Hedgehog Class

2023 - 2024

2022-2023

Welcome to Hedgehogs 2022! We are very excited about the year ahead and all the lovely learning in store! Keep visiting this page for updates and photos.

Mrs Fowler    Mrs Ambrose    Miss Duffield    Mrs Cross

Plastic Pollution

On Monday 27th of February, a man called Mr Naulls (from The Rivers Trust) came to our school to teach us about the environment and how we can help. Mr Naulls taught us how harmful litter can be.

We learned what effects litter can have on all wildlife. It gets blown into the rivers, leading to the ocean. About 80% of the litter we drop ends up polluting our ocean and harming animals.

Next, we did a litter pick around the school. We found interesting things like metal and tree guards and we found over 190 food wrappers from children's snacks. It was astonishing how much litter we found and we will make sure it doesn't happen again.

Mr Naulls kindly gifted us a litter-picking kit to encourage us to keep on making a difference. He also gave us a book called The Lost Words which was kindly donated by the author, Robert MacFarlane.

We are going to continue to litter pick as we are committed to making a difference to the world.

Report by Kate

WellCome Genome Campus Trip

Hedgehogs Class went on a trip to the WellCome Genome Campus near Cambridge. We learned all about DNA and the children shared what they already knew - what was a lot!

We learned how the institute was responsible for sequencing the human genome and we saw one of the laboratories - it was amazing - full of millions of pounds of state-of-the-art equipment for sequencing DNA.

The project the WellCome scientists are working on now is the Tree of Life project - a nationwide project to sequence the DNA of every living things in the UK and Ireland.  That will be at least 70,000 living things (but probably many more once the rarer ones have been found!). The project is shared with many other science partners, including the Earlham Institute. In our own small way, Hedgehogs have already been a part of this with their Bee Hotel project details of which can be found here. 

We finished the trip by having the opportunity to talk with 6 of the scientists who work on the campus (and this was in addition to Em Dixon and Cindy who worked with us through the day).

Please see below for photos of the day.

Cross-curricular learning

Hedgehogs have been combining and applying many areas of their learning this half term. In literacy, they have been learning how to write a clear explanation; in science, they have been learning about evolution and adaptation; in computing, they have been learning about communicating using multimedia. Below you can see the first of the films they made using all these skills - a film explaining how the peppered moth has adapted and evolved over the centuries. As we complete more films, we will upload them here.

Harvest Festival

Hedgehogs played a brilliant part in our recent Harvest Celebration at the church. Many Year 6s spoke to the whole congregation and the whole class sang a three part harmony Autumn song which was led by Mrs Cross. Please see some photos below.

2021-2022

Welcome to Hedgehogs Class 2021!  We are very excited about our learning for the year ahead.  Keep checking this page for photos, information. And don't forget to visit the other curriculum pages where you will see lots of our hard work. Our latest addition can be found in: Storytime | Great Hockham Primary School and Nursery (secure-primarysite.net).

Citizen Science - Bee Hotel

Year 5 and 6 are helping a scientist at the Earlham Institute in Norwich with their Citizen Science project. They will be monitoring this bee hotel during the summer term to see if/how it is used. The aim is to explore if children can play a part in gathering data for a scientific investigation.

We are confident we can do this, and we will be uploading our entries onto the Bee Diary part of our website once our bee friends start to move in! Please see below for the protocol written by the scientist and a photo of the hotel - you can find it on the wall outside Mrs Hall's office.

British Science Week

Hedgehogs Class invited people in to share their science learning this week for a Science Curiosity Cafe. The title of the Cafe was 'Looking Closely' and the theme was What is the same and what is different? The children told their visitors about cells and DNA, classification and explained the kinds of activities they do to help them learn.  They also explored using the microscopes, made a model of a human cell using sweets and jelly, and made a microbe from Fimo. Please look at the photos below.

Hedgehogs Class Robots Project

Hedgehogs' geography topic this half term is volcanoes. Their science topic is materials and their properties. Their DT topic is creating a 3D model from a 2D plan. Their computing topic is to produce leaflets and brochures using Publisher.

