Our RE topic for the next four weeks is based around the theme of Signs and Symbols.
We will be considering the big question Are signs and symbols important? Why? Please talk about this question with your child, looking for the signs and symbols that the children encounter on the way to and from school.
The children will learn to describe and sequence the baptism service and we will explore the different parts of the sacrament and their significance. We will focus on important symbols associated with baptism, such as the sign of the cross, white garment, font, candle, chrism and Easter candle.
Key words for the topic are: white garment, Easter candle, font, chrism, Good News
Please talk to your child about their own baptism artefacts and how they were used within their baptism.
For their RE home learning, the children are asked to design a baptism candle. Encourage your child to think about what signs and symbols they would like to include on their candle. It would be great if your child could write a key to go with their candle, that explains what each of their chosen symbols mean. Please ensure that your child takes pride in their candle as it would be lovely to make a display of them. These baptism candles should be sent into school by Wednesday 3rd November.
The Year Two children have settled very well into their new class. They are great role models to the Year 1 children and they listen to one another, have fun and are very caring. We are all enjoying learning about structures in Design and Technology, continents and oceans in Geography, the sacrament of baptism in RE and Materials All Around Us in Science. More information on the curriculum that we are covering this year can be found in the post below.
This term, through Relationship and Health Education (RHE), the children will learn about healthy relationships through the Ten: Ten Life to The Full resources.
KS1 Module One: Created and Loved by God explores the individual. Rooted in the teaching that we are created by God out of love and for love, it helps children to develop an understanding of the importance of valuing themselves as the basis for personal relationships:
Unit 1 – Religious Understanding introduces children to the story from the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus welcomed all of the little children to come to Him. The five-story sessions encourage children to understand that they are created by God out of love and for love. Children will revisit this Gospel story at the end of this Module.
Building on this knowledge, Unit 2 – Me, My Body, My Health encourages children to celebrate similarities and differences between people, including our God-given bodies and the things they enable us to do! Teaching also includes maintaining personal hygiene and the physical differences between boys and girls, including learning the names of external body parts.
Over the three sessions of Unit 3 – Emotional Well-Being, children will meet presenters Jayden and Josie and fictional character Super Susie. They will help children to understand and articulate their own changing feelings and how other people’s feelings might differ from theirs. Children will learn how they can manage their feelings and about the consequences of their actions.
Unit 4 – Life Cycles returns to the Gospel story from Unit 1, to show that God created us to follow the cycle of life and He loves us at every stage. Children will learn about the specifics of the human life cycle and celebrate how they have already changed and grown.
KS1 Module Three: Created to Live in Community explores the individual’s relationship with the wider world. Here we explore how human beings are relational by nature and are called to love others in the wider community through service, through dialogue and through working for the Common Good:
In Unit 1 – Religious Understanding children will hear the story of The Good Samaritan and will be introduced to the concept of the Trinity – God as a three in one community of love – and think about what the Trinity means for them. This is a simple teaching that we will return to in more complexity in later years. These stories show children that God made us to be in loving relationships with one another.
Unit 2 – Living in the Wider World helps children to learn about the different local and global communities that they are part of, and what rights and responsibilities come with belonging to these communities.
Year Two have had a tremendous end to their first term in the class. The children enjoyed singing along to their performances during the KS1 nativity play and were justifiably proud of the way in which they spoke their lines so clearly. They also had great fun during our Christmas party (attended by Father Christmas!), which followed a delicious Christmas lunch.
The week ended with a much more thoughtful Friday, during which the children celebrated mass with Father Francis, prayed for family and friends as they finished decorating the class Christmas tree and described what was so special about their kriskringle while exchanging gifts. A final fun experience to end the week was watching a music concert called The Night Before Christmas that has been streamed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and it was a joy to see the children soaking up this music and giggling at the antics of the Elf presenter. If you would like to rewatch the concert together, a link can be found on our Google Classroom.
Mrs Brunt and I are so very grateful for the smashing gifts and cards that we received at the end of term and would like to thank you for your continued support as we all work together to teach your wonderful children.
Have a very happy, healthy and holy Christmas and I look forward to seeing everyone again in 2021.
The children have been enjoying the story of ‘How to catch Santa’ this week and have worked hard on their writing as part of this teaching sequence, in particular thinking about writing sentences with conjunctions such as but, because, so, and as well as punctuating question sentences correctly. Having focussed on learning how to accurately draw the hands onto a clock face, in maths, we are learning how to subtract within 100, using manipulatives, 100 squares and place value strategies that explore how to subtract from the tens and ones.
As part of our art topic on Leaves, the children also created some beautiful artwork inspired by poinsettias. The children all worked so hard on this paper collage learning and if you sneak a (socially distanced) peak through the classroom window, you will be able to see their artwork, which is making us all smile.
