Living and Learning – Individual Liberty and Respect and Tolerance
This half-term, we’re learning more about our British Values in our living and learning lessons. Last week, we focussed on democracy (specifically whether children should have the right to vote at 16). Here’s our statement for this week:
I know why Individual Liberty and Respect and Tolerance are important.
We began by recapping the meanings of each value (shown below).
Year 5 went on to learn how these values work together. We all have the rights to freedom and to be ourselves, but this still has to fall within our laws. We need to show respect and tolerance of others and treat how we would want to be treated ourselves (mutual respect). We had a look at how respect and tolerance links to our protected characteristics.
Finally, we ended the session with a poem by James Barry. This poem promotes equality and that everyone deserves the same opportunities.
Help at home:
Read this poem together with your child and listen for fluency. What’s the overall? Do you notice a word that is repeated many times? Why?
Topic- History
History: Toys and Games.
Over this half term, we will be exploring toys from the past and comparing them with the toys we enjoy today. This week, the children shared their favourite toy or game and talked about what makes it special to them. We also discussed whether their favourite toy or game might have been around when their parents or grandparents were children and how different toys look from the past compared to the present day.
Help at home:
Please take a photo of your child with their favourite toy or game and email it to school so we can share it in class. Thank you to those parents/carers who have shared these already, the children have thoroughly enjoyed guessing which toy belongs to their friends.
Here are some more, can you guess who they belong to?
Science – Mammals
This week in science, we’ve been busy learning all about mammals and what makes them special. We sorted lots of different animals into two groups (mammals and not mammals) and explained why we chose each group.
We discovered that mammals are animals that have things in common:
- hair or fur
- warm-blooded
- their mums usually feed their babies with milk
- give birth to live babies
As scientists, we talked about the facts we noticed and used them to help us decide which group each animal belonged in. Some animals were easy to sort but others needed us to think carefully about their features before we made our choice.
Help at home by going on an animal hunt around your home or garden. Find pictures of animals in books or online and ask your child whether they think it’s a mammal or not. Can they explain their reasoning using the features we’ve learned?
Living and Learning: I know why British Values are important
In our Living and Learning lessons this term, Year 3 have been exploring British Values with a special focus on individual liberty, respect, and tolerance.
The children have learned that individual liberty means being able to make choices, share opinions and be themselves, while also understanding that these choices come with responsibility.
We have also focused on respect and tolerance, learning how to be kind, fair and accepting of people who may have different beliefs, backgrounds or ideas. The children shared thoughtful examples of how they can show respect in school, at home and in the wider community.
Year 3 showed excellent maturity during discussions and demonstrated a strong understanding of how these values help us live and learn happily together. We are very proud of their positive attitudes and thoughtful contributions.
Help at home:
Discuss British Values:
- Why are they important?
- What would our country be like if people didn’t show this?
RE
Our RE topic this half term is How do Buddhists live a meaningful life?
In our first lesson, children described happiness and reflected on the happiness and contentment in their own lives. Firstly, we learned about the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) promise.
We then listened to two songs: Don’t Worry be Happy by Bobby McFerrin and Happy by Pharrell Williams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxln1IiyKls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbZSe6N_BXs
We thought about how the beat made us feel and the songwriter’s message to the listener.
Finally, we wrote down things that make us feel happy and contented. We wrote these down on leaves to create our own Year 6 happiness tree.
In our second lesson, we described different types of suffering and how it may be overcome. We learned that in Buddhist belief and practice, suffering is not just tragic events caused by natural, accidental or deliberate events; suffering is also about little things that mean life is not quite perfect.
We discussed different examples of suffering and possible causes. We then considered what could be done to potentially overcome the suffering.
Next week, we will explore how Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) searched for the answer to suffering.
