Celebrating your achievements

In the last week of term you will meet as a TOTAL year, some of you to receive awards and for some of you to present what you have enjoyed most about this year.

Your challenge

a) Using a mindmap make a note of the following:

• Things I enjoyed the most.
• Things / achievements I am most proud of.
• Skills I have learned / developed.

b) Now you are going to choose a way to present all or some of these. You could:

• Write a poem with the title TOTAL - use Word
• Create a logo for the TOTAL curriculum (if it's really good we may use it) - Use paint or coral draw.
• Create a rap / school song for the new year 7.
• Plan a video presentation to the new year 7 that tells them how to be successful in their first year (we can video this).

FUTURE THINKING

What will life be like in the future?
What will your life be like in the future?

This last half term we will explore these questions.

Challenges this unit:

1. Whose ideas about the future from the past came true?
2. What are your ideas about the future? (look at some of the link tabs at the top).
3. What will the environment be like in the future (and what can we do to help)?
4. What will you be like as a learner in the future?

In lesson 1 you will explore ideas about the future. In the comments describe what you think will be most different in 50 years time?

Research Task: You are trying to find 5 interesting truths about peoples predictions about the future or what has been predicted in the past about life today. Use the weblinks below to help start your research for your given topic area:

Predictions that were very wrong!
The Environment
Environment predictions
Future transport
Predictions about transport from history
Predictions about houses from history
Communications
Entertainment
Science
Future medicine

Looking for a good book to read on the topic of future? Follow the link below for some rated young adult reads set in the future.

Book list

Asking good questions to find good answers.

Asking good questions leads to good answers.

We are looking at a mystery and how to apply the WHO, WHERE, WHY, WHEN, WHAT and HOW questions to solve the mystery.

What mysteries would you like answers to? Maybe in our blogging by applying the Ws we could even solve one or two of them.

COAST

New Term, new topic.
This term you are going to use your learning tools to:

• Investigate sources about St Piran (what can we rely on?)
• Visit a coastal area, investigate it's history and environment.
• Create your own legend about the Cornish Coast.
• Investigate the pressures that coastal areas face.

The picture is of Porthcurno; my favourite beach because of it's beautiful clear waters, dramatic views of Logan rock and it's history as the centre for communication in Britain. My Dog loves swimming there and this year I want to see a Basking Shark there.

What's your favourite coastal area in Cornwall and why?

HOW GOOD ARE YOU?

Your presentations were ASTOUNDING!!!!

I have worked with professional presenters who were not half as good as the presentations that EVERYONE was involved in. I'm sorry that it all got a bit rushed.

Your work over the last few weeks has been a great example of how to tackle a problem:

• Find the facts
• Ask other's views and seek support.
• Find a solution.
• Communicate to others so that they believe you and BUY IN to it.

Next we look a country that seems to be facing lots of difficulties at the moment; Zimbabwe (CLICK ON THE MAP FOR INFORMATION). Of course, you all have friends there already and in June the teacher from your school in Zimbabwe is coming to Cornwall.

On the comments page let me know where you think we should take the teachers from Zimbabwe to let them see a real taste of life in Britain and life especially in Cornwall. Explain your choices if you can.

We are on week 3 of the homework guys; here's a reminder.


Must
Find out some of the main places that tourists visit in your country and include pictures.


Should

Show a map of where these places are.
Include a brief description of the places.

Could

Include comments from people who have actually visited these places. Give them a persuasive write up, as if you were trying to encourage people to come to your country.

Hi 7S.

A reminder of week 3 of your homework.

You MUST

• Find out some of the main places that tourists visit in your country and include picture.

You SHOULD

• Show a map of where these places are.

• Include a brief description of the places.

You COULD

• Include comments from people who have actually visited these places.

• Give them a persuasive write up, as if you were trying to encourage people to come to your country.

I'm looking forward to seeing your teams presentations on how to devleop the school site. I'm also excited about seeing those pieces of work that have been created as blogs for homework.

Help with your projects.

Your country projects: (Click on the map to see some great maps of the world from different points of view).

This map shows countries by the size of their population.

This is your homework for week 2.

You MUST	· Find out about some typical food or clothing from your country and include pictures.
You SHOULD	· Include some recipes of typical foods. · Find out what the national anthem of the country is called and include some of the words.
You COULD	· Have a go at making a typical food and take a picture of it (or bring it in for munching!). · Get a recording of the national anthem, or all the words. · Find out about famous musicians / actors / entertainers from your country. · Make a doll wearing an example of typical clothes

If you are looking for some cultural information about a country try this great site:

http://www.geographia.com/

If you do want to make something from your country, this website may be a good starting point:

http://www.recipeatlas.com/

School Facilities Research

You should now have completed your questionnaires and are starting to put your plans together. You may want to look at what other schools have done and also look at companies that make playground equipment.

Learning through landscapes offer lots of advice on what can be done to improve school grounds. See the articles at:

http://www.ltl.org.uk/schools_and_settings/resources/articles.htm

What do you think are top 3 most important things to sort out for our school grounds and why? Leave your comments.

JUSTICE, LAW AND ORDER

CLICK ON THE LOGO TO GO TO THE UNICEF CHILDREN'S HOME PAGE

Welcome back and now for our next topic...Justice (fairness). You probably know that there are lots of things that are unfair in the world but there are great examples of people working together to bring about change.

We're not just going to talk about change - you are going to go through the process of:

• Identifying a problem
• Collecting data to show others
• Coming up with solutions
• Presenting the solutions to those who can really do something about it.

Look at the links for information to help you with your school based project but also your homework project.

For now I'd like you comments please. The 10 most important words to describe your ideal school.

Rembering Stuff - Mnemonics

Remembering stuff!!!

Some great Creation Myths 7s. A great bunch of creative story tellers and actors.


You may have already heard this very famous mnemonic to remember the order of the planets (a large object in orbit around a star but too small to be a star itself and only reflects light rather than giving off its own light - in case you wanted to know).



My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto (of course Pluto is no longer recognised as a planet). Thank you Michael for spotting my earlier error!

Anyway, your challenge Bloggers of 7S is to come up with your own mnemonic. The funnier and sillier it is...the more likely you will remember it!

Someone left a rude comment last week so all comments are now emailed to me before they can be posted.

How did we get here?

This half term we are looking at Space. To start with we are looking at the same question that has faced humans for thousands of years; this universe is so huge, it is incredible that we are here at all so how did we get here?

Doing extra research? Follow the link below to view more of the creation myths from the website we looked at.

The Big Myth (click on the red circles)


Click on the link below if you want to read stories but don't have flash animation:


Creation stories from around the world.

I would like everyone to add their thoughts about how we got here. If you don't want to give your name when you share a belief that's fine. I guarantee that there will be different ideas about how the World got here within the class.

Happy blogging
Mr B