The Digestive System -6D

In Year 6D we have been using the habit of mind thinking interdependently and bringing our knowledge from the back to the front (applying past knowledge to new situations), so we could share each other’s knowledge, while we were learning about the digestive system.

We used sticky notes to create a picture of the inside of our body. We researched about the oesophagus, stomach, small intestine and large intestine. We learnt that each part of our digestive system has a very important role, for example our oesphagus carries food from our mouths to our stomach.

We created a table about the five different food groups and their functions for example protein helps with hormones, energy and enzymes. We also labelled a diagram about the functions of our digestive system and what effect they have on our body.We used a variety of sources to give us a wider understanding about the digestive system.

By Olivia

Year 6 Crucial Crew 2017

On Monday 5th December the children in year 6 visited St Philip Evans Church Hall for the Crucial Crew Workshop. During the morning, we found out lots of information about important life skills that will help us to remain safe and lead healthy and sensible lives. The morning was run by representatives from a number of different agencies who shared some very important messages.

Western Power Distribution talked to us about electrical safety and told us how to play safely around power pylons, electrical wires and sub stations. Chloe reported, 'I found out that you shouldn’t try and get anything that falls into the sub stations as the electricity is strong enough to kill you. You should call the telephone number to ask for help.”

Food Standards Agency talked to us about staying healthy through food hygiene. We found out that remembering that we can prevent ourselves from becoming sick through the 4cs; clean hands, cross contamination, cooking and chilling. For example, did you know food needs to be cooked to 65 degrees centigrade to kill bacteria (germs)?

Meic a children and young person's advocacy agency talked to us about how they provide a phone line to go to for information, advice, links to other agencies for help.

Resolve it gave us advice on resolving conflict and how to handle difficult situations in non-aggressive ways including self-defence. Using these reminders:

Awareness- People Objects and place.

Avoidance- have fun, no your limit and staying away from confrontation.

Dialogue- speaking in a calm voice and using a non-aggressive body language.

Action-last resort if all else fails.

We also had a talk from the RNLI who gave us crucial information about staying safe when we visit the beach or are near other bodies of water.

Rail Life gave information from Network Rail about staying safe around railways. Lewis reported, “We found out that you should never play around railways as a train weighs the same as 58 elephants and they take 20 football pitches distance to brake. Also, the electricity involved with some railway lines has a very high voltage.”

Year 6 - Let The Sea Roar- Prayer Writing

In Year 6D this week we have been using the prayer writing toolkit to write our own Advent prayers. We thought carefully about the scripture we had studied as part of our Come and See topic ‘Expectations’.

In 5/6 we have been using the TASC wheel to help us plan our own research all about the Victorians. We were given the challenge to solve the problem: What was life like for a child in Victorian Wales? We used the TASC wheel to help guide our learning using the Habit of Mind, ‘applying past knowledge to new situations.’ We began by carrying out a knowledge harvest of everything we knew about the problem. We recorded them in a circle map and a Victorian timeline to help give our research tasks context. Following this, we thought about what our task is .Then we thought about as many possible sub topics we could research to give us a deeper understanding of overall life for Victorian children in Wales.

The topics we decided to research were:

• School Life in Victorian Wales

• Rich and Poor Families

• Victorian Cardiff County Council Children at Play

• Leisure

• Victorian Foods

• Children in Factories

• Children in the Coal Mines

• General Introduction

We used the Q Chart to help us to choose effective questions. We completed a QUADs grid to help us with our research and ensure our research was relevant and specific.

In Y5/6 we have some exciting news! We entered a young writer’s competition where we were asked to write a short story about a crazy creature. We had to use our imagination, show awareness of the audience and purpose and use descriptive language to write our short story. We also had to summarise and keep to a word limit. This was particularly challenging as we are so used to writing extended stories. The winning entries have been published in the book, ‘Crazy Creatures- Wales.’

This week we led Key Stage 2 in a 'Way of the Cross' reflection as part of our Holy Week celebrations. The children acted, prayed and shared their understanding reverently. Here are some of our prayers:

Let us pray.

Dear Jesus,

Help us to be brave like you.

May we never be spiteful to others who hurt us.

Help us always to be peacemakers.

Let us pray.

In spite of all the times we fall Lord, we know you will always love us.

Thank you Jesus for lifting us up again and giving us the joy of your forgiveness through the sacrament of Reconciliation.

Let us pray.

Dear Jesus, May we always try to help people in the world who need such things as food, clean water, safe housing, a peaceful environment.

Help us contribute towards making the world less cruel.

Help us to come out of selfishness and open our hearts.

Teach us to recognise our sins and follow the ways of forgiveness.

