Christmas Lunch

Christmas dinner at UJS. Havering Catering have provided turkey and all the trimmings...

And it is served by our very own elves!

Play area is open

 The whole school gathered on a gloomy Monday morning for a very special event.

Mr Woodford made a speech welcoming everyone to the special moment in the school's history. More than just an opening of the play area, it was a celebration of the years of hard work and dedication to the school by the Parents' Association.

He explained how the play area was a fine example of the school values in action. He thanked the School Council for their plans.

Mrs Wright

Mr Woodford thanked the PA team for their hard work, especially Mrs Wright (Chair for the last four years) & her family. Mrs Wright was presented with a bouquet as a token of the school's gratitude. Mr Wright, who is also a Governor, has looked after and managed the funds in his role as PA treasurer. The cheque for £50,000 was presented to the school by Rebecca Wright, now a Coopers' pupil, on behalf of the Parents' Association.

Other staff members were thanked - especially Mr Brown, Mr Fitzgerald & Mr Rowden for moving a ton (literally!) of leaves, moving benches and preparing the area. Mrs Wyer has put together a lunchtime plan to enable all children to be able to use the play area on a regular basis. 

Mr Woodford then handed over to the Mayor of Havering to conduct the official opening. There was a countdown...

... and the playground was open! The School Council and representatives from each class needed no encouragement - they were off to play! A few members of staff were also spotted 'testing' the equipment.

 

The official photograph

Mr Woodford feels on top of the world

Governors inspect the equipment

Mrs Wright 'tests' the equipment

Each class were given a chance in turn to play on the equipment on opening day. They will now have the opportunity to use the area, which includes a trim trail, stage and benches, during their lunch breaks. For more information and photographs please click here to read Creative Play's case study

Children In Need 2015

We had a great day raising money for Children in Need! Everyone participated in fundraising fun, and a few pupils rose to the Champions of Change challenge set by our volunteer team from Lloyds Bank. We raised a grand total of £667 - well done everyone.

Year Four held a Pudsey Fayre

Nail Art was a very popular stall at the Fayre

Our Lloyds Bank Manager Steve counting money and writing Pudsey Cheques

Children in Need - Can Knockdown and Can Pong

Plans are in progress for Children in Need next week. Two YR4 pupils asked Mr Woodford to display a poster for their event:

Mr Woodford was also impressed with the covering letter, detailing a highly planned activity:

As requested by our two fundraisers, we will supply a table on Thursday and Friday, and the poster will be emailed to all parents later this morning. We hope they will be well supported by their schoolfriends. We'll let you know how they got on!

Charity Support

Charity support 2015-2016

Children are invited to participate in the activity and make a donation in class at the start of the day. The amount of time, money and effort involved is completely up to individual families. No child will ever be excluded from an activity for financial reasons.

Jeans for Genes - thank you for your support in September - we raised £337.

Textile Recycling 2 November, 22 Feb, 7 June

Clearing out your wardrobes during half-term? Bag it up and bring into school on the first day back back to raise funds for the school

Shoeboxes – November

The Upminster & Hornchurch Rotarians are helping us with shoeboxes. Rotary has no religious or political affiliations. No leaflets of any kind are added to any boxes. Boxes are gifts for children & adults and delivered all the year round, not just at Christmas

Remembrance – Wednesday 11^th November

Poppies will be on sale in school after half-term. Pupils will have the opportunity to buy in class or at the main office. We will be observing silence in school.

Children In Need – Friday 13^th November

This will be a non-uniform day. Classes may be running their own activities, supported by Lloyds Bank volunteers

Carol singing – November/December

The ‘small’ choir will be entertaining the local community by carolling outside Waitrose,  fundraising for UJS

Christmas Jumper Day - Friday 18^th December

This will be a non-uniform day, wearing festive jumpers. You don’t need to buy a sweater – maybe decorate an existing piece of clothing.

Marie Curie – minipots of care – Autumn 2015 - Spring 2016

Children will be given a planting kit and plant a daffodil in school during the autumn, which then gets taken home, and cared for during the winter months. They can decorate the pot and a collection box. In the spring they will have a beautiful flower and can return the collection box with their donation.

Sport Relief – March

Lots of active activities and challenges will be happening across the week. Wristbands will be on sale in the school, and there will be a non-uniform day

Readathon  - Spring

Sponsored reading to encourage your child, while raising funds for ill children

Practice-a-thon – Summer

Sponsored music practice to raise funds for CLIC Sargent and the school - just in time for the summer exam season!

