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Pine Class May 25 Update

By All, Pine

Pine Class - April and March 25 Update

We’ve had a busy few weeks since the beginning of the Spring Term. In outdoor learning we’ve been climbing trees, clearing the woods and making bird feeders. 

We have had a short but busy half term in Pine Class. Highlights have been our topic work looking at the changes in technology over time, our trip to Hatters Tea Room and Cromer Library and enjoying the benefits of such beautiful school grounds in the warm weather. The children have also produced some really impressive art work.

We hope you have a lovely half term and look forward to helping your young people choose their options after the holiday.

Caring for our Planet

By All, Olive

Caring for our Planet

Last half-term,  Olive class began the project of collecting empty crisp packets from the packed lunch hall to learn how to care for our planet and reduce waste going to landfill! We spent time cleaning them and ironing them to make a blanket to  post out in support of the homeless charity.

The Stone Age

By All, Olive

The Stone Age Period

Olive Class have immersed themselves back in time to The Stone Age period. We have made our own weapons , foraged for wild garlic within our school woods and cooked our own garlic bread on an open fire.  We then found out what the Neolithic people ate by making our own fossilised poo! We finished the half term off with a fantastic day out at Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse Museum. We got to hunt a wild boar with a spear, make our own clay pots,  learn to plough by hand and grind wheat with a stone!

The Stone Age

By All, Fig

The Stone Age

This half term Fig class has enjoyed learning about the Stone Age and how people lived during these times. The class got hands-on experience of what life would have been like on a trip to Gressenhall Museum, where they became hunter-gatherers, farmed the land using Stone Age tools and hunted boar! The pupils built shelters and made their own clay bowls. It was a lovely day and we were very lucky with the weather.

Oak Class Make Volcanoes

By All, Oak

Oak Class Make Volcanoes

Oak class loves learning all about plate tectonics, how mountains are formed and what causes volcanoes! We were even able to make and erupt our own volcanoes using bicarbonate of soda and vinegar.

Pine Class March 25 update

By All, Pine

Pine Class - March 25 Update

We’ve had a busy few weeks since the beginning of the Spring Term. In outdoor learning we’ve been climbing trees, clearing the woods and making bird feeders. 

We’ve had a busy few weeks in Pine Class and we’ve loved to be able to get outside in the recent Spring weather. In Outdoor Learning we’ve been climbing trees, litter collecting and whittling sticks. In Art, we have been enjoying learning about the patterns used in African art and paper weaving and in Topic we’ve been enjoying studying different sorts of rocks, making the earth’s structure from Play dough and making volcanoes.

We continue to be impressed with the growing maturity, kindness and consideration your people are showing and well done to Pine Class members for representing the school at recent football and cross country events – brilliant stuff!

Bay PE

By All, Bay

Bay PE

This half term in PE with Mr Wright we have been learning how to play Lacrosse! We’ve really enjoyed using the Lacrosse sticks to throw and catch the balls.

Cave paintings

By All, Bay

Cave Paintings

We have been learning all about the Stone Age and have loved learning about the Cave paintings. We read the story ‘Cave Baby by Julia Donaldson’ and set to work on our cave paintings whilst sat under our desks in our very own cave! They look fantastic displayed on the walls of Bay Class.

Walk Like Egyptian

By All, Fig

Walk Like an Egyptian

Fig class has enjoyed getting into the world of the Ancient Egyptians learning about the Gods/Godesses, farming, mummification, dress, traditions, culminating in a visit to Norwich Castle where the class took part in Egyptian workshops. The class made Egyptian necklaces, looked at real Egyptian artifacts, explored the daily life of Egyptians from how they farmed and made food to how they celebrated, as well as helping with the process of mummification. They enjoyed trying on clothes, acting and retelling myths from Egyptian times. The class had a fantastic day and were complimented on their knowledge by the museum staff. They were also very excited to see Norwich Castle. In class the pupils have made their own cartouches in clay using hieroglyphics to write their names, mummified tomatoes, made soap carvings and tasted food the Egyptians would have eaten. They role played being Howard Carter discovering Tutankhamun’s tomb of ‘wonderful things’.

Mrs Steph Harvey
Class teacher

Soap Carving

Fig class has been trying soap carving Egyptian hieroglyphics and symbols as part of our Ancient Egypt work.

What do you think?

Red Nose Day 2025

By All, Oak

Red Nose Day 31 March 2025

Red Nose Day was a roaring success with pupils enjoying playing games, treating themselves to a cake at the cake sale, getting active for the basketball house challenge and following our outside puzzle trail and making people laugh in our ‘funniest form’ competition!

These events cannot happen without the support of our parents and carers so thank you so much for sending in your loose change and cakes for us to sell. It is all really appreciated.

We are very proud to announce that Comic Relief will be receiving a cheque from Sidestrand Hall School  for a whopping

416

Total Amount Raised

Thank you again to everyone involved!

Pine Class Feb25 update

By All, Pine

Pine Class - February 25 Update

We’ve had a busy few weeks since the beginning of the Spring Term. In outdoor learning we’ve been climbing trees, clearing the woods and making bird feeders. 

