Hello

At the moment it is quite hot and humid here in Gudalur. The evening gets cooler because of light showers. These are the pre monsoon showers. Gudalur has a long and wet monsoon. It rains continuously for almost 5 months of the year.

At the moment the school is closed for the summer. It will reopen on June 4th. We spend a lot of time playing in the forest during our holidays. At other times we are helping around with household chores.

But when we have school our schedule is quite different. We start our day by 6am and walk to the point where the Jeep comes to take us to school by 7am. We reach school by 9am. We begin our day with an assembly, where we sing, dance, and exercise and read the news. After this we have subject periods in maths, English, Tamil, science etc till 12:45 pm. Then we have a 45 minute long lunch break during which we eat the packed lunch that we bring from home. After this we have a review period where we review what we learnt in the morning. Following this we spend time doing craft work like carpentry, macramé, embroidery, tailoring etc. From 3-3:45pm we play in the ground. Finally, we spend 15 minutes cleaning our school and getting it ready for the next morning. By 4pm we are in our Jeep heading back home. After we are home we play, eat and sleep.

We have many teachers here. Some of their names are Shanti, Janaki, Surendiran, Rama, Rahul, Girija and Radha.
The next festival in our calendar is Karkadagam which we will celebrate on July 31st . This is a festival celebrated only by the Mullukurumba tribe. It is when we pray to our ancestors. We hunt birds and make special dishes with fresh crab to celebrate it.
Please do send us photographs of your tea party. We would love to see them.
Here are some photographs of our school and us.

Until next time….goodbye!

These are some questions we would like to ask the Children who attend the school in Vidyodaya.

What is the weather like?

What is your daily routine like?

What lessons do you have?

Can you send us some photos?

What does your classroom look like?

What is your teacher’s name?

We are soon going to be celebrating the Queen’s Jubilee in England.  To mark the occasion our whole school is going to have a tea party!!  We would love to send you some pictures.

Are you celebrating anything soon?

Love from all your new friends in Athens class at Lancasterian Primary school

About our School

Our school building

Lancasterian Primary School opened in April 2004.  However, the separate Infants and Junior schools have nestled beside Bruce Castle Park since it opened in August 1891.

Bruce Castle Park

Lancasterian Primary School is a community school in England in the London Borough of Haringey.  Our historic and attractive school building combines both Victorian and new architectural designs and have ample outdoor play space, flower beds and an organic vegetable garden.

Junior playground

We share with the Vale School Resource Base. The Vale School is for children who have physical disabilities. As part of our inclusion programme, the children from the Vale School work alongside Lancasterian children in a variety of situations in the classroom, at playtime, lunchtime and in assembly.

Our school has 495 pupils, from nursery (3 years of age) to Year 6 (11 years of age). There is a morning nursery, an afternoon nursery, three reception classes (4-5 years of age) and two classes per year group from Year 1 to Year 6.

Nursery play area

The School Day

The pupils in Nursery and Key Stage 1 arrive at school at 8:55 am and in Key Stage 2 at 8:50 am.  Morning nursery is over at 11:30 am.  The school day ends for all pupils at 3:30 pm.  In Key Stage 1 the pupils have a morning and afternoon play and in Key Stage 2 the pupils have play in the morning.  All the children have lunch at school, followed by play between 11:45 am – 1.10pm.

The pupils at Lancasterian follow Literacy and Numeracy everyday.  In Key Stage 1 and 2 (infants and juniors) the children do Guided reading activities everyday for 30 minutes.  Other subjects the children learn arescience, ICT (Information Communication Technology), R.E (Religious Education), P.E (Physical Education), Design Technology, Art, History, Geography and PSHCE (Personal, Social, Health and Citizenship Education).

The children also take part in singing weekly and musical activities.  In Year 4 all the pupils learn to play a musical instrument, for example, violin, trumpet, clarinet or guitar.  The pupils in Key Stage 2 also learn an additional language which is Spanish.

Each year the class names change, this year all the classes are named after Olympic Cities in the past as London is hosting the Olympics this year.  The Year 4 Class you are being linked with is called Athens Class name after the original Olympic City in Greece.

At Lancasterian the pupils take part in various clubs during lunchtime and after school.  We have a School Council where children have a meeting every two weeks to voice their opinions on how to improve our school.  There is also an Eco-Council to make our school an eco-friendly place, they have meetings every two weeks too.

