Each term at Glebeland Primary and Barnby & North Cove Primary, teachers support their pupils in their class to plan and deliver a Social Action Project. Each project is linked to a Global Citizen Theme that links contexts of learning across a number of subjects.

With the support and guidance of staff, pupils collaboratively plan their ideas about what they will produce to support their community and to raise awareness of current issues. The projects encourage pupils to become positive participants in the world around them and to understand how they can be active agents of change for their communities.

Staff have worked on developing powerful yet manageable age-appropriate projects with their pupils and have worked collaboratively and engaged in debate to ensure the projects are meaningful.

Below are some of the projects the pupils are working on currently.

Barnby & North Cove Primary School

KS1	Identity and Diversity - Ourselves and our community. We will be making blankets for those in our local community with rising utility costs.
LKS2	This term we have been collecting plastic bottles to construct a plastic bottle greenhouse to help the children grow and eat their own food in a sustainable manner. This was taken from our focus on sustainable development and looking at the lack of distributed resources across the world. We will build our greenhouse as a classroom community and nurture our crop as a community so that we can all benefit from our hard work in a practice that doesn't damage our environment.
UKS2	As a class, we have decided to focus on Sustainability and Recycling etc.. The focus of our work this term will be to use old (clean) socks to create glove puppets for the younger children in our school. Each member of our class will create at least one for all children in Acorn and Oak. They will learn to sew as part of our focus on the Red Revolution initiative - this encourages everyone to consider where their clothes come from and who they are made by. We will recycle our socks and encourage our younger pupils to use these to help with their communication skills

Glebeland Primary School

Phase	Autumn
EYFS	Harvest food bank collection - learning about where our food comes from and helping those less fortunate than ourselves.
KS1	Identity and Diversity - ourselves and our community We will be holding a toy swap in order to bring down the cost of Christmas for families.
LKS2	Caring for the Environment - Understanding the concepts of Deforestation, Reforestation and Afforestation. We planted our own mini garden, growing flowers and vegetables (a more sustainable way).
UKS2	Linked to our science topic ‘How can we prevent water diseases’ Red Kite Class will be raising money to donate to water aid. We will be looking at a range of ways of using upcycling to create a product to sell. Linking to our Learning Pi drivers. Red Kite class will be: working collaboratively, building links, resilience and determination, participants and being resourceful.

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Barnby North Cove

Collaborative, Participation and Purposeful have been the learning characteristics shown by our Pupil Parliament & Junior Road Safety Officers this term. They decided that, together, they would like to organise a non-uniform day to raise money for Children in Need and celebrate “Brightness Day”, where we highlight the need to be seen outside now it gets darker earlier, and can often be dull & misty during the day. 

Both groups took part in assembly to explain to our pupils what they wanted to happen. They were asked to come to school in some bright, yellow or spotty clothing (or a combination of all three). They also informed the pupils what Children in Need & Brightness Day is.

Afterwards, both groups counted the money together. Non-uniform donations and the pennies which had been laid on Pudsey, raised a fantastic £117.52! Also, a free draw was held. Evie won a knitted Pudsey Bear, kindly donated by Miss Williams’s mum.

Every Wednesday, Suffolk Music Service provides our music lesson in Oak Class. Today they sang "Gepetto made a Puppet" with accompanying actions. After this, they practised singing "Pinocchio" which they will be performing to Acorn Class next week. The children used their hands to show high to low notes. Oak Class enjoyed playing a range of instruments to go with the song.

 

 

 

 

 

CHILDREN IN NEED - FRIDAY 18TH NOVEMBER

Thank you to everyone who donated to Children in Need in our Greenfields schools.

The total raised across the 2 schools was…. £145!

If you go down to the woods today...... On a Friday, our EYFS head up to the Helmingham woods to explore and discover. Activities include building mud slides, rope climbing, story telling and much more.

Here are our Helmingham EYFS Pudsey bears in the wood.

At Henley, children were lucky enough to be part of a community Poppy creation at the local church. Helmingham also took part in the national silence as part of a live nationwide assembly. Days like today help us to be more reflective and build links with the past as well as feel part of a community.

 

Both of the KS2 classes from Henley and Helmingham enjoyed a visit from Mr Tom (from the story of Goodnight Mister Tom) when they took part in their WW2 day at Henley last week. Mick Richardson came along from Company of Four to reprise his role for the afternoon with the children. Other activities on the day included preparing to be evacuated, staff and children dressed up in 1940's attire, making the National Loaf using rationed ingredients and wring telegrams about a mock air raid they took part in. With Mick they were able to role-play some scenes from the play and practice some puppetry with props from the show.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The team at Kirkley have shown great resilience when faced with staff sickness this term. They have pulled together to support each other and the children, we have seen staff working with different aged groups of children and being flexible with their work patterns.

4 members of staff from Kirkley Nursery completed Paediatric first aid training this term and feel confident should an emergency arise or first aid treatment be required.

We held a busy and successful parents evening in November with over ¾ of all of our parents attending. Spending time with their child’s key person and having a look around the learning environments.

