Monthly archives: March 2023
Levens Lego League!
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What a day for class 4 today! We’ve been in Barrow attending the FIRST LEGO league regional final.
It’s been a day of grueling challenges, starting early with the first test of the robot we have been coding in school over the last few months. We quickly learned that the robot game wasn’t going to be as easy as it had seemed at first; we needed to regroup to strategise and come up with a game plan. Despite a difficult first round, Class 4 showed resilience, came up with a plan and were ready for round two. This went far better, with our robot coding teams now working together to help each other and giving direction to new team members. More learning was done and we came back at the end of the day for round three with a solid team and a clear plan. We had some bad luck with some elements of the game, but the progress made since the first round was phenomenal and we walked away with a respectable score!
Just before lunch, we were also called into the boardroom to present our ‘Innovation Project’. We’ve been working on this in school too – a new idea on the theme of ‘energy’ to help change the world. We went with cow poo, naturally, and set about telling the judges all about our cow waste to energy plan for the farms in the local area. We got a real apprentice-style grilling from a crack team from Ørsted – the renewable energy company sponsoring the event – and had to keep our cool despite some tough questions.
Throughout the day, we were also expected to show the core values of LEGO League – I’m pleased to say class 4’s behaviour was exemplary throughout. Not just kind and polite, but thoughtful of others too, from helping other teams to charge their robot to an impromptu litter-pick in the hall after lunch.
I’m pleased to announce that with all of these things combined, Levens came away with the trophy for best newcomer! Well done to the whole team for their truly phenomenal performance!
Brewery Dance Festival
Congratulations to all our incredible dancers who took part in the Dance Festival at the Brewery Art Centre this week alongside other local schools. The dance, based on an explorer’s venture around the beautiful gifts of our Earth, portrayed our children’s creativity, agility and story-telling. The audience were enthralled!
Well done Class 3 on all your hard work putting it together and for being the most professional performers on the night – both onstage and behind the scenes backstage.
Fundraising Fun
Last Friday, we had two great days of fundraising for Red Nose Day and for the Syria-Turkey Earthquake Appeal. School Council organised a cake sale – a regular favourite at Levens School; as well as non-uniform day, an Easter Egg Raffle; and best of all a lovely opportunity to play games with children and siblings all around school.
At the children’s request, the amazing total of £300 will be divided equally between both charities!
Well done everyone!! Look out for our next fundraising event for charity coming up in the summer term.
Elleray Cross Country Event
What an absolutely brilliant afternoon we all had at Elleray last week, participating in their terrific, challenging and rewarding cross country competition, running against 564 of the best runners that the county has to offer!
As totally expected, our team of 18 did not disappoint, everyone finishing the hilly, stream-ridden course with great personal gratification to be rewarded with a special medal and a burger/hotdog!
For a small school, we provide a terrific punch in cross country running, our Under 10 girls finishing second in the team competition, many children running against much older competitors. The day might have been incredibly cold, but staff and parents were warmed through with pride, appreciating every single effort, they could not have given more or tried harder.
Running Club concludes for the season this week with a celebration run through Levens Park and warming homemade refreshments served at Mrs Mason’s farm. We cannot wait to start again in September already…..
Fantastic Food- Class 3
Class 3 have had an amazing time learning all about seasonal foods. We began by looking at the climatic zones of the world and where foods can grow. We then made Japanese fruit kebabs using strawberries, watermelon, lychees and bananas. We looked at seasonal foods in the United Kingdom and created seasonal food wheels. We then had great fun learning how to make apple crumble. It tasted delicious with custard! We found out about food miles and the environmental impact of this. Did you know on average a pineapple travels 5,000 miles to reach the UK! We then designed our own seasonal tarts. This was a little bit tricky, so we decided to use tinned and frozen foods as well. We followed recipes and made these, they tasted delicious.
World Book Day 2023
We had a wonderful day celebrating World Book Day 2023. This year, our challenge was to create a story sack of clues about a favourite book or character from a story. We had some brilliant book choices, with some being quite tricky to guess! We also enjoyed taking part in lots of lovely activities; writing book reviews, designing and making bookmarks, a pre-loved book sale after school organised by FOLS and World Book Day yoga in Class One. Class teachers also shared their own story sacks and read to different classes throughout the day.
Amazing Authors- Anthony Browne
Class Three have loved looking at the books of Anthony Browne. We started the topic looking at the book ‘Gorilla’. The children thought about how the characters were feeling using inference. They moved onto to researching facts about gorillas and produced some amazing non-fiction reports, organising the facts under sub-headings. We then moved onto ‘The Tunnel’. The children made predictions about what would be at the end of the tunnel. We also considered the actions of the characters and carried out a conscience alley. The children gave the character advice and guidance. We followed this with the children producing decision wheels, these gave advantages and disadvantages of suggested next steps for the character Rose. The children then focused on diary writing and wrote an entry for Jack and Rose. We finally looked at ‘Voices in the Park’. The children loved the idea of writing about the same event from different views. To finish this topic, we wrote our own versions of the story and called them ‘Voices in the playground’. We can’t wait for you to read them!
Class 4 Bridges
For our D&T project this term, Class 4 are building bridges. We’ve been exploring different ways to stiffen and reinforce cardboard. A simple flat “beam” of paper can’t support much weight on its own, but add a curved “arch” underneath and suddenly things are much stronger! We’ve also been exploring corrugation and lamination techniques to further reinforce the structures we have been building. Check out some of our prototypes below!
