Westdale Junior School news

This year again saw a splendid Arts and Book Week at Westdale involving the whole school in a wide range of arts and book-related activities. Thanks to Mrs. Harrison for organising everything.

Library Visits

During our Arts Week Year 3 and 4 visited the local library on Westdale Lane so they could talk to Mrs Ward, the librarian.

When they arrived they went upstairs and were shown where to put their coats. Once they were seated Mrs Ward talked to them about the layout of the library and what the codes on the books e.g. B=Beginners, Y=Young Readers. After that she told them how to find the information books and gave them 10 minutes to look at some books. The books that were popular were animal books, Where’s Wally and Goosebumps. Next Mrs Ward showed them how to use the reading safari booklets and gave them one each to take home and fill in every time they’ve read a book.

The children enjoyed their visit to the library, especially the opportunity to look at different books.

Art Activities

During arts week all of the children took part in a range of art activities. Many children also swapped classes so they had a chance to do different activities. These included: Making clay masks by carving the clay with different tools.

• paper weaving using coloured strips of paper;
• creating sawdust pictures with red, orange, green and blue sawdust on black sugar paper;
• making cards which you could turn around and on either side there was a day time or night time;
• producing symmetrical patterns by drawing a shape and rotating your template;
• computer art and making origami animals;
• drawing symmetrical faces using wool, paper and glue.

Bright Sparks

On the 10th February Jane Maydew from PowerGen came to talk to the school about their Bright Sparks project. She talked to us about electricity and about global warming. Her main point was to tell us not to waste too much electricity because of the problem of global warming. She told us some ways of cutting down on the use of electricity. For example, we can turn lights off when we have finished in a room and we can turn the television off instead of leaving it on standby. We could put covers over the boiler, fibreglass in the loft and "snakes" to block the gaps under our doors etc. This would mean that we could save electricity and we can save coal, oil and gas because the electricity company will not have to use so much fuel.

The talk was good fun because Jane Maydew used different children as helpers. When they had finished helping we had to give them a low energy clap or a high energy clap. (A low energy clap meant that we clapped slowly and a high energy clap meant we clapped faster) At the end, she told us all that we had a free energy-saving light bulb and a form to fill in about energy use in our houses.

Labels: 2000, arts week