Sorry for the late hello for the year. I have been having some issues getting on to the page – that should all be sorted now! I wanted to give you a quick update on what we are doing in P4/5 this year.

Topic News

From now up to Christmas in topic work we are focusing on learning about local history including some key events and people. We have found some subjects that we would like to learn about and the class have decided which of these they would like to investigate further. So far we have been looking at The Green Lily in which winchman Bill Deacon lost his life and for which the lifeboat crew were awarded medals for gallantry.

Although we are not able to have visitors in school at the minute we fortunately have a link to the Coastguard Helicopter – Dave Wells. He was happy for us to video call him whilst he was at work and he showed us around the helicopter and discussed the modifications that are now available since the loss of Bill Deacon. This also gave the class an opportunity to ask Dave many questions about what it’s like to be flying Oscar Charlie.

Stations activities.

This year we have introduced some changes to the way we are operating both our language and maths lessons. We have a focused stations approach which the pupils appear to be enjoying and excelling in. Through the stations activities we are able to have short, focused sessions in small groups ensuring that we have some focused teaching time, chance to apply our learning and introduce some ICT too. The pupils have adapted to this well and many of them are starting to see the benefits and are willing to push themselves to achieve more too!

Nurture.

Our class has been fortunate to have a dedicated weekly nurture lesson conducted with both myself and Mrs Leslie – we have named it Awesome All Stars this was decided by the class. The name highlights the fact that we are all stars and have something important to contribute to our team and those who come into contact with us day to day. Also, that we should be proud of the awesome individuals that we are and our part in making our P4/5  team awesome too.

Money for play time equipment.

The school has been presented with £300 from the Hoswick visitor Centre – the Sumburgh Fire Station suggested that our school would be a worthy cause. This money has been split between the 5 classes and we have been looking at how we can spend it for maximum benefit to us. As we are currently restricted to playing in our own class areas and we have limited resources to share we have decided to use this money to buy some play time equipment for both outside and wet play times. We are looking forward to the arrival of our orders any day now.

ICT

Lockdown was quite a shock for all of us; glow and Teams was thrust upon us with no chance for pupils or staff to gain any experience with it. We are therefore using a dedicated ICT lesson each week to build our confidence in the options available to us through both of these packages. The confidence of the class has grown a lot with these dedicated sessions and we will continue to build on this further to boost our understanding.

Now that I am able to access the blog page I will try to keep you updated more often!