We decided to combine all of these learning opportunities into one and so they are designing robots that could collect samples of lava. This is actually a thing geologists do! 

How Geologists Collect Lava Samples From Volcanoes - Bing video

 On Tuesday, Hedgehogs Class zoomed with a few members of BT’s Innovations Department. Their names were Laura, Pam and Shane and they design and make and work with robots. A few of the robots they shared with us were: Baxter, which carried out boring tasks like moving boxes, Double, which was like an ipad on a Segway and Miro and Harriet. Miro is a robot that looks like bunny and a cow. It is programmed to help elderly people by playing games with them and it even has soft ears for them to stroke. Harriet was a hologram which means she is a mannequin with a computer screen for the head. They also showed us a fan that projected a hologram picture when it was spinning. We were inspired by what they told us and made some alterations to our designs.

We are now making our robots and will be presenting our work back to BT in a couple of weeks. We will also be writing explanations of how our robots work, producing an information leaflet about them, writing an advert for them and researching the latest smart materials that they could be made from.

2020 - 2021

We have been very busy bringing the Curiosity Cafe to you via a virtual event.  Please visit this part of the website Curiosity Cafes | Great Hockham Primary School and Nursery to see our films and those from the rest of the school.

Science

We are part of a project run by the Teachers Science Network at John Innes.  Please click on this link to find our more about our work. Science Beyond the Classroom | Great Hockham Primary School and Nursery (secure-primarysite.net)

Summer 2

Our topic this half term is The Iron Age. We are currently learning about the history and taking on the role of archaeologists.  Later in the term, we will be making documentaries to share our learning with you. Watch this space!

Summer 1

Our DT/Coding topic this half term is pulleys, gears and levers. We made simple pulleys that we had to wind by hand. We then explored pulleys, gears and levers using Lego Wedo coding. We then combined the two ideas to automate our original device. Please see picture and video below.

Summer 1

Our science topic this half term is called Are all life cycles the same? As part of this project, we worked with Dr Emily Fowler from the University of East Anglia. She shared her expertise on drosophila (fruit fly) life cycles and lent us 12 bottles containing drosophila eggs. We then observed as they developed into larvae, pupae and flies.  We used a microscope to observe closely and kept a diary. At one exciting point, we even watched as a fly eclosed (hatched) from a pupa. Please see below for a diagram and Daisy's wonderful summary of the 3 week process.

Spring 2

We have been learning about the History of Animation. The timeline of our learning journey is below. We wrote reviews and summaries of all the animations and learnt about technical advances through the last century.

Finally, we storyboarded and made our own stopmotion animations using clay models. The films are below for you to enjoy.

Each film group analyzed the other films and rated them on their smoothness, sound effects, use of music, originality and storyline. They then voted for their favourite film.  The winning film was Fat Little Fellas by Max, Reggie and Tomas.

Monday 11th January

Hi everyone, I have been so impressed with the work that is being returned by Hedgehogs Class.  Thank you so much. I am moving the homework gallery towards the top of this page now so that you can see work such as artwork displayed there.  Great job, guys - we've got this!

Tuesday 5th January

Good morning, Hedgehogs. Obviously we now know that school won't be same for this half term but that doesn't mean we're not still AWESOME HEDGEHOG CLASS! I will be checking TEAMs throughout the day so you can message me if you're not in school or you can phone and have a chat. We will aim to restart a class Teams or Zoom meeting so you guys can get together online.  I am sure that time will fly past and, before you know it, we will be back together in the same room.

In the meantime, I will set home learning on Teams later this morning.

Take care, from Mrs Fowler

Welcome to Hedgehogs Class 2020 - 2021

We are Hedgehogs Class - the Year 5 and Year 6 children.  We are proud of being at the top of the school and enjoy the extra responsibilities that we are given.  Many of us are Maths Ambassadors, Science Ambassadors and Reading Ambassadors who help promote enthusiasm for those subjects across the school and more of us are hoping to achieve those goals very soon.

To find out more about the roles of ambassadors, please visit this page.