Author: Mr Freeman

It’s anti-bullying week this week and the children have spent the day refreshing our minds on everything around bullying and how to prevent it. To begin, Year 5 discussed the definition of bullying in our school and the different roles that might come an incidence of bullying. At St James, we use STOP as an acronym to remember our anti-bullying policy. This stands for:

Several Times on Purpose

If children were to experience bullying, they should:

Start Telling Other People

From here, we discussed that it’s not only a victim of bullying that should follow this code – it’s anyone and everyone involved. Whether you are a victim, defender or simply a bystander, it’s everyone’s job to help prevent bullying.

The children then looked at some scenarios of made up school situations and had to discuss whether these were bullying behaviours or not. Once decided, the children then offered advice to all parties involved in the scenario. Year 5 did extremely well with this and all pupils were ready to input helpful ideas.

Year 5 have also started our daily friendship and support sessions today – these will happen each day before every break and lunch time to help maintain positive relationships. Today’s learning was: What makes a good friend? The task for the children was to use a positive friendship quality outside and many of them wrote down their examples in our friendship book.

Help at home: Today, we discussed why we don’t use the term ‘bully’ but we might use the term ‘bullying’. Discuss why this might be with your child and see if they can explain.

Answer: The term bully is used to define someone and it becomes part of their identity – we don’t want to be labelling anyone with a negative characteristic. Instead we might use the term bullying to describe words and/or actions instead.

This themed week is all about money it’s been a really insightful week in Year 5. We started the week learning about different types of bank accounts and which ones were the best for saving and gaining interest on your money. We also became thrifty shoppers when we looked at the unit price of goods in a supermarket. The children had to calculate which products offered the best value for money. They noticed that sometimes buying the larger product, offered the consumer better value for money.

Through the week, we’ve also had some online workshops from Barclays and HSBC. Both of these were very useful and allowed pupils to pick up on some top tips when spending and saving money. It turns out lots of our Year 5 pupils are very good savers and use Christian values like perseverance and courage by setting goals to save towards!

To end a fantastic first half-term, Year 5 finished our latest piece of writing: The Eye of the Storm. This piece was inspired by a video about a traveller heading towards an eery light in the sky. Our goal was to describe the setting and character to a reader who hasn’t seen the video.

As a class, I am so pleased and proud of their outcomes. A class (who at the beginning of the year stated they struggle with creative ideas) have proved themselves wrong and have shown how good their creative minds can be. The vocabulary is superb – the children took time to substitute words for better synonyms to boost their writing to that next level. Their use of figurative language, such as alliteration, similes and metaphors is amazing. Reading 21 pieces has been an absolute pleasure and I’m really looking forward to Year 5’s next writing adventure in November! Here are some examples of our writing:

Help at home:

Please keep reading regularly at home with your child. More reading means more access to new vocabulary. As you can see from the writing above, new vocabulary unlocks doors to creative thinking and brilliant pieces!

Years 5 and 6 went on our first school trip of the year at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park today. This is to enhance our upcoming art and sculpture topic next half term and to give the children some inspiration for sculpting.

Before talking about the trip, it’s important to acknowledge how fantastic our St James pupils were. All staff (and members of the sculpture park) commented on how well the children conducted themselves and how engaged they all were at all times. They represented the school brilliantly and I’m so proud to be their teacher.

In the morning, Year 5 went out as a group to explore the park. We took our sketch books to practise drawing small parts of sculptures (as they had so much detail within them). Children worked calmly and safely in the park and we really enjoyed exploring lots of different work by sculptors. We then visited the underground exhibition where William Kentridge’s The Pull of Gravity was being displayed. We absolutely loved this exhibition – the children could even get creative and make some of their own sculptures!

In the afternoon, we took part in a workshop led by an artist from the YSP. They led us around different sculptures and gave us some top tips for drawing and sculpting. Here are some pictures from our fantastic day!

Help at home: 

Next half term, we will be focussing on three key sculptors: Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Thomas J Price. Perhaps research some of their current work – are there any similarities and differences between the sculptors?

This week, Year 5 have been focussing on protected characteristics. The children recalled all nine very well (shown below). In our lesson, we focussed on the reasoning behind having protected characteristics in this country and where they originated. The Equality Act 2010 was introduced, making any discrimination of these characteristics illegal. Protected characteristics are in place to prevent the mistreatment and discrimination of people.

We then went on to discuss that treating people fairly isn’t always about treating people equally. Sometimes, adaptations need to be made so that everyone can have the same opportunities to be successful. Have a look at the picture below – do you think this is fair, even though everyone has been treated the same?

Help at home:

Our Philosophy Friday question this week: Is it always fair to treat everyone the same? Have a chat with your child about this at home – what do you think?

On Thursday, to support national poetry day, the children performed ‘Daffodils’ by William Wordsworth. Parents, teachers and pupils watched the performances, meaning the children had to be brave and show perseverance to learn and perform the poem. Year 5 took matters into our own hands (literally)! We painted our palms as beautiful daffodils to wave gracefully as they do. In the words of William Wordsworth…

‘and then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils.’

The actions, voices and painting of hands were all fantastic ideas from the children – we all really enjoyed our performance.

Help at home: 

Enjoy learning poems with your child and talk about the hidden meaning in them. If you wish to continue learning Daffodils, the poem is printed below.

I (Mr Freeman) had my first opportunity to experience forest school with the children today. The children told me I may be in for a good time, but I perhaps didn’t realise how much fun forest school can really be! First of all, Sarah (our forest school leader) is fantastic – all children respond really well to her words and her knowledge of the forest.

We began the session by exploring our surroundings. We are so lucky to have this space within our school grounds and the children are absolutely making the most of everything on offer. From playing in the mud kitchen to searching for unique mushrooms, it’s fair to say we are learning an awful lot every Friday. Ethan and Connor managed to find a new fungus that we were reading about in one of the books up in forest school – they concluded that we had found yellow brain fungus! Here are some brilliant photos of the children in action today.

Help at home:

Explore your outdoors with your child. They are extremely knowledgeable of their surroundings and might teach the adults something new (they definitely taught me lots today!).

 

Year 5 have been working hard on improving our fundamental movement skills, with football as a framework this half term. As we know, a huge part of lots of competitive sports is high fitness levels. So, Year 5 pushed themselves to their limits in our most recent fitness lesson! We had a circuit of activities in the hall and children had to spend 3 minutes taking on each one. Pupils worked hard, showed great teamwork and perseverance through tough skills and drills! We made sure to pause and drink plenty of water in the rest zone, too. Here are some pictures from our lesson!