What a busy two weeks we have had at swimming. It has been wonderful to see the children demonstrating the school value, ‘We love challenge' in the way they have listened carefully to the instructors and worked on improving individual swimming skills.A huge thank you to all the parents who came along to assist us at the pool. We appreciate the time that you have given!
Sleep Sleuths
While we have been swimming, the children have been, 'Sleep Sleuths' researching facts about the importance of sleep. The children brainstormed a variety of questions (wonderings) they had about sleep. We have used a variety of methods to research the answers to our questions, including watching YouTube clips, reading books, reading websites online or articles and texts created by the teacher.
For many of the children, they have grown their understanding about the importance of sleep, the sleep cycle, dreaming, how animals sleep to name a few. Communicating and sharing this learning will be our next focus.
For most of the team, the teachers have taken an integrated approach by teaching reading and writing at the same time instead of giving the children separate reading books and writing on an unrelated topic. This has enabled us to clearly show the link between reading and writing.Across the team, the children have been given greater agency with their learning by working in a variety of ways. This has looked liked working individually, with a buddy, in small groups, and using a variety of resources.
Next week, we will be exploring sleep spaces and how people sleep around the world. Here are some images which were taken within one literacy block this week which show how we differentiate learning.
Maths
We have been so impressed with the children during maths time this term and it has been wonderful to see the children working together and sharing their ideas and strategies when solving our maths problems. During these sessions, we are actively encouraging the children to extend and share their thinking by using the maths talk moves. These ways of talking are enabling the children to think really critically about the strategy they are using to solve a problem and reflect on its effectiveness.Alongside the maths problems, the children are continuing with their MMM to help extend their basic facts knowledge and we are still teaching the children about number knowledge (place value, reading and writing numbers etc.) as well as teaching strategies so the children are extending their proficiency when problem-solving.
Here are a couple of examples of the problems and the strategies being used.
Thorrington Village
We have been offered the opportunity to appear on the What Now television programme showing what we do when we visit the residents at Thorrington Village and how we show that ‘We Care’ about our community and how ‘We Make A Difference’. The What Now TV crew will be accompanying 15 of our children to the village on Friday 1st June and filming us while we are there. The children will be talking, reading and playing games with the residents and then we will all sing for them at the very end. It is all very exciting!
Cross Country
We had a fantastic day for our whole school cross country, it was great to have everyone out on the park in their house colours. All of the children did an amazing job, putting in so much effort and really challenging themselves to run faster. The top four children from each year group will be asked to represent Beckenham School at the Hillview Year 0 - 4 cross country challenge in Week 10. We will be sending home information to these students in the coming weeks.
That's all for now. Keep warm!
Kōwhai Teaching Team