Levens School

Why is there so much hunger in the world?

 in Church / Scafell / Whole School by

Enough food is produced in the world to feed everyone; so why are so many people hungry? Year 5 + 6 pupils worked together to find out just how unequally the world’s food is distributed.

Our work began with a series of challenges.  First, we had to identify the continents of the world and try to decide which were the most densely populated.  Most of us, used our knowledge of the world and considered the size of the continents to try to figure this out, but when we were presented with the actual population for each continent, we realised our estimates were not always accurate!

We then moved on to presenting the population for each country and its share of the world’s food using Lego figures, shreddies and a world map.

Each Lego figures is equivalent to 100,000,000 people and each of our Shreddies represents 2% of the World’s food.

We were shocked to discover that the continents with the highest populations actually had the smallest share of food.

For example: Asia’s population was represented by 36 Lego people and had to share just 3 shreddies representing just 6% of the World’s food.  Just 5 Lego figures represent North America’s population who have as much as a 50% share of the World’s  food!  How can this be fair?

Our learning today  made us realise just how unfair our food is distributed and how fortunate we are to have enough to eat and never experience hunger.  Our discussions and our thinking contributed to writing some very powerful prayers to say thank you to God and to pray that the world’s leaders and governments will do more to bring about change so that everyone, regardless of where they live, has enough to eat.

Our Harvest Service

 in Bowfell / Church / Scafell / Skiddaw / Whole School by

Throughout this week’s harvest theme all classes have been busy recording these videos.

Year 1 are singing Autumn Days; Reception are reciting a poem Harvest Time is Here Again; Year 2,3 &4 are performing a song called Moving Along which talks about the changes in the seasons; Year 5&6 finish our service with prayers they have written this week.

Harvest Thanks

 in Bowfell / Church / Scafell / Skiddaw by

This week, we have been thinking and reflecting on Harvest. We would like to say a huge thank you to everyone from every class for bringing in such an abundance of wonderful produce. We will be making a visit to Kendal Food Bank to deliver the goodies and we know that lots of families who live in our local area will be benefiting from eating these nourishing foods.

Thank you!

 

Ice Cold Learning

 in Scafell / Whole School by

In Science, Scafell have been learning all about different materials and their properties. Engineers choose materials for their projects very carefully because they know that the properties of a material affect how well it does the job.

We’ve been looking in depth at thermal conductors and insulators. Insulators can be found all around the home from cool boxes keeping unwanted heat away from a picnic to frying pans helping to cook our eggs evenly.

To put our knowledge into practice, we designed and built our own devices to keep an ice-cube cold. It’s warm in school with all of the radiators on, so we had to choose our materials wisely to insulate the ice-cube and make sure it didn’t melt!

Scafell did well in choosing sensible materials for the job and managed to keep their ice-cubes alive all the way through break time and beyond – a much better result than the control ice-cube sat on the side!

Hot and Cold Climates in Year 1

 in Bowfell / Whole School by

 

Further to our geography work on ‘seasons’, year 1 have been learning about location of hot and cold countries in the world. On Monday, we discussed the difference between ‘weather’ and ‘climate’ .  We had some furry visitors in class.  Some children chose different animals and we talked about whether they might live in hot or cold countries.  We then matched the animals to the climate.  On Tuesday, we looked at the globe and talked about the Equator and why countries close to this imaginary line are hotter, whilst countries further away are colder.   We used this information to highlight the hot and cold areas of the world with red and blue crayons.  Well done year 1!

Thoughts on our Changes Assembly

 in Church / Skiddaw by

In class assembly today, Skiddaw class reflected on these important questions of change. Their responses were interesting, many and varied.

What has changed in your lives recently?

RJ – seasons, HR – leaves on the trees, JG – everything!,  IW – our classroom, CH – we have grown taller, AR – our bones weaken as we get much older

What has changed in nature?

RK – hedgehogs hibernating, DP – birds flying off to warmer places (migration), Heating coming on in our houses as the weather gets colder.

How do you feel about these changes?

Some are exciting and we look forward to them, others can be a bit worrying.

Who helps you through changes?

Mums and dads and families, our teachers and our friends.

People of many faiths believe that God is like a parent or a carer. Even when everything changes, he is always the same and ready to help us.

 

 

Number facts practice in Scafell

 in Scafell by

Scafell have all been working super hard in their maths lessons recently so we wanted to let you know about one of the things we’ve started doing to really boost our mental maths skills.

In maths, there are 72 basic number facts which more complicated calculations are built on. If you can instantly recall these simple number facts, calculation becomes much easier as brain-power is freed up to think more clearly about the problem as a whole. We will be learning five new facts each week – after fifteen weeks we will have learned them all!

We’ll be testing our recall of the facts every week and seeing how much we can improve our score. See below for some helpful hints and tips to really get these facts embedded in your brain!

Little and Often

Practice makes perfect! These facts are quick, but to really get them to stick, regular practice is key. You can do this anywhere and everywhere – in the car, before bed, after tea, at the park… Wherever you are, take 2 minutes to learn these facts!

Mnemonics

If you’ve got a tricky fact to learn, one of the best ways is to think of something wild or outlandish to help you remember. The crazier the better. Rhymes, jokes or silly stories are memorable, fun and stick in your brain. This is a great way to learn 8×8….

I ate and I ate until I was sick on the floor – eight times eight is sixty-four!

Related Facts

Sometimes a new fact is very closely related to one you already know. If you know 9+9=18, that means you also know that 9×2=18 because they are both two lots of 9. You can also use this to work out 8+9=17 as it’s just one less, or 9+10=19 as it’s just one more.

Fact Families

Number facts come in families – when you’re learning one, learn the family to effectively learn four facts at a time! For example, if you know 4×6=24, you also know…

4×6=24

6×4=24

24÷6=4

24÷4=6

Best of luck with your facts practice this week. We look forward to seeing you smashing your high scores in weeks to come!

Parachutes and Trim Trail

 in Bowfell / Whole School by

Reception have enjoyed their turn on the Trim Trail this week, developing their balance, co-ordination and upper body strength. They have also been learning fun parachute games which involved lots of careful listening and making waves, mushrooms and being a washing machine!

 

Skiddaw Fruits and Vegetables

 in Skiddaw / Whole School by

In Art, Skiddaw class have been enjoying ripping magazines and newspapers whilst creating our collages of pears, apples as well as orange and purple carrots. These are now proudly on display in our classroom.

We are all enjoying snack each day, before morning play, and it has been great to see a mouth watering range of different fruits and vegetables being munched including peas, strawberries, pears, carrots and bananas. This week we have had some radishes and it was wonderful to see some children keen to try this slightly spicy vegetable for the very first time.