Wednesday, 20 January 2010

Documentary Film Project

This school year, the search was on for a creative filmmaker to work alongside us to support us making documentary films.

We had a great response from filmmakers and decided to invite 6 for interview.

Three pupils joined us for a very long but successful day of interviewing.


We appointed Mark Levermore to work alongside us this year and work has already started in the planning of the project.


Pupils are joining their teachers in the initial planning meetings with Mark.



The combination of all these minds working together is going to result in some creative and whacky documentary films.


Mark will be working with individual classes to plan in detail at the beginning of February.

The Big Draw



2009's Big Draw has finally arrived at Columbia School!


Pupils are invited into a magical forest world in our middle hall.

They meet forest creatures and exotic forest dwellers.

They are inspired by the sights and scents of a real forest in their school.

Pupils are able to choose the scale in which they draw, some choosing their school sketch books and others working on huge easels or screens.

Monday, 29 June 2009

The Curious Minds Learning Network held their first school council conference on 3rd June at Columbia School.
The KS2 school council representatives from all six Curious Minds schools came together to think about what things support their learning.
Guest speaker Ben Smith (AKA rapper and comedian Doc Brown) opened the conference and spoke passionately to the students about following their interests and talents.


The students then joined in with a series of different activities designed to get them thinking about how they learn best. Students learnt to juggle and build newspaper bridges!
Each student brought a piece of work to illustrate some work they had done at their own school that they particularly enjoyed and understood. These were made into a huge wall and students shared their work with each other.


At the end of the day, students thought about all the different ways they had been learning. They thought about how they like to learn best at school and with their school council colleagues they ordered their ideas.


The exciting and successful day was brought to a close by the Deputy Young Mayor for Tower Hamlets.

Friday, 15 May 2009

Inside Mary's Office...

Ebony and Bronze Classes went to Mary's Office with Didi.
She took them on her flying carpet.

Inside Mary's office, you can transform into anything you want!

You could be a fairy...

You could be a bat...



You could be a cat...

The Magic Carpet

Ebony and Bronze Classes travelled on a magic carpet with Didi.
They travelled all over the school.
She took them to fantasy worlds.

"We went to the Art Room and there was a forest and birds"




"We went to Olly's room and we were giants and his class were tiny. And the furniture was made of doughnuts and biscuits."




"We went to Mary's Office and it was all sparkly and shiny. Mary was wearing sparkles too."

Monday, 11 May 2009

Nocturnal Animals




Didi came to work with Sapphire and Silver Classes.



We learned about some nocturnal animals.
Nocturnal animals are animals that mostly come out at night.


First we listened to some sounds. We listened to a mouse rustling, creeping and scuttling through some leaves in a box.

Then we heard about Artemides the Owl. Artemides lived in a tree.
One day he swooped down and caught a mouse.

We also heard all about a bat and his special hearing.
Bats smell, hear, taste, feel and see just like people do. The term "blind as a bat" isn't really accurate. Bats have perfectly good eyes for seeing in the daylight, the problem is, they do most of their hunting at night! Instead of relying on their sight at night, bats make rapid high-pitched squeaks called "ultrasounds". These sounds are too high for most people to hear. If these sounds hit something, they bounce back; it's like when you hear your voice echo back from a mountain or a bathroom when you shout. The bat hears the echo and can tell where the object is. This is called "echolocation". Not every species of bat is able to echolocate, but most can.
After hearing all these interesting and fun stories we went into the hall and we moved around like the nocturnal animals we had just heard about.

We stretched and spread our wings like a bat.





We used our talons to perch on and tree and catch our pray just like an owl. Then we scampered around like a mouse searching for some food.



Finally when our bellies were full we curled up into a cosy, snug ball like a little mouse sleeping.
















Lastly we went back into class and drew some pictures of the stories we had heard. We only used pencil to draw our pictures because our pictures were set in night time, and we know at night time we cannot see bright colours because it is dark with very little light.

By Sapphire and Silver Classes

A Mysterious Suitcase


Amethyst and Ruby classes became archeologists investigating Ancient Greek artefacts.

A mysterious suitcase arrived in the school for the Amethyst and Ruby historians and they examined objects and organised them into a museum with labels.


Later Didi helped both classes discover their storytelling skills and they found they could share their own stories with their class groups.