Year 8 have been learning about different types of animal habitats as part of our science topic for the spring term. The pupils have completed their work learning about how animals that are native to the United Kingdom live.
We have now moved around the world to look at the habitat of the rain forest. Mr. Peters introduced this session by sharing a short video with the students introducing them to the rain forest environment.
We then watched it a second time with plenty of pausing and asking of questions to help us recap with our new knowledge. The pupils found out some of the names of the animals such as the gibbon, tree frog or sloth. We also learnt why the rain forest is the ideal habitat for these animals, rather than the UK landscape.
Each pupil then completed an individual worksheet as part of their table work. Different challenges were set, depending on the targets and expectations from each class member.
We finished our session by having a visit to the Lansdowne School pond. This is situated in a quiet, closed square within the school grounds. We asked the pupils what they could see in the pond, and how they would describe the habitat.
You can find out some further thoughts from four of the Year 8 pupils in the video above.
Our English work in Year 8 has started to look at the advertising world and the idea that different products have different slogans. The pupils interact with these everyday both at home and whilst out in the community. The aim of the session was to help Year 8 to become aware of the power of slogans, and to recognise them when they are presented to us.
We started off our work by staging a class discussion asking what do we mean when we talk about a slogan? The pupils then found out how a simple message is often the most effective when used in advertising.
A wonderful example is the Lansdowne School slogan: Home, School, Community. This is a slogan that we see everyday on our school jumpers and blazers!
We played a group game on the class whiteboard by matching up well-known slogans with some product trademarks. Year 8 were surprised to see just how well they can identify and remember the slogans being used by the likes of Nike, Burger King and Tesco.
With the theory now learnt, Year 8 were ready to create their own slogans. Each class member was presented with a worksheet showing a picture of different products. Our task was to create our own creative slogan to match the product.
Year 8 were encouraged to use adjectives to help describe the product that was being sold. Some of the students were also able to offer a play on words and add a little hmour into their advertising sales pitch.