This term the children have focused on several topics including Autumn, Halloween, Children in Need and now moving on to Christmas with plenty of glitter and tinsel.  We also had the opportunity in half term to meet and talk to the police and coastguard.

 

In Sycamore, the class has been raising awareness for the pupils' personal improvements through the implementation of Learning PI folders. Each week, the pupils spend some time thinking about when they may have used any characteristics throughout the week, both in and outside of school. These have been recorded onto simple sheets to keep as a record. During the day, if the children have shown a certain characteristic they are displaying then they are awarded a Learning PI sticker, with the reason written underneath it as well as house points. This has worked well so far in Sycamore class with the children being able to discuss and talk about the different characteristics and what they mean and they are beginning to integrate the characteristics into the classroom.

Seedlings class have just discovered magformers

The magnetic toy has totally changed the way we look at and talk about shapes with children considering the shapes within shapes while they build.

 

Mendham has a large number of sets of books available free to a good home. If anyone is interested please email Nicola Jones - n.jones@wvpschools.org who will share a list of titles and quantities available. People are free to take just one copy or multiple copies for whatever use they deem fit.

Scouting Opportunities at Middleton.

We have continued to provide our children at Middleton Primary School with the opportunity to receive a weekly session of a bespoke Scouting Curriculum.  We strongly believe that this gives our children an opportunity to learn in different ways, to have “everyday adventure” and to develop essential life skills. This term has been fundamental in promoting these key principles whilst allowing children to develop our drivers – ‘Curiosity’, ‘Risk taker’, ‘Collaborative’, ‘Adaptive’ and ‘Active, Respectful Citizen’, to name but a few.

The Scouting sections have been working towards their money skills badge to add to their jumper. In order to achieve this badge children need to demonstrate:

1. That they know the values of different coins and notes, then design one of their own.
2. Show how they make decisions between what they want, what they need, and what they donate or share.
3. Choose a creative way to explain the history of money and the different ways we can spend money today.

To compliment this learning the children are involved in a mini-enterprise scheme making different treats such as fudge and peppermint creams and different Christmas crafts. The children had to research the cost of equipment they would need in order to budget and sell their items for a profit. A big sale is planned for the end of this term and the children will then have the pleasure of budgeting how they will spend their money!

Written by Cameron Hopkinson

Developing our Music Curriculum at Southwold.

Following on from the Annual Conference held at Trinity Park back in September, where some of you might have heard our ‘Soapbox’ entitled ‘Developing our Music Curriculum’ we thought we would take this opportunity to update you with the progress we have made since September.

As mentioned in our ‘Soapbox’, at Southwold Primary School we are very lucky to have the experience of 2 parents, Daisy and Nathan, both professional musicians, who ensure our children receive a broad experience of music.

This term, building links with our topic of ‘Conflict’ and in particular our History unit where Upper KS2 children have been investigating the big question ‘Does slavery still impact society?’ Mars class, Year 5 and 6 have been working with Daisy once a week to develop their singing ability and building links to the curriculum by learning Negro spirituals songs sung by slaves in the Americas. We learnt about how slaves would use the words in the songs as code and as a way of communicating messages. 

In addition, Nathan has worked with all our Key Stage 2 children weekly to ensure that the children feel confident to sing some of our most well-known hymns in church.  During Autumn 1 our focus was preparing for our Harvest Celebration and this half term our Annual ‘Sticky Bun Service’ and Carol Service.  These events take place in our local church and have become important regular features in our local community developing further in all our children that sense of place and to be active, respectful citizens.   

We are also currently learning some really quite challenging songs from the Friday Afternoons Project. Friday Afternoons is a Britten Pears Arts led singing project connecting teachers and young people with contemporary composers, through creating high quality repertoire, resources and training to encourage challenging and exciting music making experiences for all.

Our Music offer really does continue to go from strength to strength.

Written by Rachel Youngman

Children arriving at Winterton school each morning now have the opportunity to choose a book from their new 'Little Library'. The Library is free to use with no checking in or out of books; simply choose a book, enjoy it then return for someone else to read.

Winterton Primary are pleased to announce the new Reading Buddies for this school year. Buddies applied to the job advert posted in school by writing why they would make effective Reading partners for the younger children. Following an interview, successful applicants received some training before being issued with their lanyards.

Using a similar process, we have appointed 4 librarians who keep the library tidy, update displays and report any problems.

We are very grateful to our young volunteers and wish them well in their new roles.

At Yox Valley, this half term we launched our new Maths Rubric! A maths rubric is a fantastic way of ensuring that all adults are aware of what is expected of them when teaching maths. It helps to ensure consistency and set a minimum requirement. As well as helping to maximise learning time and have the outcomes of the children at the heart of everything we do. What it doesn’t do is hinder adult creativity when teaching maths.

As part of the rubric, we are focusing on 3 main areas;

1.    Developing mathematical fluency

2.   Use of maths vocabulary

3.   Providing opportunities for problem solving and reasoning

The presentation of maths is very important and this is also at the heart of our rubric. Teaching the children from a young age how to present their work will help with reducing misconceptions, especially when laying out the more formalised methods.