Firemen from Hampshire Education Services visited Year 5 recently. They talked about fire safety in the home and road safety. For the fire safety the children were encouraged to identify hazards in the home using the fire lorry, which was set out as a kitchen and living room of a house.

During the road safety session, the firemen highlighted many ways in which children could be distracted from giving their full attention to crossing the road. These included messing about with friends to texting or listening to their ipods. Many of the children had not considered the dangers inherent in these activities and it proved a very worthwhile visit.

A residential school trip offers many opportunities for learning outside of the classroom. On the  Isle of Wight trip, Year 5 experiences encompassed  Art, History, Geography and Independent living skills amongst other things.

They experienced life as servants at Osborne House under the supervision of 'Mrs Pilkington' then had the opportunity to become lords and ladies at Carisbrooke Castle, (while also learning about the different arrow heads and what they were used for!). 

After a poor start to the season against St. Margaret’s the team a much needed morale boosting team performance against a strong Kingscourt team. They boasted having 4 district and regional players. Undaunted in losing the toss Alton Convent were put into bat. Joanna and Ben weathered the storm of Kingscourt fast and furious attack only losing 1 wicket in their allotted 4 overs. Jo suffered a nasty rising delivery which she required treatment. Jack and Josh scored 20 runs only to lose  a cheap wicket. They were followed by Tom and Jamie (Yr4) and they struggled to advance the scoreline. The next pair were Alton’s inexperienced pair of Harry and Harry (Colonel and Chippy). After hitting the ball perfectly into space, Harry R was run out in a daydream. However, they began settle and kept the opponents bowlers frustrated. Already Alton accumulated 223 runs starting with 200 runs. The last pairing of Harry and Matt needed to make Kingscourt aim for a bigger batting total. Matt was stumped in the first over.  This only galvanised Harry to bat brilliantly scoring 3 boundaries off the cream of the bowlers, he actually top scored with16 runs.

The last few weeks of the Spring term were marked by tremendous enthusiasm for independent research and learning as Upper Prep children worked hard on the presentations, prose and poetry for their ESB exams. Our pupils once more excelled themselves, with a record number of children (38!) achieving the top, Distinction grade. Nearly everyone achieved a Merit or better and 83% scored at Merit Plus or above. One of the highlights of Open Day was the opportunity to hear again some of this very polished work, which does so much to enhance our English curriculum and the children’s broader educational experience here.

Year 5's trip to Salesian Colleg to see the play 'Godspell' was a great success. The cast all had very nice singing voices and were very good at acting. 'Godspell' told the story of Jesus and how Judas betrayed him to the Romans. Throughout the play, Jesus told stories to all the people around him. My favourite story was the one about the sheep and the goats. Jesus said to the sheep on his right hand, "You shall be rewarded in the kingdom of my father." He said to the others, "You goats shall be cursed into the fiery pits of hell". When Judas betrayed Jesus, the music was very sad. The songs were serious and filled with sadness. A big screen in the corner of the room showed pictures some of the time. The play was very well written and choreographed. The lighting and sound effects really set the mood well, happy or sad.

On Wednesday 11th March Years 4-6 and the boys from More House watched the senior school play, Daisy Pulls it Off. It was all about a girl who goes to a new school where pupils are playing tricks on her because she was clever and went to an elementary school.

Daisy and her new best friend, Trixie try to look for the treasure of the school and in the end Daisy finds it! Because Daisy gets tricks played on her, the teachers tell her off and she nearly gets expelled, but in the end the girl who plays most of the tricks is the one who nearly gets expelled instead.

We had five hard matches to play - we won two; lost two; and drew one. Our first match was against Churches school - we lost 2:1, Eshana got the goal and India who was a great centre was the player ol this match. The second march was against Mayville, where we lost 6:4, they were a very strong ream and ended up winning the whole tournament, for this game I was the player of the match, playing wing attack. The Third match we drew again, 6:6, Eshana was the girl of the game. The last 2 matches were against St John's and Kings Court - we won both of them, 3:1 and 4:1. Rebecca was great in defence and Eshana once again was brilliant as goal attack. Both were players of the march. We came third in the tournament out of 6 teams, overall a good result. To finish the fun day the mini bus got stuck in the mud and whole netball team had to push the van while Mrs Bloem was driving!

On Wednesday we had a story that was read to us by Mr Hoyes. He read a couple of stories to us one of them was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, that was my favourite. I really liked him reading Great Expectations because I think it was a wonderful story and he put a lot of expression into the story so you could see it in minds eye. After that we got given a poem. The poems we got given were originally stories that had been made into poems.
Then a bit later on we were taught some Spanish with Mrs Swann we learnt a lot like: uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, sies, ocho, nueve, diez. And we also learnt that oi! comes from oiga meaning come over here and talk to me.

Today we went to the Allen Gallery to look at patterns. We were introduced to the Allen Gallery by Kate who works there. We did all sorts of different activities like making patterns with stamps; we had to make a sort of Rubic’s cube using big blocks, and there was a magnetic board and also dresses you dressed up in and described the pattern. My favourite activity was the magnetic board were you had to match the pictures to the pattern.

Ellie, 5B