Bicycle shelter

Google map showing our location: http://g.co/maps/8gdrc

Nearby landmarks

Bruce Castle Museum

Bruce Castle Museum and Park, Lordship Lane, Tottenham was originally built in the 16th century as a manor house, and since much altered, Bruce Castle is now serves as a museum housing the archives of the London Borough of Haringey, with a small permanent exhibition relating to Rowland Hill and the history of the postal service. The building is located in Bruce Castle Park, Tottenham’s first public park opened in 1892.

Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, commonly referred to as Spurs, is an English football club based in Tottenham, London, that plays in the Premier League.  The club’s home stadium is White Hart Lane, this is off Tottenham High Road, very close to our school.

Our School Blog

We have recently created a school blog, some children have posted stories, poems and  questions to get others opinions about things.  If you would like to take a look please follow this link: www.lancasterian-primary-school.j2webby.com

You can view the posts by clicking on the tab that says blogs.  You can also make comments on our post providing you have an email address.

We look forward to hearing from you and finding out about your school and your location.  Please feel free to ask us some questions.

Traditionally people living in our area didn’t use plastics. Roof thatching, baskets, plates, mats, furniture, brooms, ropes, fans, musical instruments and even umbrellas can be made using local bamboo and coconut, palm and banana trees. Today, we don’t produce as much waste as people in the cities but we do have increasing amounts of waste that is damaging the environment and harmful to local wildlife.Last year our school started a campaign to ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ plastic. At the moment plastic isn’t recycled locally, so we collect plastic in the local area and take it to school. Once a month someone comes to school to pick up the plastic and they drive it all to Bangalore city, where it can be recycled.

There are many easy ways to reduce the amount of plastic you use so we remind people in our local community about what they can do. For example, everyone should use shopping bags made of cloth and re-use plastic bottles. Many shopkeeepers are supportive of our campaign. They don’t give out plastic bags and they wrap items in newspaper and banana leaves, instead of using non-biodegradable packaging.

We all keep our plastic waste and our neighbours give us their plastic waste too, to get recycled. We regularly go to the neighbouring houses and collect plastics and we also pick up plastic litter on the grass verges and sides of the road. Last time we filled 5 sacks in just one hour!

Recently we went up to the local viewpoint and while we were there we collected a sack full of plastic litter that tourists had left there. It is a beautiful place and looked even nicer after we left!

Bye for now!

Climate Week!!

Because it is climate week this we have taken part in some fun activities and some visitors came into school.

On the first day of climate week, we were set a challenge, ‘GRREN YOUR SPACE’. We chose our teams (of about 6) and worked together to design and create eco-inventions. We came up with; a switch which you take out with you to turn off all your electrical items at home; a switch that automatically turns the lights off when you leave the room; a set of exercise bikes which we could play on during break time to generate power for our school and a forest to grow trees so we could source our own paper!

This photo shows the year 6 pupils learning about how we can look after our environment. The taller man in the picture is our head teacher, Mr Baker. As you can see it was very fogging on the day!!

Some of them arrived with a range of cars; one petrol, one diesel and an electric car. We checked how much CO2 (carbon dioxide) the car gives off by placing a tube in the exhaust pipe. The petrol car gave out 6.1% CO2, the diesel car gave out 3.7% CO2. The electric car gave out the least; 0.05%  CO2.

Have you ever seen an electric car?

Here is a picture of the electric car that we looked at in school.

You never know, the electric car might be the next future car!

We learnt a lot of information about how electricity gets to our home, there is about 6 steps.

First the electricity is formed and generated in a power plant which is better known as power station it then comes through the wire to a building which increases the power to manage the long journey ahead. Now it travels to the pylon, and out of the wires to the station where it decreases the volts, so it doesn’t shock you because it now in about a mile reaches your house. Then you can switch on the lights, computers and TV.

No power hour

On Friday we had a green day and we had a lot of things to with the climate. So as one of the events we had a no power hour, witch means we couldn’t use any electricity what so ever in the whole school. It was pretty though because it was hard to see our work but it was very cloudy day too. When the lights finally came on everyone cheered!

Bye for now!

Hello

Thankyou for your interest in our country.

Your ideas on fair trade are great! Perhaps you could also find out more about the farmers whose coffee you drink during your ‘coffee morning’. Here is a link of a fair trade coffee growers collective closer to you http://www.oromocoffee.org/

Our tribal community grows tea too. We trade our tea on the same principles as ‘fairtrade’ but we have not certified ourselves by the fairtrade brand.