Sharing Our Learning: Persuasive Letters

We have been using features of persuasive writing to write letters to supermarkets and politicians. We are going to post our letters in the hope of action and a response. We have been trying to persuade them to take action against the companies using palm oil as orangutans are under threat of extinction. Here are the letters written by Carmello and Leigha:

LETTER TO A POLITICIAN

St. Philip Evans RC Primary School

Coed Y Gores

Llandeyrn

Cardiff

CF23 9NX

Wednesday 2^nd November 2016

National Assembly for Wales

Cardiff Bay

Dear the Right Honourable Carwyn Jones AM,

           We are writing this letter to you because we are greatly concerned about the future of the orangutans and rainforests of South-East Asia, more specifically, Indonesia and Malaysia. We are a combined class of Year 5 and 6 pupils in St. Philip Evans Primary School and in our lessons; we heard that the production of palm oil has been affecting the orangutans of Borneo and Sumatra massively.

    Imagine if these remarkable, treasured, special apes were wiped out because of us? I believe that the responsibility for the future of these species should rest on us, however, certainly not the way humans are handling it now. Palm oil production is destroying their habitat, right at this very second. We don’t have a choice in what we buy. Couldn’t we just insist on all products in UK only containing palm oil? This way, we can promote a guilt-free lifestyle. If you don’t know what palm oil is, it is a rose-red fruit that is roughly the size of an avocado pit. It is used in everyday products, and chances are you’ve probably used it today!

    Are we aware we are purchasing products that take away an animal’s life? The use of palm oil is very popular in the UK and we think that you should be appalled by the amount of products in your household that contain palm oil. A staggering 40% of products in everyday supermarkets use palm oil! This tells us we are definitely not making an effort. We consume 10kg of palm oil as an individual per year. Times that by your age. Multiply that by the amount in our class (65). Add all the family members. See what I mean? Huge quantities are being consumed at the cost of orangutans.

     Palm oil has a shocking impact on flora and fauna, especially the orangutans. There are 50,000 orangutans left. They are disappearing quickly. What does this say about us humans? Workers are obliged to destroy natural rainforests for money; nearly all of it is gone. Speaking of this, 300 football fields of forest are torn down every day. In addition to this, global warming is taking place as well, which adds a bigger effect to the rainforest. This is because the greenhouse gases are being released into the atmosphere as we tear down the ‘lungs of the earth.’

    Palm oil is wrecking our God-given creation and we shouldn’t see the world in this state. It is our home after all. We think that Wales should think about the effects that this gives around the world. Wouldn’t it be great if Wales were the first palm oil free country? It’s quite annoying that people say they want to make a difference, but actually don’t. Therefore, it would be highly appreciated if the National Assembly took an action on palm oil.

Yours Sincerely,

Leigha (aged 10) and the children in Y5/6GD

LETTER TO A SUPERMARKET

St. Philip Evans Primary,

Coed-Y-Gores,

Llanedeyrn,

 Cardiff,

CF23 9NX.

Tuesday, 8th November, 2016

Tesco Customer Services,

Freepost SCO2298,

Dundee DD1 9NF.

Dear Tesco,

                     We are writing to you because we are very concerned about the extinction of the orangutans, we are a class of Year 5 and 6 pupils at St. Philip Evans Primary in Cardiff, and we have carried out a project all about deforestation and its effect on the orangutans. As a class we have been shocked and frustrated as a result of our findings. The facts and statistics are devastating and really do speak for themselves.  Do you know that 50 football fields of rainforest are destroyed every day to make way for palm oil plantations? We as individuals are making a change and pledging to spread this important eco message with our parents and local community. We must work together to make a difference. We are aware that many products that you sell use palm oil. Are you? You could use other oils; these include vegetable, olive, sunflower, coconut or canola oils. In my opinion, we still have time to save the orangutans.

                Years ago, orangutans were as contented as ever. But, as time went on, their habitat started to disappear, bit by bit. Now, it is worse than ever. Orangutans are expected to be extinct by 2040. We wondered if you could answer these questions:

•             Are you able to verify the sustainability of your palm oil?

•             What percent of your foods contains other oils/ sustainable palm oil?

•             Do you use sustainable palm oil? If so, how often?

We think that every supermarket can improve, and this includes you. By using sustainable palm oil/ alternatives to palm oil together with all other supermarkets, we can lengthen the life of the orangutans. So do you want to let this lovable, amazing, endangered species so close to us become extinct because of our actions, or do you want to keep them alive? It’s your choice. We must make a new start. So let us make that start today.

Yours faithfully,

Carmelo and all children in Y5/6 St Philip Evans Primary School

Thinking About Our World Fortnight

How Can We Save the Orang-utans?

This year’s whole school focus for Thinking About Our world fortnight is a response to Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudate Si in which he calls all people across the world to live more sustainably and care for our common home (Planet Earth.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3Lz7dmn1eM

We began the fortnight by watching CAFOD’s video animation of the Pope’s letter and discussed as a class ways in which his message could shape our lives. This became a knowledge harvest of ways in which the future of our world is endangered and ways in which we can help to save it. Following this we planned a class prayer session or gweddiwn to help ask God for his help in saving the planet as well as helping us to reflect on ways in which this message can shape our own lives.

