Today was a very exciting Friday. The children looked amazing in their red outfits, and the sun was out to add to the atmosphere.
In RE, we thought about how raising money for Red Nose Day shows that we represent Jesus. We considered the verses from 2 Corinthians 9 – “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” We talked about charity and that doing what is beneficial for everyone, not just ourselves, should be part of our lives, in the same way that Jesus did good for others as part of his daily life. Jesus used the gifts he had to help others; and we can be like Jesus by sharing what we have. This doesn’t need to be huge gestures or large sums of money, but actions and contributions which we can do willingly and happily, like Jesus did for us.
Year 3 has its own rockstars! Neve and Austin were two of the band members in the Rocksteady workshop today. The rest of us provided the backing percussion and singing and we all had a great time. I was very proud of year 3 as they joined in with gusto and volume and then returned to thoughtful, calm learning in the classroom. Well done, year 3: a exciting and productive day to end the week with. Wishing you all a relaxing weekend and let’s hope the sun stays out.
Books have been arriving since Friday before last and are making a huge difference to year 3’s reading corner. Thank you so much for your generosity, which will directly impact the children’s enjoyment and learning at school. The reading corner is in a process of transformation. We’ve made space for your books while also keeping record of this year’s World Book Day, to remind children of the books they all enjoy and which their friends could also enjoy.
Here is an update: there will be more changes to come….
To start our Wellbeing workshop this week, we thought about all the wonderful things we have enjoyed learning in Year 2. We talked about the poetry we have been writing in English, learning about Walter Tull in history, exploring concentric circles with Wassily Kandinsky in Art and Design as well as division in maths.It makes us feel very proud when we learn new things. One very wise comment was ‘Sometimes, we need to learn things to keep us safe’. We thought about how learning new things will help us when we choose what job we would like as an adult. Maybe we will be a police officer, singer, vet, doctor, zookeeper (in an aquarium) or even a teacher!
Be active
We all know how important it is to keep ourselves active so that we feel healthy and happy. We brainstormed a huge list of ways in which we can keep ourselves from ballet or Beavers to fencing, cheerleading or football. These activities will all help to brighten our day.
Give
Henry said that we should try to be kind and that giving things to other people also makes us feel good too. The children had lots of ideas for Mother’s Day gifts that they could give to their mum, which won’t cost any money, but would be lovely to share, such as home made cakes and cards, breakfast in bed, lots of hugs or flowers from the garden!.
What have you enjoyed learning this year?
Keeping active is fun!
Watch us jump in the air!
Give an act of kindness says Roisin every day.
May wrote a great list of different ways in which you can Connect, Give, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Be Active.
Harry’s top tips for good mental health.
Look at Harper’s wonderful examples of ways in which you can improve your wellbeing.
We have had a wonderful week opening up all the parcels filled with library books. Thank you to everyone!
The children are very proud of the way in which they have given books to the class library for everyone to share. Thank you so, so much to everyone for your very kind donations. Follow this link if you would like to buy a book for our class library: Year 2 library books
Connect
Chatting with each other, giving one another compliments and learning something new about a classmate are all ways in which we can connect with our friends. This is a wonderful way to help us feel good about ourselves and also help our friends to feel great too. It is important to believe in ourselves and one another!
Take notice
We all have negative thoughts and we learned how taking the time to notice other things instead will help us to make sure that these thoughts don’t become overwhelming. We tried some different techniques to help us focus on the present and enjoy the moment rather than letting unhappy thoughts overwhelm us. Next time, we are filled with negative thoughts, we will breathe in for 5 seconds and then out for 5 seconds and then try to play the 5 senses game where we think about …
5 things we can see, 4 things we can hear, 3 things we can touch, 2 things we can smell and 1 thing that we can taste.
Once we’ve thought about all those things, we hope that our worries will feel less overwhelming. Why not try this strategy at home when you need to?
The children had a double celebration on Tuesday as it was Shrove Tuesday as well as St David’s Day. We are blessed as a class as we have children from very diverse backgrounds, including children with families from Wales. It was wonderful to see children dressed in the green, red and white colours of the Welsh flag. April even took part in our assembly by teaching the whole school how to say Good Morning in Welsh.
