Welcome to Year 7 - Mr Humes

Accelerated Reader Quiz period 5

Pictured below are the 7H pupils who achieved their points target for the latest Quizzing period. Well done everyone.

Transition Workshop (2)

Pupils in 7H took part in the 2nd workshop this week run by Connecting Minds and Banbridge H.S. We talked about developing skills to help us focus,see, connect, reframe and care. Pupils also practised Five Finger Breathing which can help you become calmer.  The class also worked together to create the illusion of a wave. A big thanks must go to the Year 8 ambassadors and their teacher Mrs Donaghy who helped deliver the programme.

 Year 7 Transition Workshops

This week the Year 7 pupils completed their first  Transition workshop session on Mindfulness, organised by Connecting Minds and Banbridge High School. This practical workshop introduced the concept of mindfulness and six key life skills:focusing, being quiet,seeing,reframing,caring and connecting. Mrs Donaghy from B.H.S. brought along four Year 8 ambassadors who helped deliver the programme. We look forward to our next session.

Shared Education

P7H visited St. Mary's Primary School P7 class and together they programmed their "Titanic" spheros to navigate through the different obstacles (icebergs) placed on the floor to reach their destination (New York).

While some pupils were on the Edinburgh trip the remainder of P7H and P7McC designed their own boardgames. When completed they played the games and voted for their favourite. Knuckle Ball was the overall winner.  Well done to Carter, Jack and Michael! 

Theme Park Posters

Pupils in P7H have recently been looking at techniques of persuasive writing and were set the task to create a Theme Park poster. The children had to work in groups, decide upon a theme for their park and do appropriate research to create their final piece of work.

Elf Trail

P7H, along with all the other Key Stage 2 classes, had great fun today completing the Elf Trail in Banbridge Town centre and receiving a video message from Santa back in school. They also had hot chocolate and cookies and  received a selection box gift. Many thanks to the PTA for all their hard work in organising this event.

 Barnardo Buddies Training

Gail Irwin from Barnardos visited Abercorn to work with Year 7 pupils on training to be a  Buddie. They  commenced with some work in the classroom on the characteristics of  being a good Buddie and strategies they might adopt to assist someone in the playground or resolve an issue. The pupils then tried out some of the games in the Asembly Hall  which they could do with younger children. Covid restrictions have hampered the roll out of this Buddie scheme but hopefully this will change in the next term when Year 7 pupils can put their training into action in all of the play areas.

Spaghetti Challenge

 This WAU task involved pupils working in groups and making a bridge from nothing more than 20 pieces of dried spaghetti and 8 marshmallows. They first had to think about their potential design and what they have learned about strong structures in this WAU topic so far. An added challenge was to have the structure support the weight of an apple. There were some great creations with some stronger than others. It was a sticky, enjoyable task and the leftover marshmallows went down well!!

Special mention goes to the group consisting of Michael, Carter and Peter who created a strong structure that easily coped with the weight of the apple. Well done boys and to the rest of the class who worked really well on this challenge.

WAU-  A New Bridge Location

Pupils worked in  small groups to discuss and decide the best location, out of three possible  sites, for a new proposed bridge in Cantilever City. They had to identify advantages and disadvantages of each location and take into account factors like cost, environmental impact, accessibility and the overall impact on people living within the area. Each group reported back their findings in the plenary and gave reasons for their chosen location. Lots of great discussion and well reasoned arguments!

Build a Paper Bridge Challenge

As part of their WAU topic on Bridges the pupils were set a challenge to build a bridge from two pieces of A4 paper that could hold a kg weight or more. They used dictionaries as pillars which were set 14cm apart. The class had already looked at a variety of bridge designs and the importance of strong shapes like triangles in some of these structures. Coby and Reuben created a very strong beam bridge with an extra support column and definitely won the award for a design carrying the biggest weight. There were some other  great designs which could hold up a variety of weights. Well done everyone!!

Practical Numeracy

Pupils in P7H last week were estimating and measuring different objects around the classroom. They were also tasked with converting their results between cm and mm.

Drama Activity: Freeze Frame

Pupils used our outside marquee to rehearse some of their Freeze Frame scenarios last week. There was an emphasis on concentration, co-operation and communication whilst working in groups and they had to think carefully about the emotions being depicted. Some great ideas on show and we look forward to their final pieces with appropriate props.