Year Group  – across the year

 Retiring collections are held at the end of performances, with funds going to a cause of the Year’s choice. Classes may run their own activities for causes ‘close to home’ where appropriate.

Year 6 Fayre – summer

Year 6 get their business heads on and set-up mini businesses selling goods and services to the rest of the school in aid of their leaving party.

Parents Association events – across the year

We appreciate the support of the PA. If you can help at any PA event, please contact the team at info@ujspa.org.uk  - they always welcome help.

Pudsey visits UJS

We had a VIB (Very Important Bear) in assembly this morning.

He came with our Lloyds Bank manager. Volunteers from the bank will be helping us with our Children in Need activities this year.

We sang with him, and the volunteers talked about the activities we can run in school.

Afterwards, Pudsey popped into class 4J to join Mrs Jones' class for a photoshoot

Nepal Earthquake non-uniform fundraising

We raised £318.94 for the Red Cross last Thursday. This report was written by Year 4 reporter Eloise and her friend Ella:

Non-uniform Day
On Thursday 4th June 2015 Upminster Juniors all bought in a pound and dressed down in aid of the Nepal earthquake. 

Over hundreds of people were made homeless with entire villages flattened, across many districts of the country. Most charities have been given tents and clean water to pilots, so they can fly them over to Nepal and give the now homeless people what they need. 

The earthquake is called the Gorkha earthquake.

Did you know if we raise £55.00 it will enable 5 families to have fresh, clean water to last them. 

News report - cycle training

Rider Development Training - April 2015

Class Reporter Ruhan

(this new course was delivered to Year 4 by Cycle Training East, and is now being offered to Year 3. Ruhan, one of our Year 4 class reporters, was briefed to produce a review. This is the first report he has ever filed)









I am trying to persuade Year 3 to do Bike Training

To Year 3

Bike Rider is a training session where you practice biking and you have lots of fun.

TA in 4J said that it was good
AJ said it was Epic
JS said it was fun.

Thank you for reading
Yours Sincerely
Ruhan
Year 4 news reporter

Ancient Egyptians - Year 6

Oliver and Isobel have been to share their Ancient Egyptian project homework. They've clearly put a lot of thought and effort into these pieces - well done!

Year 6 buggy project

Year 6 buggy project!

 by RH, 6D

Here is a blog about the year six Buggy project we did. The dates and progress have been taken from class 6D.

Tuesday 17th of March: On the 17th we started our project, Are teacher showed us an instruction sheet that labeled what we had to do. First we had to gather all of our equipment- A   ruler,pencil,saw,wooden vice, 58-60cm long sticks (we all had different sizes!) and finally an iPad. We started by measuring how long our piece of wood was; you had to use your maths skills to get 2 short pieces and 2 long pieces so the frame would be a rectangle. For example if your frame piece of wood was 60 cm you would need 2x20 cm sticks and 2x10 cm sticks. After we made notes where we needed to saw and then labeled them with our initials and how long the piece of wood would be, then we sawed all of our wood. To make the frame straight and smooth we used sandpaper and simply rubbed it across the ends of our wooden sticks. Next we glued the frame into place and held each corner for 20 seconds. After they were all held into place we glued on card triangles to give it extra support. During the activity if our group members had any spacetime they filmed or took photos of what we were doing. This was all we managed to do today.

Wednesday 18th March: On the 18th we finished the model of our car. First we got given a massive piece of corriflute to share between the 4 members on our tables. Then we had to either draw round our frame or use the template and draw round. After we had the frames marked on the corriflute we began to cut it out, it was extremely hard as the correlate was a thick material. We eventually  cut them out and if we was ready for the next step. Now we had to stick the frame onto the corriflute, we simply did that by putting glue on the frame and holding it down on the corriflute. We waited roughly 20 minutes for them to try. Next we glued 2 pairs of parallel triangle (with holes at the top) to the frame. After that we had to cut out 2x14cm on cylindrical shaped wood. after the triangles had dried we place the axles through the hole. We the placed the wheels on and an elastic band from the front wheel to the back wheel. we left it there for today and let our cars dry overnight.

Thursday 19th of March: We started of the lesson by watching a demonstration from Miss Diamond on how to make our car move and how to make the electrics work. First we had to put wheel bearings on all four wheels. Next we had put an elastic band on one wheel. Now we had to connect our battery (x4) into the holder, then clipped a pair of wires to the end of the holder. Now we connected crocodile clips (x2) to the end of the wire leading to the motor. We had to position the motor just right so the elastic band could be connected (to the motor) and the wheels would move;it was a test of trial and error. Once it was in the correct position we used masking tape to stick the wires, motor and battery holder down onto the buggy. If we had any spare time we could decorate our wheels with writing or patterns or take photos and film videos.

