Our learning journey this week
PE
Year 3 have been learning lots of new skills in our current sport – hockey.
We have been talking a lot about the fundamental movement skills children learn in schools, from reception right up to the end of high school. The simple skills we learn in reception are constantly used and built upon, allowing our bodies to perform more complex skills. Here are the fundamental movement skills below:
This is a slap pass. Our hands should be together, nice and high on the stick.
Here is a drag pass. We need to be nice and low to the ground and drag the stick to make contact with the ball. This will allow us more power.
Here, we are practising dribbling with close control.
In hockey, we are only allowed to use the flat side of the stick. Therefore, we have to use our guider hand to turn the stick.
It’s important to learn techniques to stop the ball, as we are not allowed to use our feet in hockey.
Help at home:
Have a conversation with your child about these skills in school. Which ones are important when playing hockey? Do we use these skills in other areas of our lives? Does everyone know how to kick a ball like a professional, or is it a skill that needs regular practise and progression?
Writing
We are preparing ourselves for our first piece of writing – a recount walking through Athens in Ancient Greece! The children have been working hard on using verbs and adverbs to make our writing sound better. As a class, we’ve managed to create a huge bank of vocabulary ready to magpie into our writing next week! Here are some sentences made by the children with the adverbs in bold.
Ferociously, the statues protected the colossal temple. – Freddie
Eagles soared elegantly above the majestic temple. – Max
Dark clouds quickly suffocated the sky – whole class
Forest Schools Fun
This week, year 5/6 had more fun in our woodlands area with the forest schools team .
We used the resources to made rope swings, a mud kitchen and even a wishing well!
It was fantastic hearing the children articulate what they had enjoyed about the session so well.
We will be focusing on more construction and developing the mud kitchen area in the weeks to come.
Help at home: Ask your child what they enjoyed about forest schools. Can they get any inspiration from the nature around you? 
Castles and Cannonballs in PE!
This term in PE, Year 1 have been working hard on developing their construction, teamwork, and bowling skills! We’ve had so much fun building castles out of cones in teams. The children showed fantastic collaboration as they carefully planned and built their castles, making sure they were sturdy and creative.
Once the castles were complete, it was time for some excitement – knocking them down with “cannonballs”! Using dodgeballs, the children practiced their aiming and bowling skills, focusing on throwing with power and accuracy. They absolutely loved the challenge of taking down the castles and cheering on their teammates.
Through this activity, Year 1 have not only improved their physical skills, but also learned the importance of communication and teamwork. It’s been wonderful to see how well they’ve supported each other and celebrated each other’s successes!
Who are you?
We’ve had a lovely few weeks settling back into Nursery. As we have made new friends we started to talk about out families and who is important to us.
We became artists and captured our families on paper. Each child chose a colour to represent each person within their family.
In the early years, your child’s main way of learning and developing is through play. Building these realtionships between family and Nursery helps your child learn key life skills, like communicating, thinking, solving problems, moving and being with other children and grown-ups.
Spending time playing together sends your child a simple message – you’re important to me. This message helps your child learn about who they are and where they fit in the world and we foster this within Nursery!
Help at Home:
As the weather is beginnng to change, so is our environment. This is the perfect time go out for a family walk and see what you can find!
Please bring in all your lovely Autumnal treasures so we can add them to our tuff tray next week.
Have a happy and healthy weekend!
Miss Ward and Miss Harvey
The importance of attendance
What did you do today? ‘We just played’…is the answer many parents of Reception children get. But here’s just a few of the things your child would miss if they’re absent for five consecutive days.
Phonics: Children learn four new graphemes and three tricky words each week.
Reading: Children practise reading books that closely match their phonics, plus loads of stories are read aloud and celebrated. We visit the school library once a week to choose a book to take home.
Poetry picnic: There’s a poetry session every day –another valuable activity which helps children learn to read.
Writing: We write every day using the graphemes that we’ve learned.
Handwriting: Children learn how to form letters correctly, otherwise joining letters will be difficult in Key Stage 1.
Maths: We’ve four maths sessions a week, setting the foundations for children to be successful in using and applying numbers in the future.
Alongside all of this, children learn Science, Music and other subjects. Even more importantly, children learn to concentrate in a large group, to share resources, take turns when speaking, answer in full sentences, regulate our feelings and prepare ourselves for future learning.
