Living and Learning – Me and My Community Week – Coffee Morning
Coffee morning and WUSU.
What a great success! Thank you to the members of the FOSP team who ran the coffee morning on Thursday. Thank you to the adults who supported our school community by coming to the coffee morning and joining the children at Wake Up, Shake Up!
Living and Learning – Me and My Community Week – Grandad Wheels
On Wednesday, the children enjoyed a fantastic and hilarious visit from Grandad Wheels, author, Brian Abram.
Brian, ‘Grandad Wheels’, delivered assemblies where he shared his story, told jokes and made us all laugh, as well as discussing what life is like in a wheelchair. We enjoyed listening to ‘Chaos at Cheapfoods!’. At the end of the assemblies, Brian set the children the challenge of designing a new wheelchair.
After reading a story to the Reception children in the school library, Brain visited each class so the children could share their designs. He was really impressed.
Thank you to FOSP for funding this wonderful visit.
Thank you to everyone who ordered a book from Brain – in total, £254 was raised through book orders – Brian puts this money towards two charities that support spinal injury.
@grandadwheels
Art: observational drawing
Year 5 and 6 have been practising our observational drawing skills. We drew a line drawing of the leaves and then consider which colours (hues) to use.
Help at home: Take a winter walk and collect some items from nature. Have a go at drawing them. Can you use shade to help give your drawing form?
Our new school charity
As part of our Community Week, we have been discussing about charities and how charity is the act of giving help to those who need it. There was a list of charities for each class to research and consider. The children enjoyed discussing these with their peers. A democratic vote was made in each class and the result was brought to the Junior Leadership Team. They discussed the votes and settled on The Willow Foundation.
The main objective of the charity is to support 16-40 year olds in the UK who are newly diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. When they should be enjoying the prime of life, they’re dealing with stress, isolation, medication and hospital appointments.
Willow believes that every moment should be precious. They’re dedicated to helping young adults take much needed time out from the reality of living with serious illness, creating magic moments that become lasting memories.
If you’d like to find out more about the charity, please visit the website below.
https://www.willowfoundation.org.uk/
Fundraising that takes place this year will be donated to this charity.
Thank you for your support with this.
Scholes Community Library
All classes in school have been lucky enough to visit Scholes Library this week. It has been a fabulous opportunity to support a great community resource which we are fortunate enough to have on our school’s doorstep. Each class had the opportunity to explore the library and to bring back five books to enjoy in class.
Help at home: Visit the library with your child. You can help to engage your child with reading new books and help to support our local community at the same time.
Community week – library visit
We were lucky enough in 5,6B to start Community week off by visiting Scholes library. Even though it is only two minutes from school, it was great to be reminded of what a little gem it is. We were given a talk on how the library runs by Madeline and what books are stocked in the library. She emphasised how easy it is to get a library card and be able to borrow books to enjoy at home. We then spent some time perusing the shelves in order to select a few books to bring back and enjoy in class.
Help at home: Encourage your child to visit the library and access this brilliant resource. It will get your child enthusiastic about reading at home!
New Junior Leadership Team
Democracy is a key part of British Values and during this week, our classes have cast their votes for who they would like to represent their class on the JLT. We were absolutely overwhelmed by the number of children that wrote speeches. These were well written, full of ideas and showed off their best qualities such as leadership, good listening skills and initiative.
The votes were counted and the new members have been announced!
Here are our new members:
5,6A – Ben
5,6B – Lilly
5,6C – Jeevan
3,4A – Bradley
3,4B – Violet
3,4C – Adam
2C – Ted
1,2B – Mollie
1A – Rupert
Well done to each of you. I’m looking forward to working with you this year and can’t wait to get started.
Science – Electricity
This week in Science we have started our new unit all about electricity. We began by seeing what we could remember about our previous learning and then shared this with our talk partners. We discussed that we would be using electrical components and that we needed to stay safe using equipment such as batteries. We worked together to create a series circuit and then added additional components to see the impact it had. The children drew scientific diagrams of their circuits and used the appropriate symbols. The children also used an app on the ipads to explore this further.
Help at home: Ask your child what a series circuit is and what the components are that make up a circuit.
Reading as historian
This week in reading we are linking our learning to our history topic – Ancient Egypt. The children studied labelled diagrams of the pyramids and how they are structured. The children had to research whether the sources of information were reliable – they used websites to validate the information and to also study the websites to see if they were trustworthy. The children were able to identify how one source of information was unreliable as it wasn’t a secure site. They were able to validate information by finding similar information elsewhere.
Watch Us While We Work
Thank you to the parents who could attend our Watch Us While We work lesson earlier on in the week.
In 56C, we talked about some strategies to help with homework.
Spellings:
Have you tried playing hangman? This is a great game for spotting spelling patterns. It also means that children will get a chance to really study the 40 word list.
Using story dice as a stimulus for writing sentences, is a a great way to learn how to use the spellings in context.
Another way to avoid the repetition of writing out the words is to play Mind Meld. Partners work together to get the same spelling. The only rule is that you have to say yes to whatever your partner says.
E.g.
Partner one: Our word begins with the letter E.
Partner two: Yes and our word has a double SS.
Partner one: Yes and our word has an a followed by an R.
Together: Our word is embarrass.
Reading:
Reading aloud to and with a child is still a really important way of teaching reading skills. We looked at ways to narrate our thoughts as we read. We might read a few sentences and reflect on what we have read.
Another way to share the love of reading is to take turns when reading. Read a line, paragraph or page each.
Finally, if there is lots of speech, you could each take on a role to play. How can you change your voice/ pace to suit that character?