Election ready
The polling station is all set up and ready for the annual School Council elections tomorrow.
Good luck to all candidates.
Active travel in October – week three winner
Well done to our week three winner who made active journeys to school every day last week.
Our active travel section on the website has recently been updated. Have a look at some of the initiatives we take part in to encourage a happy and healthy start to the school day.
Living and Learning – democracy
Within the upcoming School Council elections, we’ve been considering one of the British Values, democracy, in our weekly Living and learning lesson.
This week, it’s our School Council elections. School Councils are democracy in action and we want to promote democracy as a way for children to have a say in what goes on.
Voting is all about democracy:
demo means ‘people’ and cracy means ‘ruling and decision-making’.
We’re excited to hear all the candidate’s speeches ready for the election on Thursday and we reminded ourselves about the voting process:
- Vote once for one person
- You can vote for yourself
- Choose someone who has the best qualities to become a good school councillor rather than just voting for a friend
- You can abstain, not to vote
Thank you to Olivia and Eleanor who have represented the class so well as our school councillors and good luck to all the candidates this week.
Living and Learning – Rights and responsibilities
This Living and Learning statement is a really important one for helping us to live in a respectful, responsible way. It can relate to lots of different aspects of life. Having rights links well with British Values (Individual liberties).
In our Living and Learning circle time session this week, we considered the rights we have but also the associated responsibilities.
Responsibility (also one of our 8Rs for learning) was recently one of our words of the week.
For example, we have the right to think and believe what we wish to so we have the responsibility to respect other people’s thoughts and beliefs.
We have the right to food, and the responsibility to make our own healthy choices.
We have the right to play, and we have the responsibility to play safely and sensibly with our friends.
The children were then able to come up with their own rights and responsibilities.
We have the right to have friends, and we have the responsibility to…
be kind to our friends (Sophia).
be friends with others – not just one person (Junior).
look after our friends (Olivia).
not to be bossy to our friends (Shasmeen).
not to hurt our friends (Gurvar).
We have the right to learn, and we have the responsibility to…
bring the resources we need (Ewan).
follow the instructions from the teacher (Gabriel H).
look after the equipment we use (Bridget).
be ready to learn (Noah G).
listen (Noah F).
look after the classroom (Saahith).
Help at home by encouraging your child to think about their rights and responsibilities outside of school.
Time Travel – Sources of evidence
We’ve been very impressed by the enthusiasm and engagement from the children during our current learning in Time Travel. As you will have seen in our class assembly, the particular historical event we are focusing on is the Great Fire of London which took place in 1666.
First of all, we calculated how many years ago this event took place to consider how this might affect the sources of evidence available. It happened 352 years ago.
Iris had pre-empted this learning, earlier in the week, ‘How do we know about the Great Fire of London?’ Great enquiry skills.
In table groups, children discussed whether they agreed or disagreed with the sources of evidence provided.
Using their thinking skills, the children then had to share why the sources would be possible evidence or not.
Help at home by asking your child what is the best source of evidence for the Great Fire of London and why.
Active travel in October – week two winner
Well done to our week two active travel winner (08 – 12 October) who was randomly selected to receive the latest £10 voucher.
Our week three winner will be announced early next week.
We have a final weekly prize to award and also a prize for someone who has made an active journey to school every day in October. These prizes will be awarded straight after half term once our Living Streets travel tracker data is available.
Remember an active journey can be walking, biking, scooting or parking away from the school gate and striding the last part of the journey.
Lost property
School Council are involved in a project to try and reduce the amount of lost property we have at school.
Starting this Friday, lost property will be available to look through in the playground to hopefully reduce the pile we have already this term!
Naming your child’s items helps to get things back to their owners so we will also be offering a clothing name labelling service for 20p per item. Profits will go to our school charity, Make-a-Wish.
New additions to the library – thank you, school councillors
At their final meeting, our current school councillors spent time, using part of their budget, choosing new books for our library.
From sport books to science books, there’s a great selection. The books will soon be available to borrow from the library.
School Council elections
In our whole school assembly today, we launched this year’s School Council election process. Our School Council is one of the ways that children are encouraged to take an active part in pupil voice.
The election process allows children to develop an understanding of one of the British Values, democracy, with two representatives from each class, chosen democratically by their peers.
Our current school councillors spoke about their role over the last year and the qualities needed to be an effective school councillor.
These included:
- use the 8 Rs for learning
- be respectful and polite
- help others
- be a good speaker and listener (to members of your class and in the meetings)
- share and be confident with your ideas
- let others speak
- accept the views of others even if you don’t agree
- be friendly and approachable
- follow our school rules and make good choices in class and around school
Watch out for the whole school homework this week all about the election and democracy, ready for the elections next Thursday 25 October.
Active travel winner
To mark International Walk to School month and our recent promotion of the Park and Stride site at Marks and Spencer, we are running a prize draw every week in October.
All children who make an active journey (bike, scoot, walk or park and stride) every day for each week are entered into a prize draw.
Each Friday in October, we will select a winner at random to win a £10 Love2Shop gift voucher.
Here’s our first winner. Keep up those active journeys to be in with a chance to win the next prize.
