Love of Reading
We are loving reading our new library books!
Orienteering
On Tuesday morning, we got the opportunity to experience a new and frantic activity- orienteering. Checkpoints were placed all around the school grounds and using a very detailed map we had to navigate our way around a set route.
At first, we found it tricky to read the map and understand how to use it, but we showed resilience and soon we were all flying around school desperate to be the first to the finish the course.
Living and Learning: I use the 8 Rs to help me learn
In today’s living and learning session, we recapped the 8 Rs of learning. Here is what we could remember about our 8 Rs.
We talked about being ready to learn by showing that we are listening and we have eyes on the speaker so we can follow the instructions given.
We respond to feedback. We have stars and cool class tokens to show when we have made a good choice. This shows learning behaviour that we should try to do again. Warnings show that we have made bad choices and we should not make the same choices again. Next steps give us feedback on our learning and how we can improve.
Resillience – If we struggle with something we can “try, try and try again” just like our Christian Value perseverance.
Being responsible for our learning. It is our own responsibility to make sure we are getting on with our learning and to make sure we are not distracted by others. We need to make sure we have our PE kit and reading book in school.
We reflect on our learning. We thought about what we have done well and what we could improve on.
We remember what we have learnt and using this to help in other contexts.
Taking a safe risk involves putting our hand up and trying to answer a question when we think we know the answer.
Being resourceful is knowing what to use to help us or who to ask.
Reading Workshop
Thank you again to the parents who made it to our Phonics and Early Reading Workshop on the 25th September. For those who were unable to attend, please click on the link below to view the presentation shown at the meeting;
As always, please do ask if you have any questions and we will be happy to support you. If you did attend the workshop, please send feedback responses as soon as possible. This will help us to determine what went well and to tailor future parent meetings where necessary.
A reminder that our next session for parents will be our Parent Partnership Meeting- Wednesday 17th October 3.15-3.45pm.
Please return the slips sent home last week, to confirm your attendance.
Thank you.
Orienteering
We’ve had a brilliant afternoon orienteering around our school grounds.
“I loved it because there was lots of running around and activities. We had to stick keys in a hole, it beeped and then we had to keep on doing it until we had completed the whole map.”
Travelling through time…
On Friday, Hobgoblin Theatre company came into school and took the children on a trip through time – from the stone ages up until modern day. Along the journey, the children learnt many fun facts about history including how Thomas Farriner starter the Great Fire of London and wiped out the plague as he did, how Henry VII had 8 wives and how the Vikings invaded Great Britain. After the production, the children participated in a workshop – learning to become actors and how to create freeze frames.
Here are some pictures and quotes from the children about their experience.
“After the show, I liked it when we moulded people into different shapes.”
“I liked making statues.”
“I liked the funny costumes.”
“I like it when the actors told Jack to go and make them cups of tea.”
Time travelling with Hobgoblin Theatre
Today, we travelled through time! We started in the Ice Age and ended up in the here and now. We learnt about famous people and historical events throughout the ages. We will be writing some recounts about our experience next week.
We’re going on a…. deer hunt.
This week, we thought we’d get creative and instead of just reading our book ‘Stone Age Boy’, we would actually go back to the Stone Age. We gathered branches and made them into bows and arrows.
Making the bows and arrows needed us to read the instructions carefully as well as measure the branches very precisely. We then had to use clay to make arrowheads – it was a very busy afternoon.
After this, we acted out the part from the book where the main characters go off and hunt a deer. As you can see from the pictures, we all really enjoyed sneaking through the hall imagining we were being as stealthy as possible so as not to scare the deer.
Living and Learning: reflecting on my learning and remembering what I’ve learnt.
In Living and Learning circle time, we talked about remembering our learning. We then talked about the importance of reflecting on our learning. We passed the ball around the circle and said something that is going well in our learning and reflected on something we would like to improve.
Here are some of the things we remember about our learning:
- Facts from around the world.
- Counting in 5s.
- How to write the right way around.
- Using capital letters and full stops.
- Writing and phonics.
- Counting in 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s.
- Ordering numbers.
- Time Travel topic – learning that chronological order is oldest to newest.
- Using contractions.
Here are some of our ideas for how we would like to improve our learning.
- Improve the size of my writing.
- Writing on the line and using finger spaces.
- Writing in full sentences.
- Practising counting in 3s.
- Joining my handwriting.
Living and Learning: I remember what I’ve learnt. I reflect on my learning.
We had a very interesting discussion during our ‘Living and Learning’ session this week all about how remembering plays an important part in our learning. We agreed some people just seem to be able to remember things more easily than others. There are certain important facts we have to learn and then remember to help us in our work, such as times tables, number bonds and spellings. We can then apply these skills during our lessons which makes many tasks so much easier.
People shared the strategies they find the most useful. We noticed how many different preferred styles of learning and remembering everyone uses. We discussed how it might be useful to try alternative ways to remember instead of always using the same method. As Oliver commented, “I do experiment because I get bored if I always do the same one”.
It was interesting thinking about all the learning that takes place at school which we use in in our daily lives. Evie said learning Spanish in Year 2 really helped her on holiday and gave her the confidence to say a few words!
In our classroom we have a ‘reflection area’ which people go to for various reasons during the day. This led us to talk about the second statement, ‘I reflect on my learning’. We discussed why it is important to ‘think about’ not only what we have learnt but why and how we learnt it.
Again the class contributed to the discussion with real maturity when talking about making mistakes. As one group commented; ‘That’s what helps us to learn sometimes, because if it’s wrong we try not to do it again.’ We made links with our previous discussions about how it is important to respond positively to feedback, know our personal targets and strive to reach our targets.
People shared the things they really wanted to get better at and reflected on the bumpy journey it often takes to really reach that goal. We’ll make mistakes along the way but that’s all part of the learning process!