Red, green and white colours and beautiful daffodils to celebrate Saint David’s Day
Our inspiring Lenten Promise display
A class liturgy to reflect on our lenten promises
To mark the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday, the children were inspired by the story of Saint David to write their own Lenten promises. The children’s promises range from praying each day, donating money to charity instead of eating chocolate and keeping their bedrooms tidy. The children enjoyed making their own daffodils and used these as part of a thoughtful class liturgy led by Scarlett, Cian and Athina. These Lenten promise daffodils are now beautifully displayed and they are certainly brightening up the classroom, just like the children.
World Book Day characters
‘Sharing books is fun’
‘We enjoyed recommending a book to someone new’.
‘It was great to spend time with someone that we don’t normally see’
Making new friends
Just look how well the children are concentrating as they share their favourite books!
To end the week, the children showed great imagination in smashing costumes that celebrate their love of reading. It was lovely to see how the children enjoyed sharing their favourite books with a reading partner from year 4. The challenge at the start of the day was to publish our own class book and the children wrote some wonderful poems in the style of Edward Lear’s poem ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat’. As part of World Book Day, we have been rejuvenating the class book library, which now includes some great book labels and bookmarks created by the children.
The children would love to start bringing home some high quality books to share with their parents and if you would like to order a book for our library, please click on this link: Year 2 wishlist. So that your generous donation will always be celebrated, a book plate with your child’s name will be added to the book before it is added to the library!
Year 3 looked fantastic today, particularly the Mr Foxes! One of the particularly great things about their outfits was that many of them were made from home things, which had been carefully selected so the children could play a character they found very interesting or admirable. Like other classes, year 3 is in the process of revamping the reading corner. The children played a part today by making bunting about their favourite books. Emphasis was put on spelling every word correctly, starting every proper noun with a capital letter and also describing the book in a “strapline” or three key words. I shared my favourite book – “Little House on The Prairie” which I described as “girl’s adventurous life-story”. One piece of bunting describes “George’s Marvellous Medicine” as “funny, energetic and weird” – I quite agree. Another says for “Fantastic Mr Fox” – “Looking for food, What a disaster that’ll be soon!” Here are a few other pieces, to give you an idea of the care the children took with them…
As Mr Haynes said in his email yesterday, the class library could really do with some more, up-to-date texts so children can really benefit from the wealth of literature around now. If you would like to contribute, here is the link from his email: https://amzn.eu/bXpVAyq . Thank you.
Here are the children in their marvellous outfits, showing their bunting and focusing on book reviews they wrote. They also did well, collectively, to answer questions in our “literary quiz”.
The range of books the children brought in was wide – fiction, non-fiction, adventure stories, stories about school. Roald Dahl and JK Rowling featured quiet strongly. We talked about reading being the single-most important activity you can do for yourself: not just for knowledge, academic achievement and vocabulary building, for also for imagination, creativity, enjoyment, mindfulness and to share with others. Keep reading, everyone!
We have been learning that books both fiction and nonfiction are so interesting. Books can transport us to other worlds, they can teach us new things and they can inspire us. Mr Sallis gave us some new books celebrating diversity called Little Leaders : Exceptional Men and Women Black History . These books tell us about some inspirational people who made a difference in the world.
This week the children helped me move and created a more welcoming reading area in the classroom which we have already begun to use.
Many of the children came into school dressed as book characters. Can you tell who they are?
The children also brought in their favourite stories and books and shared them with each other which reminded us about just how much sharing a story can be.
Over the next week, why not see if you can complete the reading stars game. In how many different ways and in different places can you be found reading?
The children in year 5 will develop these skills through a game which was novel to most of the class – Danish Longball (also known as Swedish longball). This is a fun-packed game to practise the skills of batting/kicking, catching and running while also being a good team player and sportsperson. It’s like crickets and rounders but the pace is faster and (nearly) everyone is involved. The diagram below shows what the play area typically looks like. This week year got the hang of running to first base and back to home to score a point while the fielders passed the ball to each other as quickly as they could. We are looking forward to introducing more rules in the coming weeks as well as running around in what will surely be warmer weather, cheering each other on to team success.
In the meantime, other classes are enjoying a return to gymnastics, indoors. It’s been a long time since children could enjoy jumping, balancing and rolling in the gym and it’s fantastic to be doing these activities again. It’s essential that children are attired safely and comfortably for gymnastic activities, so please make sure your children have gym shorts and T-shirts in school all the time for whenever they are needed. Thank you for your support.