Living and Learning
I know why Individual Liberty and Respect and Tolerance are important
In our Living and Learning lessons, we have been focusing on the British values: rule of law, democracy, respect and tolerance and individual liberty. Find out more here: https://www.stjameswetherby.leeds.sch.uk/find-out/british-values/
This week, our focus was on respect and tolerance and individual liberty.
To help us understand individual liberty, we watched ‘We are all born free’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9_IvXFEyJo
We then answered these questions:
- We are all free to do what we want but this must be within the law. What would happen if everyone just did their own thing?
- What do we have the right to?
- We have the responsibility to…
Whilst we have individual liberty as one of our British values, we need to ensure we are showing respect and tolerance of others.
Why is this important?
What would our country be like if people didn’t show this?
Help at home: Can your child tell you the British values and what they stand for? Discuss the questions together.
Maths – Commutative Law
This week in maths, Year 1 have been exploring commutative law. We’ve been learning that when we add two numbers together, it doesn’t matter which order we add them in – the total stays the same!
We’ve used lots of representations like cubes, counters and pictures to help us. Sometimes the objects were clearly grouped and other times we had to look carefully and decide how to split them into two parts. We practised writing both expressions, like 3 + 2 and 2 + 3, and talked about what’s the same and what’s different.
The children have been brilliant at explaining their thinking and using full sentences to talk about their maths. They’re getting more confident at spotting groups, splitting amounts in different ways and recording their ideas with addition symbols.
Help at home by spotting maths in everyday life. Try using toys, snacks or socks and ask your child to show you two groups. Can they write (or say) both expressions? For example, “I can see 4 and 1 – that’s 4 + 1 and 1 + 4!”
Happy New Year
The children settled in so well after their Christmas break. They’ve been brilliant at getting back to their usual routines and we’ve been so impressed with their self-care skills. Lots of children can put their coats on themselves, get ready for snack time independently and get ready for home time too.
This week, we’re reading ‘The Gingerbread Man’ and children are already beginning to retell the story. This story will be our focus for two weeks. If you have a copy of the story at home, please enjoy reading it together. The children have loved to join in with the repeated refrain in the story. “Run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man.”
For Maths we’ve been building our mastery with number 1! We can represent one using our hands, with Numicon, by making marks and collecting one object.
In phonics our sound box had lots of ‘m’ objects including a marble, a mouse, a map and a mirror.
Help at home-What can you find around the house that begins with the ‘m’ sound? What other ‘m’ objects could we have put in our sound bag?
Lost and Found
Happy New Year everyone! This half term our theme is Fire and Ice.
Our story this week has been Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers and the weather has certainly helped us learn about cold climates.
In the story, a boy finds a penguin at his door and goes on an adventure to try to find his home, as he thought he was lost. Just like the boy, we explored and learnt about where penguins live and extended our vocabulary by learning a new word: iceberg. We used the globe to find the land and sea and Antarctica and enjoyed finding other interesting places.
“The white bit means it’s very cold, because its covered in ice!”
“Antarctica is right at the bottom of the world, nobody lives there its too cold!”
Phonics
We have begun learning our Phase 3 sounds. This week, we have learnt four new digraphs/trigraphs ai,ee,igh,oa.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Let’s Put on Our Mittens.
Let’s put on our mittens,
and button up our coats.
Wrap our scarves snuggly around our throats.
Pull on our shoes and fasten the straps.
And tie on tightly our warm woollen hats.
Open the door, and out we go.
Out, into the soft and feathery snow.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Maths – super subitising!
This week we have been practising our subitising skills. This means, we have been looking and saying how many objects we can see – without counting one by one.
Year 2 Plant Investigations
Year 2 have started learning about plants this half term. This week, the children observed a range of plants and thought about different ways to group them. They grouped plants by size, whether they are trees or not, if we can eat them, and whether they grow fruit. The children showed great curiosity and were excited to share their ideas.
Beau “We grouped by plants you can eat and plants you can’t.”
Louis “Some of these plants have fruit and others don’t.”
Ava “The fruit grows from a flower!”