Class News

An excellent learner

Getting a certificate for always demonstrating excellent learning behaviour.

SEAL star

Getting the ‘I can take a safe risk’ certificate for confidently trying new shapes in gymnastics.

The Rs for learning

The 7Rs for learning is an additional theme to our SEAL (social and emotional aspects of learning) coverage across the year.  Throughout this theme children will explore seven key aspects of learning behaviour:

• Responsibility – know that you are in charge of your learning
• Risk – taking – having a go
• Resilience – keep trying, stay positive and persevere
• Resourcefulness – try a different way and find and use resources independently
• Responsive – respond in the right way to peers and adults
• Remembering – apply your learning in other lessons
• Reflection – think about what and how you’ve learnt and learn from your mistakes

Each of these aspects that help us to learn will be explored over this half term.

Characteristics of effective learning

A big part of education is to learn facts and rules (and then to use these in certain situations).  At school, we learnt times tables, spellings and capitals of some countries, for example – these are useful facts that we now use as adults.  But education at its core is not just about being able to learn and remember facts.  It’s about the processes as well as the outcomes.  We want our children to happy and healthy learners for life.  If they have the characteristics of effective learners listed below, which we promote at school and which you can promote at home, they are more likely to be successful, life-long learners.

The characteristics can be broken down into three broad areas:

1. playing and exploring (finding out, using what they know in their play, being willing to ‘have a go’)
2. active learning (being involved and concentrating, keeping on trying, enjoying achieving what they set out to do)
3. creating and thinking critically (having their own ideas, using what they already know to learn new things, choosing ways to do things and finding new ways)

Have a think about these.  When does your child has the opportunity and encouragement to demonstrate and develop these characteristics?

Here are a ‘Top 20’ list of examples of questions which might prompt you to change the way you support your child at home.

• Does your child respond to first hand experiences in an exploratory way?
• How does your child demonstrate natural curiosity?
• Does your child notice patterns, changes, similarities and differences in or outside the home?
• Does your child initiate activities around his / her own interests?
• Does your child seek challenges and take risks in new experiences?
• Does your child learn from mistakes without becoming disheartened?
• To what extent does your child become completely focused in activities and experiences and not easily distracted?
• Does your child pursue a particular line of interest in an activity?
• Does your child demonstrate persistence in the face of difficulty or a challenge?
• Can your child refocus and re-plan to overcome difficulties, setbacks and disappointments?
• Does your child know how to seek appropriate help in terms of materials, tools and other people?
• Does your child become involved in activities and experiences which arise out of personal interest, curiosity and enquiry?
• Does your child demonstrate satisfaction when engaged in and completing activities?
• Does your child generate new ideas during activities?
• Does your child adapt, refine or make changes when previous ideas were unsuccessful or could be developed?
• Is your child inventive in solving problems, using knowledge and skills across areas of learning?
• Does your child talk about or explore the idea of cause and effect through actions?
• Does your child offer ideas of why things happen and how things work or show this in his / her exploratory play?
• Does your child explore ways of solving new problems including trial and error?
• Is your child able to plan and monitor what has been done?

(Much of the content of this article comes from the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum, but we believe apply at all stages of a learner’s life.)

Try this tasty dip

Year 6 have been developing their food technology skills by making hummus:

Have a try at making hummus!  It is a great source of protein and fibre and makes a healthy alternative to meat if you’re a vegetarian.  To make this tasty dip even more delicious, spread it in pitta bread for a light lunch or dip veg into it for a scrumptious snack.  Try it in your lunchbox – you won’t be disappointed!

Here’s the recipe:

• 410g can of chickpeas
• juice of one lemon
• 1 clove of garlic, crushed
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil

Whizz the chickpeas, lemon juice and garlic in a food processor or using a hand blender until just smooth.

Loosen with a little warm water if needed.

Phonics phase 3

Phonics is the step up to word recognition. Automatic reading of all words, both tricky and decodable, is the ultimate goal!  We’ve begun Phase 3 of our phonics programme.  The purpose of this phase is to:

• teach more graphemes, most of which are made of two letters, for example, ‘oa’ as in boat and float
• practise blending and segmenting a wider set of CVC (consonant – vowel – consonant) words, for example, fizz, chip, sheep, light
• learn all letter names and begin to form them correctly
• read more tricky words and begin to spell some of them
• read and write words in phrases and sentences.

The following phonemes will be taught during Phase 3.

1. v, w
2. x, y, z, zz, qu
3. sh, ch, th, ng
4. ai, ee, igh, oa
5. oo, oo, or, ar
6. er, oi, ir, ur
7. air, ear, ure

Here are some examples of words your children will be reading: tail, week, right, soap, food, park, burn, cord, town, soil.

The number of tricky words is growing.  This term we will learn: he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, her, they, all.

How you can help at home

• Sing an alphabet song together.
• Play ‘I spy’, using letter names as well as sounds.
• Continue to play with magnetic letters, using some of the two grapheme (letter) combinations:

r-ai-n = rain blending for reading | rain = r-ai-n – segmenting for spelling

b-oa-t = boat blending for reading | boat = b-oa-t – segmenting for spelling

h-ur-t = hurt blending for reading | hurt = h-ur-t – segmenting for spelling

• Praise your child for trying out words.
• Set a timer; call out one word at a time and get your child to spell it on a magic board or a small whiteboard, against the timer – remember, they can use magnetic letters.
• Play ‘Pairs’, turning over two words at a time trying to find a matching pair – this is especially helpful with the tricky words: the the, to to no no, go go.  Don’t worry if they get some wrong! These are hard to remember – they need plenty of practice.

Making complete circuits

Space Dance

This half-term, we’re very lucky to have a dance teacher coming into school to teach us dance in PE lessons. We’ll create and learn a dance which links with our Big Topic about space. We’ll even perform our dance in an assembly in front of the whole school!

It’s cold outside…

…so make sure you come to school wrapped up warm!

PE multi-skills

We’ve been practising lots of different skills in PE this week.