Thank you for working with your children to write some lovely Advent prayers, which the children have been reading as part of our daily prayers.
The recordings for our Christmas play were completed on Monday and the final video with all the pieces edited together is wonderful. We are all looking forward to sharing this with you on Tuesday at 7pm. Further details on how to access this video will be sent to you early in the week.
To allow for the recommended quarantine period, the final ‘posting’ day for class Christmas cards is Tuesday, so that all the cards can be delivered on Friday, along with the exchange of our KK gifts, which should also be brought to school by Tuesday. We are all looking forward to our Christmas lunch on Thursday and the children are invited to wear a Christmas jumper and bring in Christmas hats on Thursday.
Once again, thank you for your continued patience and support as we ensure that everyone stays safe inside their own classroom bubble and close to their families at the start and end of the day.
The children have had great fun this week, learning their lines as well as the actions and songs to lots of cracking nativity songs. We have recorded groups of children in their roles and they all look wonderful in their costumes. We look forward to sharing the completed play when it goes live during the last week of term.
In a whole school competition, the children refined their speed stacking skills and it was lovely to see how their times came down as they practised more and more. This activity was done as part of our maths topic on Time and it would be great if you could continue to help your child to tell the time using an analogue clock, reading half past, quarter to and quarter past times first and leading on to reading times to five minutes.
As part of our English learning, we have started to read the book ‘How to catch Santa’. This is a great read and the children had lots of questions to ask Father Christmas, so we used their ideas to write letters to Father Christmas. I was very impressed with how the children remembered to punctuate all their sentences beautifully when they were writing to Santa!
To mark the first week of Advent, we lit the first candle on our Advent wreath and decorated our Christmas tree. The children have set each other Advent Challenges such as ‘Share a friend’ and ‘Help Mum and Dad’ and we open one of these challenges each day as part of our school journey through Advent.
As we go through Advent, one of my favourite activities is to walk around my village each Sunday afternoon as it begins to get dark and look to see how the houses are being decorated. As the weeks go by, there are more and more lights and this is a wonderful way to see just how important Jesus’s birth is in the lives of so many people around us. I wonder what the Christmas lights are like down your street? Maybe you could take a walk and find out.
As ever, we continue to be very busy in Year 2, combining a focus on Maths and English with many other areas of the curriculum.
As part of our topic focussing on People who Care, past and present, the children learned about Florence Nightingale and Saint Teresa of Calcutta as well as nurses who care for us so well today. Next, we will learn about other nurses, such as Mary Seacole.
The children had great fun creating a sculpture of a modern day nurse and we linked this to our Design and Technology topic on Structures. The children explored what makes a structure stable and the classroom is now filled with paper rollercoasters, 3D shapes made out of construction kits as well as playdough sphere structures. Following their investigations, the children concluded that a structure needs a flat and wide base in order to be both stable and strong. They are using this information well this week as we hold our Speed Stacking Competition along with the rest of the school.
We are all looking forward to enjoying Advent together and today, we will start making our classroom look much more Christmassy! Please do read our RE home learning page to find out more about what we are learning in RE between now and Christmas.
Because maths is something that we will need to use every day, mathematics holds a very important part in our curriculum at St Adrian’s. We aim to ensure that children develop an enjoyment and enthusiasm for maths that will empower them and stay with them throughout their lives.
At St Adrian’s we teach mathematics through a maths mastery approach. Our aim is to develop a positive culture of deep understanding, confidence and competence in maths that produces strong, secure learning. In this way, children become mathematically fluent, have a ‘can do’ attitude and are eager to use their maths skills to explore different strategies and reason and solve problems. These problems are directly linked to the diverse world in which we live, so that children are able to make connections between mathematics and their everyday lives.
Implementation
Maths in the Early Years
The characteristics of effective learning underpin all learning in the Early Years. We make sure that every child, whatever their starting point, has the best start that they possibly can. High quality learning through purposeful play is provided in a stimulating and motivating environment that responds to the interests and needs of the children. Using resources from the Whiterose programme in Reception and Master the Curriculum in Nursery, children learn about number, pattern, shape and measures in all areas of their learning, so that they can make connections.
Play is what children and young people do when they follow their own ideas and interests, in their own way and for their own reasons. We believe that deep understanding is achieved when children are given plenty of time to play and explore and lead their own active learning. If children discover things for themselves, they are much more likely to remember it. With plenty of time provided for substantial conversations, high quality teaching and questioning from Early Years practitioners encourages children to think critically and test their ideas.
Early Years practitioners attend training, specifically linked to maths and spend time each week discussing the needs and interests of pupils in order to take learning forward in the best possible way.
