Living and Learning: I know how to STOP bullying
Our recent Living and Learning statement has been: I know how to STOP bullying.
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 (now called the Junior Leadership team) met to review our school definition of bullying and our child friendly anti-bullying policy. Thank you to the JLT 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?
- Miss Beatson, Mrs Bald, or Mr Roundtree (they are child protection staff)
- 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 classroom 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.
As part of our Anti-bullying week, we had creative homework where the children showed that they knew how to stop bullying. Thank you to those children who have sent their homework. We have enjoyed looking at it in our homework review and sharing our ideas. (send any completed homework to Stjamesy3y4@spherefederation.org)
History : What’s the artefact?
We’ve had some great history lessons this week. We looked at some artefacts (old objects) and tried to guess what they were. This one is a water squirt – used to squirt water on buildings during the Great Fire of London.
The children guessed what it might be before we talked about what it was used for. We were great historians!
It might be a ski.
It’s a gun.
It’s a needle.
String telephones
Today in Science, we have been exploring how sound travels.
We learnt that sounds get quieter as the distance between the sound source and your ear increases. Sounds travel as vibrations. As the sound waves travel, the particles of whatever they are traveling through vibrate, or move quickly on the spot. The further the vibrations travel, the more they spread out. As they spread out through more and more particles, the vibrations become smaller and smaller. This causes the sound to get quieter and quieter. This is why sounds get quieter and quieter as you move further away from the source, until you eventually can’t hear the sound at all.
We experimented with a string telephone. We found that when we were talking in our normal voices we couldn’t hear each other across the hall. However, when we used the string telephone, we could still hear our partner. This is because when we use the telephone the vibrations of our voice travels through a solid – the string. However, when our voice went into the air, the vibrations spread out and got smaller as they travelled.
The string and the cups are solid, so the particles are much closer together than the particles in the air, which is a gas. The sound energy can travel from particle to particle far easier in the solid string telephone, so the sound of your voice is louder over the same distance than it was in the air.
Virtual Tour: Leeds City Museum
As part of our history topic, we’ve been learning about ancient Egypt. At the moment, we’re unable to go on a school trip, so we took a virtual tour around Leeds City Museum instead. We saw a real-life mummy and found out all about mummification.
It was made more interactive by Miss Beatson asking some children to put their hand in a bag which had something wet and soggy inside to represent the organs; to hook wool out a box to represent pulling the brains out of a nose; and smell spices which were used to scent the body during mummification.
We followed up the virtual tour by writing a set of instructions: How to mummify a body!
Balancing act
This week in PE, we’ve been exploring different balances with a partner and using a bench. We had to make sure we could hold our balances for three seconds. Some were harder than others!
Timestables rockstars
As a school, we buy into Times Tables Rockstars. This is a fun way for your child to practise their times tables. We use it, at least weekly, in-class but it would be really good if you could use it at home, too.
Each child has got their own login – if you’re not sure of their login/password then please email and I can send another one home.
At the end of year 4, they will take part in a times tables test. They will answer a range of times tables questions and need to score full marks to pass. They will have 5 seconds per questions to answer. Looking below, Year 4 are on their way to answering their 10 times tables and 11 times tables.
It would be great if, even for just 5 minutes a day, they practised their times tables. If you need any help logging in or have trouble accessing it, please let me know. Send an email to Mrs Rowlet at beckyrowley@spherefederation.org
Celebration certificates
The certificates this week go to…
For great learning…
Willow – for working hard in reading this week.
For sport and physical activity…
Evie – for great enthusiasm and determination in PE.
For living and learning…
Summer – for remembering our school definition of bullying.
Numbotter of the week– Emily for earning loads of stars!
Our new class reward system is still going down well too. For making good choices throughout the day, children can write their name on a raffle ticket (some children have got 9 or 10 tickets in this week). On a Friday, 5 winners will be drawn out and can choose a prize from the Raffle Reward box.
Nursery Rhyme Week
We’ve had so much fun this week celebrating Nursery Rhyme Week.
Take a look at all the things we’ve been doing…
Singing Five Little Ducks and Five Little Monkeys with our friends.
We sang twinkle, twinkle when painting Starry Night pictures in the style of Vincent Van Gough’s famous paint.
At the sensory table, we made cups of tea and sang I’m a Little Teapot.
At the playdough table, we sang Pat-a-Cake and pretended we were bakers.
We used ‘cement’ and wooden blocks to build a wall for Humpty Dumpty.
Literacy
Our focus story this week was Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. It is a fantastic book with simple rhyming text. It also has engaging illustrations encouraging children to look at the book carefully to find the next fairy tale and nursery rhyme character. Some of the characters we found in the book were Mother Hubbard, Cinderella and Tom Thumb.
We went on a ‘ I Spy’ hunt looking for illustrations from the book which were dotted around the outdoor area. We had lots of fun remembering the characters names and using the language from the story.
The F2 children also went on a hunt around the classroom for other nursery rhyme characters. They picked a character to draw and wrote a sentence describing where the character was in the classroom. E.g. I spy Incy Wincy Spider on the wall. This writing activity also linked nicely to the prepositional learning we did last week in maths.
Maths
In maths, we continued learning about the number 3. We learnt all about ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd). To help us learn about this, we played racing games and handed out medals to our friends.
We also played the ‘Three Billy Goats’ game. The children made three goats out of cubes. The little Billy Goat was one cube tall, the medium-sized Billy Goat was two cubes tall and the biggest Billy Goat was three cubes tall. They then took turns to roll the dice (1-3). The children were encouraged to subitise* the dots on the dice and work out which Billy Goat needed to cross the bridge.
F1 Group Time
This week, the children drew their own versions of some famous nursery rhyme characters. At the start of every group time, we ask the children to find their name in the middle of the circle – they are getting very quick at recognising their names!
Odd Socks Day
It was lovely to see almost all of Foundation in odd socks on Monday!
Home-Link Challenge
Next week, our focus story is The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We will be talking about size and learning all about measuring. To help your child get a head start, have a go at these challenges at home.
* The ability to instantaneously recognise the number of objects in a small group without the need to count them.
Finally…
Thank you to all the parents who do the home-link challenges with their children at home. It is always lovely to receive so many emails of amazing home learning!
PS – I have seen so many Christmas decorations up already and I’m sure some of your will have already put yours up! Send me pictures – I love CHRISTMAS!!
Nursery Rhyme Day
What a fun day we’ve had! You all looked fantastic dressed up as nursery rhyme characters.
We had a mini talent show. Check out how confident and amazing Foundation are at singing nursery rhymes!
Incy Wincy
Little Bo Beep
Five Little Monkeys
Baa Baa Black Sheep
Another Little Bo Beep
We also had an original song called Flower Garden.
Adjective day 2020
We had a fabulous Adjective Day today. It was a bit different having to stay in our bubble and not being able to parade in and out of every classroom but we still had a great time. We have lots of examples of adjectives on our word wall now. We even managed a distanced rendition of our adjective song.
Adjectives can tell you more,
About a noun and that’s for sure,
Ad-jec-tives!
