Welcome to the Year 8 Blog!

This year is going to be a lot of fun, learning and hard work in preparation for the transition to Upper School. The year 8 tutors are Miss Clark and Ms Miller who share 8GC and Mrs Tomlinson who is tutoring 8MA while Mrs Ahmed is on Maternity Leave. Miss Clark teaches Art and DT, Ms Miller teaches Music and teach Science. We have many, many years of teaching experience between us and recognise that Year 8 is a pivotal year in your child’s educational career.

Music in Year 8

We will begin by researching music in news broadcasts, revising musical elements and devices before composing our own times pieces to accompany a news programme. Our great composer is George Gershwin and we will look at the controversial issues in the folk opera ‘Porgy and Bess’ before our world music takes us to djembe drumming and African call and response and grid notation. We will arrange a Christmas song using African styles and layered rhythms.

With a focus on musical structure we will look at programming and compose some digital pieces, learning about hooks and riffs before engaging in a whole class ensemble topic on Rap. We hope to finish with a flourish in a whole school musical production.

Mary Rose Trip

We had a wonderful time at the Mary Rose museum where the children experienced the life of a Tudor teenager.

During several fascinating workshops, they were able to simulate the loading and firing of the cannons and saw items from the ship which are now over 500 years old. We were able to take a look into the lives and origins of the sailors and we fought a battle to protect our shores!

Every member of staff from the Mary Rose Museum who approached me on the trip couldn’t speak highly enough of the children’s behaviour. They certainly represented themselves and the school beautifully. We were very proud of them all!

Science

Over the course of year 8, the children will be taken on a journey through three science specialisms, Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

The children started the autumn term by studying food and nutrition, combustion, plants and reproduction and finally the periodic table.

During the spring term we have been concentrating on light, breathing and respiration, energy transfer and unicellular organisms.

• The children has enjoyed many experiments including modelling an asthma attack using balloons and straws while measuring the difference in time for air intake.  
• They have enjoyed finding out if height has any correlation to lung capacity.
• They have enjoyed watching demonstration on lung and heart investigation
• We have used Bunsen burners and iron rods to help us understand rates of conductivity
• Last but by no means least we have looked at the convection process, using coloured dye to represent hot and cold air

The summer term will be focussing on materials,  forces, plant growth, reactivity and electromagnets where we hope to experience many more exciting experiments.

Polite reminder

We do require children to be ready to learn and we . This means arriving to the classroom with their equipment, pencil case, pen, pencil, ruler and rubber.

Useful Science websites

khanacademy.org

bbc.co.uk – bitesize for interesting science and most other topics at KS3

billnye.com – Bill Nye the science guy

howstuffworks.com

exploratorium.edu – a variety of science resources

natgeo.com

natgeokids.com

images.nasa.gov – NASA

edinburghzoo.org.uk – webcams of animals at Edinburgh zoo

During the current closure of school lessons and further sites specifically pertaining to each unit will be uploaded to your go4schools homework area.