The Christmas Story

Fairlop enjoyed our Christmas Assembly today, bringing together all the children and staff in the school. The school orchestra were fantastic and played beautifully, and we sang many carols and Christmas songs, whilst the KS1 children gathered together as Mary, Joseph, Kings, Shepherds and Angel to remember Jesus' birthday story. Here's Year Six's presentation - which was wonderfully animated in powerpoint - but assembled hastily this evening in Movie Maker to share with you!

Our good wishes for a peaceful Christmas and New Year to our readers - wherever you are in the world. Enjoy!

Heritage Day

Heritage Day at Fairlop



On Friday 7th November Fairlop held their Heritage Day. This was a wonderful event which started with a visit from Peggy Oliver, 'Pearly Queen of Redbridge'. Peggy joined school councillors for lunch and after answered some of their questions.

At 1.45 we held a whole school parade in the school grounds, where parents came along to cheer the children on as they walked passed wearing colours of their chosen countries. We had two very talented drummers leading the parade.

Performances then began with some excellent dance troupes from around the world. We had a performance from High School Musical, our very own Asian dance group, Fairlop's Rockers and an Irish Dance from Year 6. There was also a solo artist performing a wonderful tap routine and a cornet player from Fairlop.

After all the fun and excitement, food from lots of different countries was served up in the hall, ranging from fish and chips, sausage and mash through to curries, samosas and fried chicken. It all looked and smelt wonderful! Some even braved the cold to run a 1940's cake stall outside!There were also side stalls which included face painting, hair braiding, henna hand painting and sari wrapping.

This was a wonderful day at Fairlop. We had a fantastic turn out of parents and would like to thank everybody involved. Take a look at some of our pictures of the days events.

Fairlop gains the ICT Mark!

Our Head, Gail Brannan, announces how delighted we are to be awarded the ICT Mark. She states how it recognises our positive approach to ICT and the benefits it brings to our children, and how we believe that ICT can be used in every aspect of learning to ensure our students are equipped for the modern world.

The award recognises the school's success in developing the strategic use of ICT in both administration and across the curriculum. Parents will have proof that their children are attending a school at the forefront of modern technology. The award was granted following an extensive external assessment by Becta, the British Education Communications & Technology Agency, which is the government funded body responsible for promoting the use of ICT in Britain's schools and colleges.

Artist Kat Hall visits Fairlop!

Kat Hall came to Fairlop in early October and our Year 4 classes had a great time working with her, creating minibeast sculptures. The photos below show how they used a range of images and books for inspiration, after visiting our Environmental Area to look at real-life minibeasts. From producing skeletons, they used tissue paper and coloured cellophane to make the outer shells in vivid colours. The three Year 4 classes made a spider, a grasshopper and two ladybirds.

The sculptures now adorn the lower corridor where a fantastic art display is on show detailing this project. If you're visiting soon, make time to take a look!

Welcome back!

Summer's over and time to look forward to some exciting events taking place in Fairlop during Autumn. The class blogs have been updated, so all our news will be recorded over the term.

Year Six made an early visit to Glasbury House and have written up their daily activities on the separate Glasbury blog. They have improved their photographic skills with some wonderful videos and photos, and recorded podcasts too. Listen by clicking on the Podcast tab on our website. Thank you to the parents who have kept in touch by commenting on the blog.

Over the term, we'll be using the Asus PCs that are on loan from Redbridge - and find out how Year Six enjoyed taking them to Glasbury.

Meanwhile, here's a panoramic view of Fairlop on one of the few summer days we've had this term!

Yellow Pages Challenge

On Thursday 17th July, two of our children, Charlotte in Year 3 and Zain in Year 6, were chosen to represent us at Parkhill Infant School to see how we got on in the recycling of our Yellow
Pages.Fairlop collected nearly 700 Yellow Pages which put us third overall. We were presented our Yellow Woods Bronze Beech award by Jo Smallman (Redbridge Environmental Officer. Thank you for your effort in bringing the Yellow Pages to our school for recycling.