Friday 20th of March: Today our challenge was to create a switch for the electric motor. We were give a paper fastener,paper clip, an extra crocodile clip and a piece of card. We had to experiment lots of different ways on how to do it.Here are some of the examples of the with: Connecting the paper fastener to the crocodile clip and the motor or stick the card onto the buggy then pierce the paper fastener through the card and attach the paper clip onto the round side of the paper fastener. We didn't have a lot of time today so we only had a short activity.

Tuesday 24 of March: So far we had everything completed except from the lid design. We were given a sheet of A4 card and the resources in the classroom such as: felt, netting, colouring pencils, colouring pens, coloured paper scissors, scrap paper, glue and lots more. There was various designs of what people did, there were sports cars with a convertible roofs, a bus, box cars, jeeps and buggies. As well as decorating it we had to make space to turn the motor on and off. If we completed the tasks that we did that day our buggys would be complete. If we were finished and did know what to do we could add extra features. A majority finished our buggies today!

Great success at the London Youth Games and in Girls' football

Rugby - 3rd at the London Youth Games

Our sport continues to go from strength to strength and last week our rugby team finished 3rd in the London Youth Games. 

This is a huge result for Upminster Junior School. To reach the games the team had to win the Havering competition, which we did for the third year running! Then faced with the best rugby teams from across London they managed to finish a fantastic 3rd!  3rd best school in all of London!

Well done to all the boys and girls that took part and thank you to Mr Stanley's and Mr Waskett's continued effort to raise the profile and the standard of sport in our school.

Girls' football on the verge of the Havering championship for the 2nd year running

Whilst we are on the subject of sporting achievements we can also announce that our girls' football team won their semi-final of the Havering Champions' League (8-0) and will play in the final on the 16th April - Good luck girls!

Please come and support our team!

Mr Woodford

Edith's Wartime Scrapbook

Edith's Wartime Scrapbook

It's been a busy few weeks for Year 5! The children (and the teachers!) certainly deserve a restful weekend. 

They have recently returned for their 1940's Experience at the Lincolnsfield Centre and this week they have been putting on a fabulous production - which was enjoyed by all. In fact, I think it was more entertaining than a visit to the West End. The children were all brilliant. They said their lines perfectly and sang their lines beautifully!

Here is a short clip of one of their songs:

I can't wait for the next one!

Mr Woodford

Young People, ICT and e-safety

e-Safety flyer for parents and carers

Keeping children safe online is a priority for us all. This links to a short flyer from the London Grid for Learning

Blood-Hound SSC

On 21^st-23^rd of February Year 6 had a talk with a man called Mr Cook; he spoke to us about Blood-Hound SSC. Blood-Hound is designed to be the world’s fastest car going at a top speed of 1,050 mph; this can cover 4 football pitches in 2 seconds! In 2016 it will be tested for a World Land Speed record.

Mr Cook spoke to us about how maths and science are involved in the Blood-Hound project. We learnt this by using one of Newton’s laws: mass x acceleration=force. Also we looked the amazing features of Blood-Hound and all of the different types of Land Speed Record cars and how they are different.

He presented for about 45 minutes before we went down to the hall and got into groups of three or four. We were told to make a cardboard model of the Blood-Hound using a pack we got with instructions and resources. We made them by folding the cardboard into shape, then sticking the wooden axles down for wheels the finally putting the straw into the balloon and sticking it down. This took us around ten minutes to do. If our car was to be fast it would need to be aero-dynamic like the Blood-Hound, we had to try to improve it. There were lots of ways people done this like sticking a straw at the front or folding the front over to make it pointy.

One of Newton’s laws is a force must act on another force to make it move. Using that rule our cars worked by blowing a straw which blew up the balloon, then the air from the balloon deflated and came out the straw to make the car move. After our cars were complete and had a test run, we had a big race. We had to nominate one member of our team to race our model.

Everyone had a brilliant afternoon!

          

                By RH 6D

World Book Day

On Thursday the 5th March 2015 Upminster Junior School all dressed up a a character from a book that they are familiar with. This was in aid of World Book Day. They all thoroughly enjoyed the day, and looked absolutely Brilliant.

Written by ES, Year 4 4C/4H