Our classes started our project with a question: How can we save the orangutan? We used ‘Communicating with Clarity and Precision to answer the question.

Richard reported, “We began by watching a video from the WWF that told us a little bit about the problem, however, we wanted to find out more. We used the TASC wheel to help us guide our investigation. We thought about questions that we wanted to answer in our investigation. Mine were:

1. How has the production of palm oil caused orangutans to become endangered?
2. Which companies us palm oil in their products?
3. Is there a way in which we can produce palm oil without harming the orangutans?
4. How can we persuade companies to use palm oil?

We used a QuADS grid to guide our research and we used books and websites to find the solutions. Additionally, we carried out research at home and created a learning log of our results.”

Rebecca reported, “We had a visit from Phil Williams our school’s Eco Advisor. Phil talked to us about the effects of palm oil production on orangutans which are primates that live on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra in South East Asia. He talked about all the products that we use around the home that contain palm oil. We went home and found packaging of products at home that contain palm oil.”

How Can We Save the Orang-utans?

Our next step on the TASC wheel is to tell other people about our learning. We used the habit of mind, communicating with clarity and precision to discuss our ideas.  We held a pupil voice session and discussed all the ways in which we could share our learning. As a class we decided that we wanted to write to politicians asking them to act on the use of palm oil; write to supermarkets to urge them to stop using palm oil in their products as well as producing videos to share our messages with people.

In our maths lessons we looked at data about how the numbers of orangutans in the wild have changed a lot over the past 50 years due to deforestation of the rainforest. Following this, we created both pictograms and line graphs to help us interpret the data. We looked at patterns and drew conclusions about what has happened to orangutans.

In our literacy lessons we have been learning about how to use persuasive devices to write persuasive letters to politicians such as Carwyn Jones AM and Teresa May PM. Additionally, some groups wrote to supermarkets. We had to persuade them to act on palm oil. We began by exploring the different persuasive devices, anecdotes, facts, opinions, rhetorical questions, exaggeration, statistics and triples. We had to use the habit of mind communicating with clarity and precision to ensure our letters were successful. We identified these features in a modelled example and then planned and wrote our letters. You can see some examples of our letters on our class webpage. We hope we get some responses back.

Our next task is to produce a market place display board collaboratively as a group to share our learning about how the use of palm oil is affecting the orangutans. You can find out more by coming to our Eco Extravaganza sharing event for parents on Monday 14^th November between 3-3:30pm in school.

DAHLICIOUS DAY 13TH SEPTEMBER 2016

On Tuesday  13th September, to celebrate the centenary of Roald Dahl’s birth the whole school celebrated the life and works of Roald Dahl.  The day started with an assembly where the children were reminded of how significant Roald Dahl is to us as he was born in Llandaff, Wales. Children dressed up as Roald Dahl characters, shared their favourite Roald Dahl books and learnt about the famous Welsh author’s writing techniques and inspirations. It was a wonderful opportunity to enthuse the children about reading and approach literacy in an engaging and exciting way. ‘Book Buddying’ also took place with older children sharing a book with children in the Foundation Phase, which really helped to promote the love of reading at St Philip Evans Primary School! The children had a fantastic day and the effort made by everybody was, as always, exceptional!

Y5/6G: Assembly on Loving

Our current RE Come and See topic is entitled loving or cariadus in Welsh. To begin our assembly we sang Wherever There Is Love we chose this hymn as it reminds us of God’s love for us during the darkest moments of our lives.

Following the hymn, we began to share how we explored unconditional love within our families and lives. Jessica said, “My group created a bubble map that used different adjectives that described the emotions that you feel when you experience unconditional love.” Both Olivia and Natasha went on to share the poems that they had written about unconditional love. Elizabeth continued by telling the audience, “Alongside our friends and family, as Christians, we know that God loves us all unconditionally. He has created us and cares for us all. As part of our learning in this topic, and all other topics, we turned to scripture to find out about Jesus’s teaching about love and we deepened our understanding of this teaching and reflected on how it can shape our own lives.”

Following this, Charlie acted out the Gospel of John and the account of Jesus’ command to his followers, “My commandment is this: love one another, just as I love you.”

After the Gospel reading a number of us acted out the parable of the Prodigal Son; Jesus often used parables to help people understand his teaching. Parables are stories with a deep meaning. Jesus used the story of the prodigal son as a way to help us understand God’s unconditional love.

After the dramatization of the Prodigal Son the class shared the Beatitudes which are more teachings of Jesus about how we should live our life. The children shared the different verses and explained how the other children could let these shape their lives.

To bring the collective worship to a close we led the school in a time of prayer and reflection. We began by hearing a litany that we had written in an RE lesson based up upon psalm 136. Then we lead the school through prayers of intercession answering in Welsh. We challenge the school to leave our assembly with the mission of loving others as Jesus’ loves us. To finish we sang our favourite hymn We Are Children Of the Living God.