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?

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…

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?

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 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?

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?