Latest News
Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.
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Year 3 - Thames Water visit
Mon 24 Jan 2022As part of their 'All around the world' topic, Year Three were visited by Sarah Swallow & Andy Clarke from Thames Water to discuss: The Water Cycle & 'Bin it; don't block it'. This was a great hook and some brilliant pre-learning ready for next half term where we will focus on rivers and the water cycle. We thought about the impact of our actions on the environment and just how much water is wasted when we leave the tap running whilst brushing our teeth! Why don't you ask your children this evening some of the facts and statistics they found out today? They have all brought home: a leaflet, a shower timer (strictly four minutes max!) and a pack of special cards. The whole year group listened beautifully and the children and adults alike discovered lots of new wonderful water facts! We loved the games and the experiment.
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Winter Watchlist 2022 - Useful for your wintery walks
Mon 24 Jan 2022Hey have you managed to see any of the Winterwatch programmes on BBC2 on iplayer?? If not, you should as they are brilliant. Here is the link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p012msk2/winterwatch
Winter continues to bring with it a whole host of incredible wildlife!
Winterwatch has got a new list of seasonal highlights to look out for in their Winter Watchlist for 2022, which will provide you and your family with more inspiration on your wintry walks.
Again, there’s something for everyone to look out for. Absolute beginners and seasoned naturalists will all have their challenges: from stunning starling murmurations, to winter gatherings of elusive roe deer, to spotting signs of harvest mice nests.
What’s on your Winter Watchlist?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3xVYVWXqHRFRpLMlh5M3wDc/winter-watchlist-2022
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Year 5 Mummification
Fri 21 Jan 2022Today, the Year 5 children became embalmers at The Ancient Egyptian House Of Death by learning how to mummify a dead body (an action figure). Luckily they all had strong stomachs and could deal with a lot of blood and guts! Below are the set of instructions they followed. Take a look at our photos too - can you tell which step they are following in each picture?
1. Wash the outside of the body with palm wine
2. Carefully pull brain out of the nose using a hook
3. Make a clean cut on the left side of the body near the tummy
4. Remove all of the internal organs
5. Let the internal organs dry
6. Place the lungs, intestines, stomach and liver inside canopic jars
7. Place the heart back inside the body
8. Rinse the inside of body with wine and spices
9. Cover the corpse with natron (salt) for 70 days
10 After 40 days stuff the body with linen or sand to give it a more human shape
11. After the 70 days wrap the body from head to toe in bandages
12. Place in a sarcophagus (a type of box-like a coffin)
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Year 6 - Hampton Court Explorers!
Wed 12 Jan 2022Year 6 were enthralled by their visit to Hampton Court Palace yesterday; I have genuinely never heard so many gasps of awe and wonder when we stepped foot in The Great Hall. The children were truly shocked by the sheer size and grandeur of this residence but equally loved exploring the meaning behind some of the more intricate details too - the entwined initials H and A which were carved into the wood in The Great Hall to resemble Henry’s love for his wife Anne Boleyn, for whom he built the vast room.
The children were incredibly well behaved throughout the trip and enjoyed retracing Henry VIII’s steps through the never-ending corridors. Particular areas of interest included Henry VIII’s kitchens and the Royal Chapel, where the heart of one of Henry’s wives heart is said to be buried. I wonder if the children can remember and tell you more?
Alongside exploring the palace itself, the children took part in an intriguing workshop called ‘Investigating Henry’. This session, which was led by the staff at Hampton Court, encouraged the children to think critically and evaluate a variety of primary and secondary sources to help them understand more about the kind of man Henry was. Using replica artefacts and excerpts from contemporary Tudor sources, the children were curious to weigh up the evidence and construct a balanced opinion of Henry VIII by asking key enquiry questions. It was fascinating to find out that there is more to Henry VIII than the popular stereotypes!
We are sure that the children were eager to share the facts they had learned and describe the array of artefacts witnessed as throughout the trip the children demonstrated such excitement and a genuine love of learning about this historical period, immersing themselves in Tudor life within the walls of Hampton Court Palace. Take a look at some of the photos from today to find out more…
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Year R - Relax Kids
Mon 10 Jan 2022Today Year R had their first Relax Kids session with Kath. Relax Kids is a wonderful scheme that helps children develop ways to manage their emotions and support their wellbeing. The first session was with Rowan Class children. During the morning the children developed their listening skills and practised stopping and being still. Kath talked to the children about how controlling their breathing can help them when they are upset. In class we already use star breathing, so Kath taught the children how to do square and triangle breathing. The session was packed full of lots of different fun activities and the children are already eager for their next Relax Kids sessions.
