Philosophy Friday – 29.11.24

Philosophy is thinking deeply.

Every Friday, we start our day with some time to wonder and ponder.

We’ve a different question each week – there’s no obvious right/wrong answer and no underlying moral message. All children are given the opportunity to contribute their ideas and give reasons for their thoughts.

This week’s question related to our current topic:

This half-term, we’re artists. We’ll develop our art knowledge and skills.

This question sparked some interesting discussion and debate.

It doesn’t even have to be good. You can do anything you want as long as you had a good time doing it.

– Freddy

It’s always going to look nice to someone. I believe you should do whatever you want.

– Izabella

If every painting looked like something, it could be a bit boring. It could just be colours and shapes.

– Olly

It’s the colours that make a painting beautiful.

– Ellis

Our oracy focus this half term is:

Help at home by discussing this week’s Philosophy Friday question with your child. Can you find any examples of art that don’t immediately jump out as resembling something?

Living and Learning – I can talk about my feelings

This week’s Living and Learning statement is:

We discussed a range of emotions and the importance of recognising and talking about them.

Emotions are feelings – they can change all the time. We all experience a whole range of emotions, from anger to happiness to fear. This is ok and normal.

Emotions and feelings are our mental health.

We talked about how we can read people’s faces and body language to help us understand how they might be feeling. The children had a go at showing what these emotions might look like.

Everyone has the right to ask for help. If you need help with your emotions, or you notice someone else might need help with their emotions, speak to a trusted adult.

Help at home by discussing this learning with your child. Encourage your child to talk about their feelings – do they know who to speak to at school if they need help with their emotions?

Why not try completing this emotions chart with your child to highlight how emotions can change over the course of a day or event?

Reading – Inference

In reading, we’ve been reading The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas and Helen Oxenbury.

It’s a comically inverted version of the classic fable and the children have thoroughly enjoyed reading it. We spent some time discussing the pig’s character:

We’ve been using the text as a vehicle to practise our inference skills. Inference is the skill of using clues to make a sensible guess about something we don’t know.

One of our favourite activities for practising inference is ‘hot seating’ in which characters, played by members of the class (or the teacher!), are interviewed by the rest of the group. It encourages children to embody a character, thinking deeply about themes and ideas, and exploring their behaviour. We had great fun pretending to be the big bad pig!

Help at home by trying a hot seat activity with your child’s current book. Can they embody a character and dramatise their behaviour?

PE – Gymnastics

This half term, our focus in PE is gymnastics.

We’ve been exploring movement – the different ways in which we can control our bodies and travel from one point to another. We’ve considered the height of our position and how it can change.

The children created and performed sequences, giving feedback to each other. I was astounded by the flexibility, balance and creativity on display!

Help at home by discussing movement with your child. How can we move in different ways? Perhaps you could explore the movements of some animals – how do they move their bodies differently to ours?

Me and My Community Week

Wetherby Brass Band

On Tuesday, we were lucky to have a visit from Steven from Wetherby Brass Band. He spoke to the whole school about the benefits of playing in a band and being part of a community within the Wetherby community.

Steven, brought in some instruments and some of us were lucky enough to play some of them – some made hilarious noises.

The band play during many events in the Wetherby community, including the Remembrance Parade. They also play every Sunday at 2.30-4.30pm from the end of April to the end of September.

Me and My Community – Caring for Our Community

What is a community?

Communities are made up of people who are connected in some way. They might share common interests and values.

The children came up with a list of people who make up our community:

• families
• friends
• police
• teachers
• shop owners
• doctors
• neighbours
• church

We are connected to these people in lots of different ways and they all play a part in making our community a happy and healthy place to achieve and believe.

We thought about our classroom community and how we’re connected to one another. To show our community and its importance, children passed the string to the next person, whilst offering some words of appreciation, encouragement or support.

The web shows our classroom community. If we all show care and support, it will be strong.

We then dropped the string…

When people stop caring and supporting, the community will start to have problems.

What if we cared MORE not less?

Help at home by discussing this question with your child. You could use these stem sentences to help:

• To support my family community at home, I could…

• To care for my school community, I could…

• To help my local community, I could…

Me and My Community – Our School Vision

As part of our themed week, Me and My Community, we spent some time discussing our school vision.

Our school vision is to be…

…a happy and healthy place to achieve and believe.

We picked out 4 key words from our vision:

• happy

• healthy

• achieve

• believe

We discussed each word, thinking about what ‘happy and healthy’ looks and feels like, and all the ways in which we ‘achieve and believe’

“We can be happy by playing together.”

“We stay healthy by washing our hands.”

“We can achieve by working together.”

“We can believe by cheering each other on.”

Help at home by discussing our school vision with your child. How is our school vision reflected in life outside of school?

Maths – Ordering Numbers

In maths this week, we’ve been learning to order numbers by comparing the number of tens and ones.

Today, we took advantage of the sunny weather and took our maths learning outside. The children were each given a number and had to arrange themselves in order, first in small groups…

…then all together.

This task required much more than just maths knowledge: leadership, teamwork, patience. There were plenty of skills on display!

Help at home by challenging your child to order some 2-digit numbers. Check for understanding by asking them ‘How do you know?’. Ask them to tell you about the number of tens and ones in each number.

Try this fun ordering game.

Philosophy Friday

Philosophy is thinking deeply.

Every Friday, we start our day with some time to wonder and ponder.

We’ve a different question each week – there’s no obvious right/wrong answer and no underlying moral message. All children are given the opportunity to contribute their ideas and give reasons for their thoughts.

This week’s question related to our school vision. Our vision is to be…

…a happy and healthy place to achieve and believe.

Read more about our school vision here.

This question sparked some interesting discussion and debate.

Healthy is more important because if you don’t stay healthy, you won’t feel very well. – Logan

I think healthy because you need to keep healthy so you can come to school and school makes you happy. – Poppy

If you weren’t happy, it could be a world of everyone being sad. – Izabella

I think healthy because you don’t always have to be happy. – Vincent

If you only eat healthy stuff, it might make you a bit angry and you wouldn’t be happy. – Woody

Our oracy focus this half term is:

Help at home by discussing this week’s Philosophy Friday question with your child. Why is our school vision important? What does ‘happy and healthy’ look and feel like at school, at home and in the community?

Maths – Flexible Partitioning

In our ongoing maths quest to master place value, we’ve been partitioning flexibly…

Sounds fancy, but what does it mean?

The children have been learning the component parts of numbers and the value of their digits. For example:

75 is made up of 7 tens and 5 ones.

The value of the 7 is 70.

The value of the 5 is 5.

70 plus 5 is equal to 75

70 + 5 = 75

We’ve been exploring the different ways that numbers can be partitioned. For example:

60 + 15 = 75

54 + 21 = 75

23 + 52 = 75

Help at home by exploring flexible partitioning. Use these stem sentences to help secure understanding of number.

The number is ___.
___ is made up of __ tens and __ ones.
The value of the __ is __.
The value of the __ is __.

How else can the number be partitioned?