Matilda wrote: “I like the look of the Mr Kipling cake. It is beautifully decorated with corrugated icing. It’s quite fruity and very mouth-watering. The smell is quite citrusy. The cake feels springy and spongy. The look of the Morrisons cake is very appetising. It has a thick layer of marzipan which I think will be overpowering. It smells pungent. The aftertaste is very bitter. The Sainsbury’s cake looks gooey and nectarous. It smells quite nutty rather than fruity. Overall, I think that my favourite is Mr Kipling.”

We are in the local papers all over Somerset! It’s great that so many people will get to hear about our Remembrance Sunday experience because we were so proud to take part and fulfil such an important role. Thank you to the local residents (especially the ones with no links to the school) who have contacted us to let us know how much they have appreciated the special words we wrote in dedication to each of the soldiers. We appreciate you taking the time to tell us how touched you have been by our memorials.

The theme for Anti-Bullying Week 2018 was Choose Respect and it ran from the 12th to 16th November. In Year Six, we decided to focus on Cyberbullying and how we should behave respectfully towards other people when we are messaging them through our computers or mobile phones. We thought about what actions we should take if we felt we were the victim of cyberbullying. If you ever come across cyberbullying, here is our advice on how to tackle it: 1) Save any evidence of the bullying and show an adult. 2) Block the message or the person and do not respond to them in any way. 3) Log off the site where the cyberbullying is happening. 4) Talk to someone you trust about it. We made posters to show this advice. You can see Oscar’s here.

Our thanks to Mr Fiddes and everybody at The Royal British Legion in Timsbury for asking us to be part of this very special event. The Year Six Eagles are proud to have been given the role of laying wreaths for the seventeen Timsbury heroes on this 100th anniversary of the end of World War One. We will remember them.

Well done to all of the Year Six Eagles who turned out today to play their part in Timsbury’s Remembrance Day Service at the War Memorial in the village. Our role was to lay wreaths for each of the seventeen men from Timsbury who lost their lives during World War One. We have been very proud of the thoughtful and respectful manner in which the children from our school have approached this special task which we were asked to perform by The Royal British Legion.

Thank you to everybody who visited our World War One Exhibition in The Eyrie. We hope you enjoyed looking at our pencil sketch artwork and seeing the very thoughtful and poignant tributes we have written for the poppy wreaths. We hope that you can join us on Remembrance Sunday when we will be paying our respects to the seventeen Timsbury soldiers at the service at the War Memorial.

We enjoyed going round looking at each other’s Learning Logs. This Home Challenge was on the topic of Eagles. Some super research had taken place to find out interesting facts about different species. Some children had made amazing models while others had presented their work through beautiful artwork, quizzes or even board games. Well done to everybody for your super projects!

Our cookery task was a huge success. Everybody enjoyed tasting their pies and we evaluated our results, deciding what went well and making decisions about what we would do differently if we were going to make another Lord Woolton Pie in the future. Although the recipe was reasonably straightforward, each group had to make their own pastry which presented a challenge but our class has very talented cooks who coped with this brilliantly.

Welcome to the Eagle Kitchen! We ended our Battle of Britain project with a Fantastic Finale which involved cooking a World War Two recipe. During the war, food was really scarce and the British population were encouraged to grow their own vegetables. This was promoted through a campaign called Dig For Victory. In April 1940, Lord Woolton was appointed Minister of Food by Neville Chamberlain. Lord Woolton’s task was to oversee rationing during wartime shortages.

We have had a lot of fun making our Anderson Shelter models. We designed our models carefully, working out exactly how we wanted them to look. We gathered the resources and materials required to construct our structures. Then, we used tools, including saws, to create a framework to a carefully calculated design specification. Cardboard was then put over the framework and it was decorated to make it look like it would have done during World War Two. Did you know that people put soil over the top of them to grow their own vegetables in because food was so scarce?

As part of our The Battle of Britain topic, we have been learning all about the Blitz and how people tried to keep themselves safe during this time. We have discovered how children were evacuated to the countryside away from the cities which were being bombed and we have researched how those who remained in the cities attempted to protect themselves, including carrying out blackout procedures and building Anderson shelters. In DT, we planned our designs for models of Anderson shelters and we have now started to build them. We researched their shape and size, how they were camouflaged in people’s gardens and what furniture would have been inside. We will show you our finished models when we have completed them.

This is the Raft Building activity at PGL. This was our final activity of the week and one of our favourites. Each team built their own raft, tying the poles together and securing the barrels, before launching their vessels into Portland Harbour and paddling around. It was brilliant fun!

This is the Low Level Ropes Course activity at PGL. Each person on the course had two teammates to support them with either their ‘Ninja Squirrel’ position to push them back on or their ‘Fist of Friendship’ to help them to balance. The course was tricky enough but then we had to get to the other end whilst holding a cup of water! Some groups managed this better than others!

This is the Climbing activity at PGL. The climbing wall goes a lot higher than you can see in the photo. The children at the bottom are belaying. This is a very important job we were taught. Belaying is very technical but we became very skilled at it. A belayer distributes the rope that the climber needs to climb higher but also exerts tension to keep the rope taught. Therefore, a falling climber would not fall very far at all.

This is the Kayaking activity at PGL. We left the Osmington Bay site and headed to Portland Harbour where the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy is located. We changed into our wetsuits and then, after practising how to use the paddles correctly on land, we spent an hour kayaking around the harbour. We had a brilliant time!

This is the Fencing activity at PGL. We learnt all about the safety equipment you have to wear when fencing and then spent time practising how to stand and then move in the correct positions. The swords we are using are called foils. Can you recognise who the Year Six Eagles are that are fencing in this photo?

This is the Trapeze activity at PGL. It involves climbing up the telegraph pole to the little wooden platform which you can see at the top. Then, if you make it that far, you have to launch yourself off the platform and try to touch the white ball. You then swing around for a bit before you are brought down. Everybody managed to gain a huge sense of achievement on this activity. Even if we didn’t make it to the top, when we thought we had reached the point where we didn’t want to go any higher, everybody encouraged us with shouts of “Two more!” We then found the courage to climb two more steps before being lowered to the ground. We were all so proud of everybody.

In Year Six, we have to be able to round any whole number to a required degree of accuracy. We rounded off our work on rounding by taking each other on in a series of challenges which required good rounding skills but also good tactical skills too! We had a lot of fun during this session. Some of us extended our learning by rounding decimal numbers to the nearest tenth.

Our week of cycling activities, celebrating the Tour of Britain passing through our village, ended with our Tour de Timsbury event. Everybody brought their bikes to school (or scooters instead) and had great fun cycling around a specially designed course marked out on the school field. The whole school took part which made it quite an impressive peloton!

We have been developing our knowledge of the United Kingdom this week through looking at where the stages of the Tour of Britain have been taking place. We researched where the start and finish was for each of the eight stages and placed coloured stickers on the map to locate these places. Although we had a good knowledge of where Bristol and London were, other places required some efficient atlas skills to plot them accurately, such as Pembrey Country Park and Whinlatter Pass. In the photo, you can see us working out where Cranbrook is.