Class 3

Saturday, July 11, 2015

Our visit to a Sikh Temple

On Tuesday June 30th we visited the Guru Tegh Bahadur Gurdwara and Sikh Temple in Leicester.
We covered our heads, removed our shoes, washed our hands and were ready to be shown round the temple.
We saw morning prayers and on Tuesdays there are singers and musicians playing whilst people give their offerings to the Guru Granth Sahib.The Guru Granth Sahib is kept under a special canopy in the Gurdwara.
As the scriptures are being read, the reader or an attendant will periodically wave a chauri over the scriptures. This is a sign of respect for the authority of the Guru Granth Sahib which is treated like a living Guru or teacher.

Prashad, the sacred pudding of Sikhism, is made from equal parts of butter, sugar and flour. This delicacy is served as a sacramental offering during Sikh worship services. Here those who wanted to try some are collecting the offering.

Most enjoyed it, if we did not like it then it was collected from us to be fed to the birds and the fishes- so nothing was wasted.

We then explored the museum and saw lots of rather gory paintings- depicting the battles that happened to the Guru's over the years.

Ethans head covering came undone so he was shown how to turn it into a turban-this then lasted the rest of our visit.

Looking at the 5 K's -the Sikh Symbols.

Some models of Sikh temples from around the world.

Learning more about the Sikh religion and beliefs.

asking and answering any questions

The 5 K's - we knew them all.

Kesh (uncut hair)
Kara (a steel bracelet)
Kanga (a wooden comb)
Kaccha - also spelt, Kachh, Kachera (cotton underwear)
Kirpan (steel sword)

Being shown the Kirpan

Looking ( but not inside as it was a sacred place) where the Guru Granth Sahib

rests-its like a 5 star bedroom complete with air conditioning.

Refreshemnst served in the Langar Hall.Food is cooked by the members of the community and served by members of the community, to all people at the Gurdwara. The idea is to demonstrate equality of all people, irrespective of caste, creed, religion or race.

sitting on the floor and sampling the curries

rice - sweet like a pudding as we found out

water to drink

everyone tried something

some rather liked the rice

We were made to feel very welcome .

Rachel Hamilton- Author visit

Rachel Hamilton returned to school to tell us all about her new book-The Case of the Exploding Brains.
She reminded us first about how important imagination is,set us tasks to think up settings, characters and scenarios for stories...

Time for some volunteers to take on the characters from her new book...

Rachel and the characters reading from The Case of the Exploding Brains.

Rachel ,The Glamorous Assistant...Porter...The Museum Curator Gnome...

Rachel signed books for children who are now looking forward to reading her book.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

A visit from Tom Brown.

Tom Brown( a past pupil) who is a reporter and presenter for East Midlands Today came in to class 3 on Monday 29th June to talk to us about his job and how he came to work for the BBC.
Tom started by telling us about his job and showed us some of his reports -a man who had a cinema in his shed.He explained how he had to film, ask questions, edit and send his film in ready to meet the evening deadline.

Tom talked about how varied and interesting his job was, travelling a lot and meeting lots of different people and never knowing exactly what the next day may bring.

He brought in his camera and recording equipment...

set it up...

and then let us have a go!

Ethan interviewed Jess and discovered she was an 18 year old famous singer on her world tour.Camera man Thomas captured the whole interview for us.

Next Vincent filmed an interview with Isabella asked questions to find out all about 25 year old Sophie a "You Tuber" with 7 million followers!

getting it right so the answers could be heard

making slight adjustments

Finally we had an interview with a German artist(Conor) whose best work so far is a painting of bean bags!

Well done Sophie for keeping asking questions and keeping a straight face with Conor's German accent!

Finally we had a "live" studio session with our studio presenter Megan linking us to a live link with Matthew who had a report about strange happenings in Scottish Lochs!

Great" off the cuff " work class 3

Tom promised to edit all this filming and send us a copy of it.This arrived on Thursday and when shown was very well received-laughter erupted at the ending- Tom had mischievously stated all the class had enjoyed the session- well almost everyone....and the filmed someone looking rather bored with the whole thing.Due to copyright rules we cant Blog this -but ask the children-it was fabulous.

We finished with a question and answer session finding out about how Tom got to work for the BBC, what his most embarrassing interview was ( doing rock, paper scissors live whilst asking interview questions to the World Champion Rock Paper Scissors record holder-Tom beat the champion!), his hopes for the future- to work covering sport and traveling to cover things like- The World Cup and Olympics, famous people he had met-Michael Palin and several footballers and many more really good questions from the children

Thank you Tom- a great session much appreciated by all of class 3 and myself. We look forward to a future visit.