Hola! Como estas? or in english, Hello! How are you?
During our multicultural week Y3/4 decided to turn Spanish as we have children in our phase who have actually experienced living in Spain. The idea was to make the children aware of how cultures can be very different. We had an excellent week of fun but have also discovered so much more about one of our European neighbours.

Miss Shields set us the hard task of discovering who Spains neighbours were; we discovered they had land neighbours like England have as well as neighbours separated by water. We really aren't that much different.

Look at Reece's jigsaw map and see if you can work out the 2 land neighbours - the clues are you will find one to the North East of Spain and the other neighbour is to the West.

You can see Spain's other nieghbours over the water - Algeria, the Baleric Islands and Morocco too!

Eating habits
We discussed how the days are different and found out that Spanish children often get 2 breakfasts - el desayuno as lunch is so late in the day - anywhere between 1.30pm and 4.00pm. School could not change the time of lunch but we had a go at making 'El desayuno' by squeezing oranges for fresh juice and making toast with apricot jam or chocolate spread on it. Children also get the choice of chocolate milk so Mr Scott brought us some of that to try too. This certainly kept us going until lunch time!!!

Mrs Dixon and Miss Clark's team made traditional Spanish cakes, which are called Magdelena cakes. These are more healthier than our cakes because they use olive oil instead of margarine or butter. We weren't sure what they would taste like however they were deliciously soft and light and every single person tried one, including a few extra teachers who had smelt the yummy smell through the corridors.

Miss Shields' team made a sample of tapas. This one is called 'Pan con ajo, tomate y Jamon.'(Bread with tomato, garlic and ham) and it is really easy to make. You just need crusty bread, garlic, spanish ham, tomatoes and olive oil. You brush your bread with olive oil, sprinkle garlic over the top, add a slice of ham and then your tomatoes are the finishing touch.

Mr Scott and his expert team made a child friendly version of Sangria. We chose the fruit juices that were closest to red wine colour (cranberry juice) and mixed this with fresh apple and orange juice. His team expertly chopped up a range of fruit, including lots of oranges as these are one of Spain's traditional foods to add extra flavours.

We all enjoyed these during the re-enactment of the Fiesta Del Pilar, one of Spains many festivals.

Spanish Traditions
Across Spain there are many traditions and Mrs Dixon chose two entertaining ones for us to re enact. The first was Flamenco dancing and although it looks really easy to do, the steps are quite tricky and you have to think about moving your hands as well as stamping your feet very quickly to match the music. We think we had a really good try as shown below!

The second tradition was bull fighting and when the children evaluated the best parts of the re-enactment of the Fiesta Del Pilar, which occurs on the 12th October every year to remember the unity between heaven and earth, a lot said the bull fighting was in their top 3 events of the day.

The Spanish Language
Spanish is a lot different from English however from going on holiday, a lot of us knew some spanish words. We learnt a few spanish phrases to help us to answer the register in Spanish and some of us can even count to ten.
We've got a couple of quizzes below for you to try to see how much you can remember.
Download file
Download file

Everyone was quite sad to discover Spanish week is over but we are looking forward to finding out what our next challenge will be next term.

Posted by V.Dixon at 12:06 PM | Permalink

Wardley 2 v Brandling 1
Ryan Elstob
Karl Young

Man of the Match: Cameron Scott

Wardley's Year 5/6 football team had a winning start to the season. Wardley dominated the game and could have won by a larger margin. The team started nervously, as many players were making their debuts for the school team, but as the first half drew to a close, Wardley's dominance eventually paid off. Ryan Elstob opened the scoring with a simple tap-in. Excellent defending from Aidan Willis and Cameron Scott throughout the game ensured that Brandling only had two shots on target throughout the match. In the second half, Wardley created many chances and finally second half substitute Karl Young scored from close range after some excellent work down the left by Callum McPherson. Mr Scott and Mr Evans were delighted with the first performance of the season and hope to continue the good form in the next match.

Posted by B.Evans at 08:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Year 3/4's latest Geography topic was all about investigating the local environment and seeing what can impact this. We started in the classroom to discover how Wardley effects the rest of our country. As discovered using the internet, although Wardley is only small, we still need to play our part in encouraging people to reuse, recycle and replace the resources that the environment provides for us.

WALT: investigate ways to improve our environment

The children used websites to see how big the British Isles were and discussed what impact all the people living here would have on the natural resources coming from the land. We came to the conclusion that it is essential that, where we can, we should RECYCLE and REUSE whatever we can to protect our environment or we will eventually run out.

You can see some of our attempts to persuade you below.

WALT: be aware of our local environment

All three Y3/4 classes went on a walk around Keir Hardie Avenue. We were pleased to see that the council have planted flowers and trees, have ensured there are some bins around the street and have provided bus stops and lighting for night time. However we were extremely shocked to find so much damage to our environment. We took over 70 photos of problems and then sorted them into categories.

Our problems are as follows: GRAFFITI, LITTER AND DOG MESS!!!

See the evidence for yourselves with just a few examples the children snapped!

We put our results into tables then used these to help write a letter to the council expressing our concerns and suggesting a few ways to improve the environment.
Download file

WALT: suggest ways to improve the local environment
Whilst out and about our school, we also looked at ways we could improve the wasteland in front of the metro. When we evaluated them we discovered nearly every person had included lots more bins, pooper-scooper bins to stop the dog mess and cameras to deter people from ruining the environment any more than they already do!

Imagine if it looked like these suggestions!!!

After examining photo's of other negative effects in our local environment, the children came up with lots of suggestions to improve certain issues; there were too many to include, however the examples below demonstrate how seriously they took this task. We could have some politicians in the making!

WALT: investigate our school environment
Our final job was to examine our own school environment. At first we thought everything was great but when we looked closely there were a few things we weren’t happy with here either. 3/4 C found our caretaker and asked her why we had damaged windows. She explained that it will cost over £100, 000 to replace them all. This made us realise why the bad things we found cannot be fixed straightaway. However the children asked if we could pretend that we had all the money in the world so we could easily suggest some ways to improve Wardley Primary School further. We also mentioned a few ideas to Mrs Hunter, our School Business Manager, such as the arrangement of the flowers and she thought that this would be a very good idea to put forward to the gardeners before they start replanting.

Posted by C.Shields at 05:18 PM | Permalink