Continue reading Children’s Parliament and Alan Turing Institute Work
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Writing in the Draatsi class
Mrs Henderson and I have been given the chance to take part in an Improving Writing Course run by CYPIC – The Children’s and Young People Improvement Collaborative. We gathered views on writing from the class at the start of the project and used a piece of written work to help us assess where our writers need most support initially. We aim to write three times a week and our focus just now is on improving our understanding and use of punctuation. The class write for just a short 15-20 minute slot before having time to edit and improve their work. The pupils also help each other in this process too. 😊 Their writing jotters are filling up fast with a variety of writing topics across the curriculum! Most recently, we have linked our writing to work going on throughout the class and school. Some examples are…
- Write your top tips to cope with bullying during Anti-bullying Week
- How do you use AI in your daily life?
- Describe the ‘den’ in our class novel
- Persuade Santa to put you back on the good list OR employ you as his elf for this Christmas season OR keep his beard…don’t shave it off!
We contine to share the success of the class with the pupils and they are keen to see the progress they are making. We hope to reach our target set in the new year before moving on to the next element of ‘Tools for Writing’ to be improved.
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JRSO Work
We have one JRSO pupil within our P4/5/6 class, who has been working with the other P6 pupils in Mrs Scanlan’s class next door, to help promote road safety in our school. These pupils worked so hard to compile and deliver a special assembly following Road Safety Week. They also invited the older classes to create a road scene picture which highlighted some of the road safety dangers they addressed in their assembly. These pictures are displayed in the main foyer. Time has also been spent with some of the younger P2 pupils playing a board game that reinforces road safety. The JRSO pupils also plan to visit the ELC pupils to share ‘Ziggy’ stories in the future. Well done to all the JRSOs!
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Lest we forget…
Yesterday, the Draatsi class watched a video all about ‘The Poppy Story’ and they took notes as they watched to help them recall details for their writing today, on Remembrance Day. Note taking is a really tricky skill but they all persevered and tried hard to just write down the main points! Please see the photographs below of some of the completed pieces of writing. Perhaps you’ll learn something about how the poppy became a symbol of remembrance.
We also spent time looking at John McCrae’s poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ which was written as he looked out over the poppy fields in Ypres, Belgium. We took his very famous poem and blacked out some of the words to create a new piece of writing by choosing words we felt were important. It was amazing how many different versions were created using this technique! Some are still to be completed but please see some of the finished examples below.
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Chuck Close Portraits
It’s taken us a while but sometimes you can’t rush a good job! The children have all created beautiful self portraits in the style of a famous artist that we found out about. They were shown his work and we talked about how we could recreate it. The children were given the choice of working with larger squares or smaller squares in true Chuck Close style. We talked about drawing 2D shapes within each small square or taking the opportunity to make each small picture more personal to them and some chose to do a mixture. We talked about the use of shading to make certain parts of their picture stand out and used black pen to make each portrait more visible than the shapes and squares. When the pictures were complete, we looked at the colours used and they picked backing colours to help display them to their best advantage! They will be displayed in our ICT Suite so please look out for them when you next visit.
Below are three examples from our P6 pupils.
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Curricular Overview for Block 1
Please see below our learning overview from now until Christmas. This can be subject to change depending on interest but hopefully, you’ll be able to get a ‘feel’ for what is going to be going on in the Draatsi classroom over the coming terms.
One exciting project that has not been included on the emailed copy is that our class have an amazing opportunity to work along with the Children’s Parliament and staff from the Alan Turing Institute finding out about Children’s Rights and Artificial Intelligence. You will be receiving more information about this soon. 😊
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Look what we found!
Some pupils from the Draatsi class were delighted to start the school day by finding a frog! We carefully took it to the pond area but not before we’d had a good laugh at it jumping on Mrs Smith’s shoe! Happy Friday everyone!
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Welcome back!
Before the holidays, we decided on a class name and P4/5/6 chose the Draatsis. Please look out for a photo of your ‘Draatsi’ in the Home/School Diary today!
For these first two days, we have been settling in again and those new to this classroom, have been getting used to their teachers and routines. We have talked about our holidays and completed camera snapshots of our summer memories. We have started our self portraits for the year in the style of Chuck Close, an American portrait artist. We have tried a Maths problem solving activity that required us to persevere when our answer didn’t quite work out first time. We have worked on various Team Building games that have helped us work together, communicate well with each other and be patient and encouraging! They did very well. I think it will be a good year!
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Platinum Jubilee
This week P4/5/6 have been finding out about the history of our school and they have been looking at all the amazing artefacts that have been kept following the Queen’s visit to our school in 1969, when she opened it. Some pupils were surprised to hear that there were once 5 small village schools in the South Mainland and that these schools were all closed to make the school that we have today….although it’s grown over the years too!
We invited Mary Andreas in to talk to us and prepared questions to ask her about her memories of the Bigton school and how she felt about moving to a much bigger school, out with her community. She also recalled how the children and teachers prepared for the Queen’s visit and talked to us about her feelings on the day. We looked at photographs and enjoyed spotting some relations.
Our discussions this week ahead of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, have definitely sparked an interest in the pupils to go home and ask their older family members about their experiences of school. Well done everyone!
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Star Fundraiser!
A huge well done to one of our pupils who recently cut her long locks in aid of The Princess Trust. To date, she has raised an amazing £743 . Very well done!
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