Do we use fair trade products? Well, most of our food is locally produced anyway. We don’t have big super markets or chain stores in our town. So, our food is sold by local people in small shops. Although our food is grown and sold locally, we cannot be sure that a fair price is always given to the farmers.  Here is a picture of what our ‘shop’ looks like…

Our local fruit vendor

You may already know, our school is on the Nilgiri hills in South India. We have many elephants here. You said you found Indian elephants fascinating. Well, many of us share our home with them. Most times we live in harmony, sharing our home, the forest, with all the birds and animals that live in them. But occasionally we have trouble. Sometimes clashes with elephants cause people severe injuries. Occasionally, elephants even break our homes and destroy out agricultural produce. In fact many children who live in the forests find it difficult to come to school because they are afraid of being attacked by elephants as they walk to school . For this reason many children our age remain at home instead of going to school like us.

Elephants in our forests

Bhangra is the dance of Punjab which is a state in North India. However, in our communities we have very different types of tribal dances and songs.  We have five tribes in this area- the Paniyas, Bettakurumbas, Mullukurumbas, Irulas and Kattunayakans. Each of us has our own unique language and songs in these languages. Our dances are also quite different from each other. If you ever visit our country, perhaps we could show you and we could dance together!

This is a photographs of all of us doing the Paniya dance.

Hope this answers some of your questions, bye for now…

In our school we run a range of clubs , including:
Zumba is a dance group run by professional Zumba dancers. It helps children keep healthy and exercise.

Choir is a singing group for boys and girls. Recently the choir went to The Symphony Hall to perform songs from films.

Inside the Symphony Hall

Girls Dancing. All the girls in the year do this, we are practising a dance to perform at our music recital, the boys will sing ‘Hit the Road Jack’ while the girls are dancing.  The practice is going well but the song is quite fast and upbeat so it’s quite hard work and there is only a few weeks to go.

Children in year 3 aged 7-8 get a chance to go to Forest Schools on a Friday and learn about the outdoors.  They build shelters, make fires, press fruit to make juice, find out about wildlife and their habitats and lots more.  They have a drink and biscuit while they are outside.

Some clubs are run after school; Let’s Get Cooking is a club that teaches children how to cook simple but fun recipes. The children practise cutting, mixing and baking skills.  They cook savoury and sweet dishes and are able to take some of their cooking home for their parents to try.

There are different sports clubs like football, netball, street dance and cricket.

Do you have any after school clubs? If so what are they?

In June we have our sports day, when we invite our families to come and watch and cheer us on in lots of different sporting activities.

We are doing a lot of tests in school at the moment because soon we will have to do our SATs tests.  These are tests that will find out what group we go into when we go to our Senior School in September.  It’s really tiring but we are trying our best!

What sorts of activities do you do in your free time?

This week is climate week… we’ll tell you all about it next time.

Bye for now.

Thank you for tell us all about your carpentry work.  Some of our dads are carpenters!

We do some work with wood at our school; this is called DT or Design Technology. Usually the teacher will give us a challenge or a problem and we have to investigate solutions, plan and design and idea and then get making!

Our FAIRTRADE work

We would really like to become a Fair-trade School so last week some of our pupils visited a school near to ours called St. James Primary School, to learn about Fair-trade as they have been learning about Fair-trade for much longer than us. They learnt about some of the things we could change or do to become a Fair-trade School.

We have come up with some ideas to help towards this project:
• Hold coffee mornings – parents and visitors could come and enjoy Fair-trade coffee and biscuits and we could have displays of other Fair-trade products.
• Fair-trade cotton – we could make sure our school shirts are made from Fair-trade cotton.
• Tuck shop – selling Fair-trade snacks and drinks to our pupils.
• Footballs and other sports equipment.
• Fair-trade flowers – at the end of each school year we could give Fair-trade flowers to any teachers who are leaving.

We hope you think these are good suggestions, we think they are. We are aiming to give Fair-trade farmers the money they deserve to help their families drink clean water and have a good education.

If you have any more suggestions to help us become a fair-trade school, please send them to us, we would be extremely grateful for any ideas.

In Roberts Primary school we have lots of fair-trade displays and posters. Some of the displays show all sorts of fair-trade items and the countries that are involved. We did not realise there was so many Fair-trade products from so many different places. We have looked at how far our food travels to get to the shops and markets.

Do you know anything about Fair-trade?