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Don't forget about our Growth Mindset approach
Thu 06 Jan 2022We want to remind our school community about our ethos of having a Growth Mindset. We believe the best thing to do is to teach children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort and keep on learning. For a reminder about the traits of Growth Mindset please visit the following link on our school website https://www.greatbinfields.co.uk/growth-mindset/
You may have heard your children talking about how they've been into "the pit" at school! In school we share a similar picture to the one shown below - a simplified version is displayed in all classrooms and is a visual aid for the children to describe their learning journeys throughout the day.
In the near future, our children will be receiving a home learning task with a Growth Mindset focus and we look forward to their responses.
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Year 6 - Christmas Gingerbread Houses
Thu 16 Dec 2021What a cracking end to the term Year 6 have had! We’ve been designing, baking, building and decorating our very own ginger bread houses! The children have demonstrated superb resilience throughout the entire process as they have needed to edit, adapt and redesign elements of their house during the stages of the build. I think we can all now appreciate that building a gingerbread house from scratch is not for the faint hearted!
We started by conducting market research to formulate our very own success criteria, thinking about what makes a successful gingerbread house. Secondly, we created a computer aided design to carefully deliberate the measurements of each aspect of our 3D net. After this, we created a prototype to ensure our measurements were well considered. Then it was onto the baking, building and decorating of the gingerbread house itself! The children worked incredibly hard and demonstrated many of our Great Binfields values – incredible cooperation, superb resilience and of course, a wonderful amount of creativity too.
As a year group, both children and adults, we’d like to say a HUGE thank you to Nicola at Ma Humbugs for supplying us with an abundance of delicious goodies to decorate our creations with and for also lending us a beautiful model gingerbread house to help inspire our own designs! We are so fortunate to have such wonderful families within our school community that are willing to support us in any way they can.
Take a look at some of the pictures to see the fun we have had whilst creating our gingerbread houses!
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GBP's Rock to the Beat Autumn Term Programme with Hampshire Music Service
Tue 14 Dec 2021I have just received the amazing video performances of Rock 2 the Beat from our two new GBP bands: 2 Direction and The Thundering 7.
Their HMS band teachers have said: "It has been such a great first term of Rock2thebeat teaching at Great Binfields and we are very excited to share with you the pupils' end of term performance. All the pupils should be incredibly proud of what they have achieved this term with most of them only been playing their instrument for 10 Weeks!
Rock 2 the Beat will return week beginning 10th of January where the pupils will be learning new songs in the spring term. There are still some places available on Rock 2 the Beat and a letter will be coming out to years 5 & 6 soon. Sorry, years R - 4.....you will have to wait until you are in Years 5 or 6 to enjoy this experience.
Two Direction (Hound Dog)
The Thundering 7 (Happy)
Happy grooving!
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Our orchestra get festive!
Tue 14 Dec 2021Our orchestra have only been playing for 10 weeks together and look at what they have achieved. You should be incredibly proud of your achievement. You aspired (one of our school values) to do well - and you smashed it. You were all resilient (another one of our values!!) in the early days of meeting for Orchestra Club when it was tricky and that perseverance paid off.
You have made Mrs Irons' term and she said to me, 'That's why she teaches music!' You have made her so happy and I hope you are feeling super happy too.
Go to our video resource centre (the 9th tab down on the red children tab of our website) for the clip of the children playing - can you recognise this iconic Christmas tune? https://greatbinfields.primarysite.media/
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Father Christmas comes to town!
Mon 13 Dec 2021Today the children in Rowan and Birch classes had a wonderful surprise, Father Christmas came to visit them. It was lovely to see the children's faces light up as they approached the hall and realised who their special visitor was. Father Christmas told them that he had been keeping an eye on them through our Santa Cams and that he had been impressed with the things that he had seen. They then had a chat about Christmas elves, reindeer and how Father Christmas gets into everyone's homes. Finally Father Christmas read the children the story 'The Night Before Christmas', although he did say he thought the bit about his belly shaking like a bowl full of jelly was a bit rude! As an extra special treat Father Christmas left some early presents for each of the children. Thank you so much Father Christmas for coming to visit us.
