As we come to the end of our second week back together, I can’t believe how much learning we have accomplished and how the children have well and truly settled back in to school life. It is almost as if they have never been away!
This week we have loved continuing with our class novel, Kensuke’s Kingdom, and we are very near the end now. The children are desperate to read on and find out whether Michael will finally get off the island, but the question is … will Kensuke go with him? We will find out next Tuesday. In Maths, the children have worked extremely hard in their mental division and we have now moved on to short division where we started to use the ‘bus shelter’ method– no buses in sight but plenty of great division practice. This will be a journey very similar to our long multiplication, where we have to take it slow and steady with our small steps have lots of resilience and of course much needed practice– we’ve got this year 5! In our RE, Miss Bassett started the week reading the childhood classic ‘Rainbow fish’, which sparked the discussion of what makes each of us happy. From there, they then looked closely at the bible and its teachings of how to make other happy.
The most pinnacle lesson we had this week was our continuation of our RHE lessons. We moved on from what the census is, to looking at diversity and ethnicity and then on to how diversity varies in different locations around the England. This is vital for the children to learn that there are places beyond St Anne’s and how different places can have a wide variety of people from other cultures, religion and ethnicity. This discussion then led on to a lesson on racism, where we explored very openly what racism looks like, why it might happen and the damaging affect it can have on individuals. During this lesson I was taken away by the children’s maturity, compassion and openness. They each listened and discussed how this made them feel and from this we could empathize with the injustice of making any individual feel different or isolated. In fact the children felt so strongly, that they want to continue to look at this area next week and role play scenario’s of how they could, individually, stand up to racism and what to do if they ever witnessed this. What a thought-provoking lesson, that the children responded and engaged in so deeply. I am sure you will all agree that educating our children openly about subjects that challenge injustice is vital if we are to be true disciples of Christ, where we truly do ‘love one another, as I have loved you’ John 15:12.
TIME TO CELEBRATE
This week we celebrated Adam for his great focus during his learning which has meant that he had great independence and has mastered some tricky maths concepts this week- well done Adam keep it up!
We also celebrated Olivia as a Roger Robin, for the encouragement and support she shows to others. She has also presented her work beautifully, which has given her learning great clarity and organization- well done Olivia. You are a kind and compassionate member of our class and we thank you for this.
NOTICES
PE DAYS: Tuesday (outdoor) and Friday (indoor).
Lunchtimes with Mr Nay- Tuesday and Thursday
Please can children remember to take their reading books to and from school- they should be reading for at least half an hour every night please.
God bless and have a wonderful weekend in the sunshine,
Mrs Hotchkiss, Mrs Nel, Mrs Harrison, Miss Bassett and Mrs Russel