Letter from Elodie AUBERT

Click to download and read the letter of thanks from our wonder French student teachers.

Sarah Ayton - Olympic Gold Medalist

On Friday 7th December we were fortunate enough to have a special visitor, Olympic Gold Medallist, Sarah Ayton.   Sarah won a Gold medal in sailing at the Athens Olympics in 2004. Sarah introduced herself to everybody and showed a video of her Athens triumph. She then spent the next forty minutes engaged in a question and answer session with the whole school.  She answered a large variety of questions including what drove her to become an Olympic sailor, what training she has to do every week, how her diet helps and whether she’d ever seen a shark while at sea. We found out she is the current world champion and in preparation for the Beijing Olympics in August.  The children were very impressed with Sarah and we all promised to support her in her endeavours when the Olympics takes place this summer.  Who knows one of our children could be in the same boat in 2012?

ICT Week @ Longwell Green

Last term the whole school took part in another of our special themed weeks. In the past we have had weeks focussing on science, the arts, health and fitness and most recently an African themed week. This time it was the turn of ICT!

The week was planned focussing predominantly on incorporating ICT into as many lessons as possible. Many classes planned their week around the class topics that were being taught. We tried to use as many of the technologies that we have in school to creatively explore how ICT can inspire learning.

All children from Foundation Stage to year six took part in many activities such as, animation films, Bee Bots control technology, digital photography, digital videoing, video analysis in PE, producing leaflets and  video conferencing. Many children also had the opportunity to work in cross phase groups when working on the Bee Bots (Year 1 and Year 6), designing posters in the Learning Lab (Year one and Year Four) and taking photographs around the school (Foundation and Year 5).  

We were also lucky enough to have several visitors to the school during the week. The Robotics team returned to work with Year 6 programming Lego robots, a PE teacher from the CTC ran workshops with several classes looking at the use of video analysis and ‘Blobs’ and a group of trainee teachers from Bath Spa University came to work with children assisting in particular with the animation and digital microscope sessions.

The week was a great success and thoroughly enjoyed by both staff and pupils. We were particularly proud of how well the children worked with each other in the many collaborative opportunities that the week provided.
 
Watch out Mr Spielberg, we have a few movie makers in the making at Longwell Green!!!!!

2007 Christmas Carol Service.