Do you know any farmers or workers who are involved with Fair-trade?

Do you eat Fair-trade food or use Fair-trade things?

Our Topic - INDIA: A land of contrasts

In our school we have been learning about you and your country. We have learned that there are a lot of different climates such as desert, city and rainforest.

We have also learned about the Indian elephant and how fascinating they are.

We have found out about transport and how people in India get about. We would really like to visit India one day and be able to investigate some of the places for ourselves.

We have learned some Bhangra dancing too!! Our teachers have shown us routines on the internet and we have made up some of our own moves. We found that the music is really fast! What other types of music do you listen to? We guess that you will probably like some of the same songs as us!

Bye for now!
Year 6

Hello!

Behind our school building we have a workshop where we learn carpentry. Our teacher, Srikant anna (‘anna’ is the word for ‘older brother’ in Tamil) has been running the workshop for almost 9 months now. In the workshop he makes wooden alphabets, puzzles and toys. We distribute these puzzles and toys to nearby villages, so children who don’t study in our school get a chance to use, play and learn from them too.

Srikant anna and us

In the workshop we work with wood as well as thick cardboard. While the cardboard is available in our town itself, the wood is bought from Pondicherry, a city almost 500km away.

Srikant anna uses many tools and machines for his work. Here are pictures of a cutting, drilling and grinding machine. Usually he uses a saw to cut through wood, however when he needs to cut intricate patterns he uses the cutting machine. The drilling machine is used to make holes in wood and the grinding machine is used to smoothen the surface of the wood. Often, sand paper is rubbed against the surface of the wood instead of a grinding machine

Here is a wood cutting machine

This is the drilling machine

This is the wood grinding machine

Apart from this he also uses smaller, mobile tools like wrenches, pliers, sandpaper, hammers, screwdrivers, nails, scales, saws, spanners and chisels.

Today we are going to learn how to make a torch!

We enjoyed reading about your school. Yes, our classrooms do look different from yours. We have assembly in the morning too. We will write about it next time

Until then….goodbye from all of us!

Hello there!

Our school is called Roberts Primary School and is situated in Dudley, which is in the middle of England, near to Birmingham. It’s much larger than nearby local schools – we have over 600 pupils! In total there are 7 year groups, with children aged between 4 and 11. We have 3 classes per year group and there are roughly 30 children in each class. At school we are always busy with lessons but we always enjoy school. How many pupils do you have at your school?

Here is a picture of the front of our school; it was newly built in 2000.

And here’s a bird’s eye view of our school.

Here is a picture of our classroom. All of our pupils have gone to assembly.

Do you have assembly? Is your classroom different?

In Year 6 we have been learning about India, it has been very interesting. Last week we have been thinking about Fair Trade and how it helps give some more money to farmers, giving them a fair deal for their produce. We have learnt about Mumbai, Rajasthan and Kerala, Red 6, Blue 6 and Yellow 6 were fascinated. We all agreed it would be great to go to India to see the Taj Mahal, the Himalayas and other landmarks. Everybody was so surprised to learn how different India is in different places.

Our school is an eco-friendly school. That means our school focuses on helping the environment around us. To help us be more eco-friendly we have an environment zone and a huge playing field! Our environment zone is run by Guy. Guy helps to keep our school eco-friendly and litter free. We also have eco reps in each class to help Guy and Mrs Dulson when they get busy. One of our most important objects are our wind turbine and solar panels.

Our wind turbine is like a giant propeller and turns wind energy into electricity. Our solar panels do the same job but turns sun energy into electricity.

Roberts Primary has all sorts of trees all around in our school, especially in our ‘Environment Zone’, which is a conservation area for plants and small creatures. We have Silver Birch, Ash, Hazel, Willow and Oak trees. They are a bit brown and dull at the moment because in the winter we have cold weather and it has been snowing recently. What is the weather like where you are now?

An Oak tree in our environment zone.

A very spiky Holly bush, which stays green all year and is seen a lot at Christmas time.

The Hazel trees – looking bare this time of year!

At Roberts Primary School, we have begun to grow a new orchard on our school field.

At the moment there is no progress of growth, however in a few years time we will have a grown an orchard filled with apple, plum, quince and damson trees. We are excited to see the progress of our trees and see how our fruit grows. We also have a garden that we are still working on, we hope we are going to improve the garden as we try to recycle and reuse. We hope to grow broad beans, peas in a pod, broccoli, beetroot, carrots and tomatoes.