Maths in Key Stage One and Key Stage Two
We use the Whiterose scheme of work which have been written to meet the requirements of the 2014 English national curriculum. The Whiterose scheme of work has been assessed by the DfE’s expert panel, which judged that it met the core criteria for a high-quality curriculum to support teaching for mastery.
Longterm plan: Yearly overviews that show what topics are taught when can be found here:
Across the school, the structure of the mathematics curriculum shows clear progression in line with age related expectations. At all ages, pupils learn to use concrete resources and pictorial representations, which enables them to fully understand mathematical concepts when they are presented in more abstract equations or problems. Maths vocabulary is displayed clearly on working walls and pupils are encouraged to share their ideas and explain their strategies to develop their mathematical thinking further. New curriculum content is taught in blocks, which breaks down the teaching sequence into small achievable steps to deepen understanding. In addition, key mathematical knowledge and skills are revisited daily to embed learning as this maths fluency is vital for pupils to reason and solve problems. In this way, children receive a minimum of five maths learning sessions each week with additional activities devoted to number fluency and times tables.
This approach enables pupils to progress through the curriculum content at broadly the same pace. Marking and feedback, including verbal feedback is used to take children’s learning forward. End of term review sheets are used as a diagnostic tool so that any gaps in understanding are addressed and to ensure that any necessary interventions are targeted specifically to meet the needs of children. Where children require additional support, ‘scaffolds’ are used to support children further to ensure that they have secured the small step. These ‘scaffolds’ may be in the form of returning to concrete resources or pictorial representations or making connections with concepts that children are already secure in. Pupils who grasp concepts quickly deepen their learning through the challenge of rich and sophisticated problems within each topic. In this way, our maths curriculum matches the needs and abilities of each of our children to ensure that all pupils are able to excel.
For further information on the core concepts underpinning our mathematics curriculum, view these Parent Videos that can be found on the Maths – Whiterose Website.
If you would like a more detailed guide to skills progression and how the White Rose scheme links to the Maths National Curriculum, download the document below.
Times tables play an important part in our maths learning, with children developing their fluency in rapid recall of tables up to 12 x 12 by the end of year 4. Pupils deepen their understanding by starting with concrete resources and moving onto pictorial representations before learning each times table as a more abstract equation. While the rapid recall of times tables is developed, children also learn how to apply and manipulate their understanding of these to reason and solve problems.
Impact
By the time that they start secondary school, we aspire that a St Adrian’s mathematician will have a bank of efficient and accurate maths skills that they can use to solve problems and calculate effectively. Through the use of a Concrete Pictorial Abstract approach, they will have a deep understanding of maths concepts and will be able to justify, reason and explain their answers articulately. They will have a range of efficient strategies to draw upon if an initial method does not work or if an answer does not make mathematical sense. Children will also be able to apply these calculation and maths skills across the curriculum and are confident to choose the best maths to complete a task.
Helping your child at home
All KS2 children have a subscription to Times Table Rockstar which has a wealth of games that the children love to play to improve their recall of multiplication facts. ttrockstars
KS1 children all use Numbots as part of their home learning activities to speed up and improve the accuracy of their number calculations. https://numbots.com/
The Oxford University Press have developed this site to support parents in helping their children with mathematics. You’ll find lots of advice and support, games and activity ideas for how best to help your children develop as a mathematician. There’s also information on what is taught in primary school maths lessons, and what some of the ‘jargon’ means! Maths – Oxford Owl
The Natwest have this great site for helping children to develop money sense: Money Learning Resources
Making maths fun
Maths games don’t have to be computer-based; there are lots of ways you can bring maths to life for your child through simple games and activities.
Board games can be great for developing a child’s maths skills, helping them to become comfortable in pattern spotting and playing with numbers. Great games include: Monopoly, Snakes and Ladders, Shut the Box, Darts, Dominoes and Mancala.
Whether out shopping, using the concept of money to develop your child’s arithmetic skills, or helping them to better understand measurement when baking or putting together the new rabbit’s hutch, there’s always an opportunity for a maths moment!
This week, the children have continued learning about Walter Tull, in particular thinking about how Armistice Day is commemorated on the 11th November every year. The children were particularly thoughtful and respectful during our class worship on Wednesday that included the two minutes silence.
The children all looked suitably spotty during Friday’s Children in Need fundraiser and they were very proud of their outfits. Well done to you all.
This week, we have also planted out onion sets, so, along with the spring bulbs that we have planted, we will keep an eye on them to see when they start to shoot.
Next week is an incredibly busy week. We will be learning new songs for our Christmas play, concentrating on the theme of Anti-Bullying during our Well-being sessions, learning about Sikhism in RE and building a five foot tall sculpture of a keyworker in Design Technology! Please do speak with your child as they go through the week to find out more about their learning,.
