microsoft and BBC Earth, creating educational resources to go alongside their incredible new 3D film, Enchanted Kingdom. What an honour! Read the full article on the Microsoft blog below:

http://news.microsoft.com/en-gb/2015/01/28/project-based-learning-for-schools-comes-to-life-with-new-bbc-earth-natural-history-film-enchanted-kingdom/