There’s a lot happening when ‘we just play’!
KS1 Dictation for writing
All the children have made a great start to their writing journeys this year. We have been really pleased with their enthusiasm.
In Key Stage One, we use dictation as a tool to help children with their writing. During dictation, the teachers will either have sentences already in mind or they will discuss and decide on a sentence with the children. Dictation allows children to watch as an adult models using different writing skills effectively. Together we practise letter formation, spacing between words, spelling, where and when to use punctuation such as capital letters and full stops. Teachers also model how to listen to sounds in words and write the corresponding letters.
Here are some examples of our writing:
Help at home: You could think of some simple sentences to write with your child at home. These could be about anything at all from writing about what you did at the weekend or a sentence about a film or a program you have watched on the telly.
Ask them about the process and how they do it school. I’m sure they’d be happy to share with you how skilful they are at counting the words in the sentence and using their Phoneme Fingers to listen for sounds in words. You could also include some tricky words or some of your child’s spelling words.
KS1 Maths-Numbots time!
All children in Year 1 have been given an account and login for Numbots (on the back of their reading records). This is an interactive tool that school heavily invests in for your child. It is an engaging platform to help your child learn the foundations of maths.
Numbots is all about every child achieving the ‘triple win’ of understanding, recall and fluency in mental addition and subtraction, so that they move from counting to calculating.-Numbots Innovators.
We have seen the amazing impact that Numbots can have on a child’s knowledge and confidence in Maths. Numbots is part of the weekly homework for Year 1 children. Please can we ask that you make this tool a part of your weekly family routine. Once children have logged on a few times, they’re hooked and really enjoy ‘playing’!
We have class leader boards that tell us the amount of time, amount of correct answers etc for each child.
(For Your Information: Once children have completed the Numbots levels they can then move on to TTRockstars which is based on multiplication and division.)
If you are experiencing an difficulties with logging on, please chat to your child’s teacher.
Help at home: Help your child log on to their Numbots account. Guide them to navigate the devise being used and let them impress you!
Living and Learning: Rights and Responsibilities
Last week, Year 3 learnt about rights and responsibilities and consolidated this with a group circle time. In circle time, children were asked to share ideas on different rights they have and responsibilities that match. Below are some comments from our discussion:
I have the right to go to school and the responsibility to learn as much as I can.
I have the right to eat and have the responsibility not to waste food.
I have the right to eat and have the responsibility to maintain a balanced diet.
Here are our human rights:
Help at home:
Talk with your child about the rights they have, along with the responsibilities that accompany them. Ensure children understand what rights are (definition below).
Rights are things we are all entitled to in order to help us live.
Using our debating skills in our history lesson
In history this half-term, we are learning about Ancient Greece with a focus on the concepts of power and innovation.
We started the unit reviewing the timeline in our classroom to work out when the golden-era of Ancient Greece was relative to other historical events and periods that we have already studied. We then looked at the physical geography of Greece and discussed how having many islands made it difficult to be under one centralised ruler. I was really impressed when a child explained that this would also make it difficult for other people to invade Greece and another child thought about whether it would be easier to invade a country that is by the sea rather than landlocked. What great reflections for children to have thinking deeply about their learning!
This week we have been comparing the city states of Sparta and Athens. The children were very persuasive in their debates about which would be the better city state to live in. The biggest source of outrage for many children was that it was unfair that girls weren’t allowed to go to school in Athens.
This week we will be researching the most significant innovations made during the golden-era of the Ancient Greeks and thinking about the impact these have had on our modern day lives. I am sure you can’t wait to hear all about it!
Help at home
- Consolidate our key vocabulary by asking us what a democracy and an oligarchy is.Help us to remember more by asking us the difference between Athens and Sparta (you may wat to use the prompts: education, women, government, trade.)Prepare us for our next step in learning by researching the innovations made during the golden-era of Ancient Greece. You may have books you can use, you may want to do your own research on the internet or you could use the BBC bitesize page: https://shorturl.at/EtTHq
‘Welcome to Reception’ meeting
Thank you to those parents/carers who were able to attend our ‘Welcome to Reception’ presentation on Wednesday evening. I hope you found it informative.
If you were unable to attend or would like to re-visit the subjects we discussed, please click here to be taken to a PDF version of the slides used in the presentation