Safer Internet Day takes place every February. It’s a great opportunity to celebrate all the amazing things we all do online; and also to find a different way, each year, for everyone to safe online. This year the theme is being respectful and maintaining good relationships when playing games online.
As a show of hands in the morning’s “kick-off” assembly showed, nearly everyone in the school loves playing online games: there was palpable excitement as the children thought of it! And every device is used to play games on. All the more reason to make sure we can all enjoy a favourite hobby while keeping ourselves and everyone else safe!
We want gaming to be a fun, respectful way of spending some time, according to each family’s rules. What we do online should make our online friends post emojis like these
We discussed the questions “Should you behave as well towards your friends online as well as you do offline? Why?“, “If you’re online and no-one knows your identity, can you behave how you like?” and, perhaps the most difficult one, “If someone else makes the wrong choice and doesn’t show respect, what can -or should – you do in response?”
Following are some photos of children completing activities in their classrooms and a few photos of the sharing assembly at the end of the day. As well as developing understanding of online safety, the activities provided opportunities for collaborative learning and creative writing.
We hope you enjoy finding out about what the children have learnt about the essential topic of internet safety.
At the end of the day the children shared what they had learnt with the rest of the school.
Reception learnt the Smartie the penguin song which tells us, “Before you click, click, click, make sure you think, think, think – and tell someone.”
Year 1 learnt about what it’s OK to share online and what not to. You can share non-personal things, such as the colour of your socks, or your favourite fast food, but not your full name or where you go to school.
Year 2 wrote “spells for internet kindness”. They learnt that whenever we play online games, we need to be prepared to show respect even if other people make wrong choices.
Year 3 wrote “gaming guides”. Some advice about what you can do online is the same as what you can offline – for example, don’t give out personal information like your address to someone you’ve never spoken to before or met.
Year 4 played “roll a story”, where they acted out given scenarios – such as your friends have fallen out during an online game – and then found ways to resolve the problem.
Year 5 discussed good and bad decisions in online behaviour, including how hard it can be to make the right choices.
Year 6 also considered the different scenarios in “roll a story” and made posters informing people how to resolve situations, based on these predicaments.
All the activities provided the children with opportunities to discuss the issues, focusing on solutions and remembering that online games are a source of fun and communication for nearly everyone.
Year 4Year 2
Year 2 wrote some spells for a kinder internet.
We all stirred up the spells in our cauldrons and recorded them. Here are some of our spells. Can you think of any other ingredients we should add?
Year 2 spells for a kinder internetYear 6 presenting at the end of the day.Year 4 presenting at the end of the day.
This Friday, bones and numbers featured highly. Year 3 practised their times tables by playing a “four in a row” dice game. They all looked great in their number-themed home clothes
We also played a quick game of “The product is…. what’s the equation?” You had to find at least two multiplication equations (excluding 1 x ….!) to make the answer. Products used included 24, 36 and 30. How many possibilities can you find at home?
We continued to learn about skeletons in science, this time the human skeleton. On seeing an image of a human skeleton on the whiteboard, a very astute member of the class asked, “Is that an adult or child skeleton? Because an adult has more bones than a child.” What a fantastic science question to ask! We learnt the Latin, or scientific versions of the names for different bones. Can you remember which one is called which name?
We also practised the mostly commonly mispelt words from the spelling assessment, so well done everyone for learning these as home.
As well as snowing, there were cakes at the end of the day. What a fantastic Friday!
The children in year 6 have made a brilliant start to programming with Logo, which is part of the J2E suite of online applications. Logo builds on Visual, which Year 4 are using and this in turn leads on from applications like JiT5, which Year 2 used to direct sprites in different scenarios. If you have a child in year six, you could ask your child to show you their programs and to explain what each algorithm does.
What pattern do you think this procedure would create?
repeat 40[repeat 6 [fd 50 rt 60]pu rt 39 pd].
If you are in year 6, or already understand or would like to try out Logo, then have a go at writing this procedure in Logo and see what happens!
Here is just one example of the fantastic programming year sixes can do just now.
JiT5, in KS1, provides opportunities to write algorithms as well as practising directional language in lots of different contexts, such as “The Three Little Pigs” or space.
This animation shows a cat and mouse chase, which involved programming two sprites.
If you would like your child to show you more of these programming tools, or would like to have a go yourself, then ask her/him to log into J2E and take you on a tour! The opportunities to use logic and express individuality in the suite of apps are wide and fascinating.