In Topic we’ve been learning about the Middle Ages and we’ve tried our hands at weaving our own Rag Rugs. We’ve also been helping to show Felix – our French trainee teacher – how we work as a team. He has played his first game of cricket and shared his handball skills with us! In art we have enjoyed exploring the work of abstract artists including Jackson Pollock. 

Mars Day

By All, Events

Once again Mars Day has an out-of-this-world programme of live link-ups, activities and resources, talks and live Q&As with space stars, as well as career discussions with hidden heroes of the UK space industry.

A few highlights for Mars Day 2025 include:

  • Speakers from the UK Space Agency and ESA with The International Space Station (ISS) as our ‘guest of the year’!
  • Tim Peake beaming in during Mars Hour, giving you a chance to ask about his mission to the ISS
  • Going behind-the-scenes with the BBC Science team from the hit series Solar System with Professor Brian Cox

So, get ready to plan your own Mars Day mission – touchdown on favourite topics, book on to sessions and get ready to take part in Mars Hour activities. You can check in with your class or the whole school, as well as friends, family or embark on a solo mission.

Encourage young people to see the value of STEM subjects, by registering for your place on the next mission and prepare to land on Mars with us this March.

Book your free ticket

Chestnut Class Autumn Term

By All, Chestnut

Chestnut Class Autumn Term Blog

What a busy half term Chestnut has had! Well done to Chestnut class for a great few months.

In Design Technology, we created our fantastic cars out of wood.

In target time, we have focused our work on developing our fine motor skills as well as strengthening emotional and communication skills. To achieve this, we have implemented a variety of activities.

In maths, we have been working very hard on addition and subtraction using various resources
and practicing a lot of mental maths.

In English, we have been reading “The Iron Man” and we have been working on
comprehension and description. We have also learnt grammar including when we use present and past simple tense as well as regular and irregular verbs.

In Topic, we had a special visit at school “Mr Churchill” .Chestnut students had the opportunity to ask Mr Churchill questions about WW2 and we really enjoyed having him at the school.  We have also been learning the key events in WW2, causes of WW2, children in the WW2 and women’s role in WW2.

We have also enjoyed our school trip to the Christmas Carol concert at Norwich Cathedral.

I hope you all enjoy a restful Christmas break!

Oak Class Get Festive

By All, Oak

Oak Class Get Festive!

Classes were set the challenge of creating a Christmas grotto area in our classroom and we wanted to show you Oak’s! We made two giant snowmen and the pupils helped to wrap boxes and they decorated everything themselves. It looks so good and it is a lovely place to sit and read. We all wish you a restful Christmas break and a happy and healthy new year.

Pine Class Dec24 update

By All, Pine

Pine Class - December 2024 Update

We’ve had another busy and exciting few weeks in Pine class. We’ve been learning about the contribution to WW2 by our own family members and the family of staff at school. We also had Winston Churchill come to talk with us and share his experiences of leading the country at war. We also really enjoyed our trip to Norwich Aviation Museum where we saw lots of different aircraft and got to sit in the cockpit of a Jaguar aeroplane.

We loved the snow that briefly came and made the school look so pretty and we’ve had a lovely time getting the classroom ready for Christmas with lots of craft activities.

Illuminate Walk and Christmas Fayre 24

By All, Events, uncategorised

Above photos taken by John Bull

Illuminate Christmas Fayre

We held another successful Illuminate walk and Christmas Fayre with over £2000 being raised during the evening.  A big thank you to those families and friends of Sidestrand that attended, it was great to see so many attend despite the weather!  Once again, our Site team and Mr Coates and Sixth Form students did a great job of creating a little bit of winter land magic on our school site.  This year as well as Marshmallows we had Chestnuts being roasted by Mrs Claus and her helpers.  It was great to see a range of external stall holders come along and support our event.  We are really fortunate to have some amazing staff who help to support the event.  Thank you to everyone who helped play a part in ensuring its success.

Ms. Shelley Taylor
Headteacher

Bay Blog December 24

By All, Bay

Bay Blog December 24

We went shopping in Cromer. We went to the Co-op. We got ingredients to make pizza. We wrote a
shopping list. We paid for the ingredients using money. It was Fun!

written by Lily

Bay Class went to the About with Friends Café. I had a sausage roll and a hot chocolate. I like going to the café.

written by Archie

Science Museum Trip

By All, Oak

Oak Class' Trip to the Science Museum!

A brilliant time was had by all on our trip to the Science Museum in Bowthorpe.
There was so much to see and do! We began our day in the lights room where we tried to sneak through a web of lasers, navigate a confusing mirror maze and look at lots of interesting light installations! We had a wonderful time in the VR area trying out the headsets and riding motor bikes and race cars. The robot that kindly brought us a biscuit was really fun to watch and we finished the day in the Science lab where we could complete hands on experiments. A huge thanks to Ms. O’Hara for organising this for us. We had a fantastic time as you can see from our photos!
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