Year 5 Space Conference

YEAR 5 PROJECT

Year 5 took part in something really exciting last week. Thanks to some high-spec cracking laptops and wireless technology, (and the webcam supplied by Gary Jelks' team at Redbridge) they had a fantastic afternoon using the live simulation link/video conference to the National Space Centre.

Working in small teams they had to take care of a fair bit of research from the NASA website, finding out what it is like to be OUT THERE IN SPACE!!

Check out www.spacecentre.co.uk for yourselves.

Picnic on the Field.

On Friday 4th July we held our first ever 'Picnic on the Field'. We had a fantastic turn out of people - more than we had expected. The weather was really kind to use and families turned up with their picnic blankets and chairs to enjoy a relaxing, sociable afternoon. Children enjoyed being able to run around and play, whilst parents sat back and enjoyed the sunshine. There were plenty of food stalls including cakes and samosas, and game stalls, pin the tail on the donkey, splat the year 6 and of course face painting and henna hand painting.
Take a look at these photos to see what a good time everybody had!!

My School is Great!

MY SCHOOL IS GREAT – competition winners from Fairlop

Fairlop lucky winners of the My School is Great competition are Louis B in Year 3 and Chloe O’S from Year 4. They both wrote fantastic descriptions of why they thought attending Fairlop Primary was great.

Louis said “I was spurred on by the fantastic prizes that were on offer, especially the Ipod Nano, which I won! It was really great to go the London Aquarium for our prizewinning event. We received a goodie bag and the presentation was fun in front of all the other schools taking part.”

Chloe said “The lunch was lovely, and I was really pleased to win. I take part in lots of competitions, and also thought the prizes were great! I was really shocked to see I was in the short listed entries and absolutely astounded to find I’d won!”

Both of their winning entries were shown in the Ilford Recorder. Click on the link to see them on the London 24 site. Take a look!

http://www.london24.com/l24/pages/myschoolisgreat.aspx

Year Two show some cool ICT!

On Monday 19th May, A & N from Year Two represented Fairlop at the annual ICT conference. They really enjoyed showing and chatting about how they have learned to podcast using Podium, and made a special podcast about the seaside, which is linked to their Literacy lessons. A & N also demonstrated to various interested parties the delights of using 2Publish (fantastic clown photos - see the Yr Two blogs) and Kartouche Creative Writing.

Although the day was fairly hectic, the ICT teaching staff found time to enjoy the presentations by Ewan McIntosh & Karl Hopwood, before the workshops took place. Fantastic Redbridge ICT was on display, and the Fairlop pupils loved using both the Nintendo & Robosapien model!

April Fool - Truth or Fiction?

How did April Fool's day begin? Well, thanks to Yahoo, their explanations are:

"The first of April, some do say,

Is set apart for All Fools' Day.

But why the people call it so, Nor I, nor they themselves do know.

But on this day are people sent On purpose for pure merriment."
--Poor Robin's Almanac (1790)

Many believe that up until the mid-sixteenth century, France celebrated the new year on April 1. But in 1562, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a new calendar to the Christian world, which changed the date of the new year to January 1. Of course, they didn't have email back then, so word traveled slowly and some people continued to celebrate on April 1. These poor, misinformed souls were referred to as "April Fools" and had tricks played on them.

According to another version, Charles IX introduced the Gregorian calendar in 1564, changing the date of the new year. The "April Fools" tradition was then passed on to England and Scotland in the eighteenth century and eventually made its way to the American colonies.

Take a look at some of these April Fool stories - do you think they are fact or fiction?

Is there a spaghetti tree?

Did Pluto move behind Jupiter in 1976 causing gravitational alignment that would lesson the Earth's gravity?

In 1998, did Burger King REALLy invent a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans.

Is it true that Google's search results are created by a vast batteries of trained pigeons?

Around School - what can you blog about?

New to Blogs .....?

A blog is short for weblog, which is a journal, diary or newsletter that is available for public viewing on the internet.

We hope the Fairlop blogs act as a diary or journal where our staff and pupils will write their observations on what's happening around our school. Using blogs provides our own personal writing space, helping both literacy and ICT skills and is a fun way of working. We hope it encourages children to take more interest in their schoolwork and helps their communication skills, as other children interact by entering comments against posts thereby working in a collaborative environment.