History: Athenian democracy
In today’s lesson, we’ve been learning about Athenian democracy.
We learnt that most Greek city states were ruled by one person (monarchy – a king, queen or emperor) or a small group of powerful men (an oligarchy). An Athenian Tyler, Solon, introduces democracy to Athens around 500BC which gave any citizen the opportunity to vote on new laws.
However, only men who were born in Athens were classed as citizens. Women could not vote!
Our learning this week
Literacy
This week we are taking part in World Nursery Rhyme Week.
The initiative, which was launched in 2013, promotes the importance of nursery rhymes in early childhood development and education with a particular focus on how nursery rhymes boost early language and literacy skills.
We will be learning a familiar nursery rhyme each day and listening to rhyming books and poems.
Singing nursery rhymes is a wonderful activity you can enjoy doing together at home. You can access all of the free resources at: www.worldnurseryrhymeweek.com
Phonics
This week’s phonemes are b, f, ff, l, ll. We will also be learning to read the tricky words I, no, go.
PhonicsPlay is a great website that we often use in our phonics lessons.
The games are a fun way to practise reading sounds, real words, alien words and sentences.
The games are organised into the Letters and Sounds phases. Reception are learning Phase 2 sounds.
Login details are Sphere (user name) and Spher3 (password).
Maths
This week we are learning about shape. Why not go on a shape hunt around your home?
Living and Learning: United against bullying
This week, it’s Anti-Bullying Week and the theme for this year is ‘United against bullying’.
Don’t forget – we are also taking part in Odd Socks Day on Monday 16 November.
STOP is a key message linked to bullying. In our school, STOP stands for two things:
- the definition: Several Times On Purpose
- the solution: Start Telling Other People
Recently, our school council met to review our school definition of bullying and our child friendly anti-bullying policy. Thank you to the school councillors for their valued contributions. As a result, our definition and policy have now been updated.
Child friendly anti-bullying policy
What is bullying?
In our school, this is what bullying means:
Bullying is where you hurt someone, physically or emotionally (including online), several times on purpose.
What might bullying look like?
If any of these things happen several (lots of) times, it is bullying.
- Hurting peoples’ feelings, for example, name calling, teasing, threatening, ignoring, leaving people out or spreading rumours
- Hurting peoples’ bodies, for example, hitting, punching or kicking
This could be in person or online (cyber bullying) and could be because of someone’s race, disability, gender, appearance, age or any other protected characteristic.
What could you do if you are being bullied?
Start
Telling
Other
People
Who could you tell?
- Mrs Weekes/Mrs Freeman/Mrs Russell/Mrs Small (they are child protection staff)
- Mrs Taylor (Health Leader)
- Any other members of staff
- Friends
- Someone in your family
- A trusted adult
- Childline (0800 1111)
- Write a worry slip and put it in your Living and Learning box or the whole school worry box
- Email stayingsafe@spherefederation.org
Our views on bullying
STOP bullying – bullying is wrong! We’re a happy and healthy school.
Houses from the past
As a part of our Great Fire of London topic, the children looked at what houses from the past were like. They discussed what they thought about the houses and why the fire might have spread so quickly.
10 more and 10 less
In maths, our focus at the moment is addition and subtraction. In one session last week, the children worked in pairs to find 10 more and 10 less of a number.
Times Tables Rock Stars
Times Tables Rock Stars is an app and website that we use in school to quicken the recall of tables facts. In Y6, we love it!
We have been using this app on a regular basis and there has been clear progress in our recalling speed of our times tables.
But don’t just take my word for it – check out the evidence below! The following graph shows our average recall speed measured against Y6 expected standard.
A clearer image, if you need it, can be found here.
It’s great to see so many engaging with TTRS…
…but I’m sure we can improve our average daily time. Each game is short so you don’t need lots of time – ten minutes each day would be ideal!
A clearer image, if you need it, can be found here.
It’s also a great tool for me to see how we’re doing as a class (or individual pupils) and can therefore tailor our practice to fit! I can have a look at minutes played, points scored, strongest/weakest table facts etc.
The first picture below is a heatmap to show recall speed – the greener, the quicker! (Ignore the red one in the bottom left. That was a user error.) We can use this to see that, as a class, our slowest recalls are with 9 x 8, 8 x 4 and 8 x 6 / 6 x 8. Challenge your child to recall these now! 🙂
On the right is our average score for random tables out of 25. Each bar represents a pupil and the aim is to get everyone consistently at 22 or more out of 25. Currently, we have 13 pupils doing this – well done!
A clearer heatmap is here and average score out of 25 is here.
All of these graphs can be downloaded for each child so if you want to know exactly how your child’s getting on and how to improve, send me an email and I’d be more than happy so let you know their individual stats!
Supporting your child at home
Firstly, thank you for all the support with your child’s learning. We are very impressed with the children’s attitude and enthusiasm to continuing and extending their learning at home.
As you will be aware, Lexia is a reading and phonics based online program and, in Year 1, we have been using this app on a regular basis. Once your child has received their level 5 certificate, they no longer need to work on this at home as they have completed the Year 1 program of learning.
We’ve just signed up to Numbots and your child will have brought their login details home on Thursday. This is a great app and website for practising addition and subtraction facts (our current maths learning) and it’s great to see so many of the children have already accessed this resource. There are 15 different games, each with a different focus. Topics covered include doubles and number bonds to 10, 20 and 100.
Another great maths resource is Hit the Button. Select number bonds (to 10) when using this.
PhonicsPlay is a great website that we often use in our daily phonics lessons. In each game, you can select the phase of phonics and, more specifically, which letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes) to focus on. The games are a fun way to practise reading sounds, real words, alien words and sentences. Login details are Sphere (user name) and Spher3 (password). Check out the Resources page. In class, we have recently reviewed Phase 3 and we are now working on Phase 4 so please select these when using this at home.
As with all of these resources, little and often is the best way to use these at home.
In addition, our Home learning page provides an overview of our learning in class for the week. Finally, it’s definitely also worth checking out our Help your child and Calculations and times tables pages which both contain a range of ideas, links and activities – even just a bit of regular practice of handwriting can make loads of difference!
If you have any questions or queries about the above resources, please contact us by email (carolinetaylor@spherefederation.org and jackiefreeman@spherefederation.org).
Maths: part whole models
The part-whole model is the concept of how numbers can be split into parts. Children using this model will see the relationship between the whole number and the component parts. This helps learners make the connections between addition and subtraction.
Last week, Year 1 started learning about the part whole model and how a number can be partitioned into two or more parts. The children were confident in creating the model and writing the appropriate calculation.
5 + 2 = 7
2 + 5 = 7
To build on this concept, we began to look at addition fact families. The children were taught that the order of an addition sentence can vary and they are now beginning to realise that addition is commutative.
Once the children were familiar with swapping the parts, in the number sentence, we explored whether the whole could be moved to create more fact families.
5 + 2 = 7
2 + 5 = 7
7 = 5 + 2
7 = 2 + 5
Writing: similes
We’ve been learning about similes this morning in our writing lesson.
We used an app called Padlet to collate our similes. We then read them as a class and edited them if they needed correcting or improving.
“The red panda moved as quick as lightning to save its adorable cub.”
“The newly washed clothes were as soft as silk.”
History: using historical sources
In yesterday’s history lesson, we learned about the Battle of Thermopylae – a famous battle between the Ancient Greeks and the Persians.
We learned about a Greek historian who wrote about the battle and about the weapons and armour that the Greek soldiers would have had.
We then became military commanders to show the events of the battle.
