In the Spring term, the children at Barnby & North Cove have been exploring some core aspects of philosophy with me during assemblies. First, we considered the reliability of different forms of inference - deductive inferences which are logically sound; inductive inferences which rely on past experience; and abductive inferences which rely on incomplete evidence. Sherlock Holmes is said to have deduced the solutions to mysteries but he didn't use deduction at all, he used abductive inference. 

Then we turned our thoughts towards knowledge - what can we say for certain we know and, more fundamentally, what is knowledge? Descartes's position on doubt allowed for interesting discussions - he said that the only thing he could not doubt is that when he was thinking, he existed at that time as a thing which could think! Plato's tripartite theory of knowledge as justified true belief gave us a bit more comfort but we're not sure it is an adequate definition...

Throughout these sessions, the children have shown themselves to be curious, independent thinkers and have been ready to question what they think they know!

Willow Class have certainly been showing their creative side recently. During our parent share session they were presented with an electrical circuit challenge. A series of circuits needed their problem solving skills to work out which would work and which were faulty. By building links with their previous learning they were able to analyse the circuits and recognise a break in the circuit or a missing component. They then used they knowledge and a little imagination to picture how the circuit should be then adapt to make it work properly.

It was lovely to see the children share their curiosity and the parents were equally engaged in the challenge.

This hands on session provided the children with an excellent opportunity to show their creative development. They handled the challenges well and adapted to each problem that arose as they attempted to solve the problem. Everyone was fully engaged in purposeful talk, questioning, and experimentation.

The children also taught their parents a few things too.

A wonderful and successful day and one we would love to repeat in the future.

Oak Class

Have you ever wondered how many potatoes it takes to power a bulb? Oak Class has the answer so you have no need to wonder any more. For our design technology unit of work we are exploring ways that electricity can help us. During our recent learn with your child session parents joined us to create circuits using potatoes as the battery. After much trial and error we discovered it takes 8 potatoes to power an LED bulb.

Creativity has been a prominent theme this term across Glebeland Primary.

Woodpecker class have been adaptive, independent thinkers in History.

Before starting our unit of work on famous inventors, we learnt about what an inventor does by inventing our own back scratchers. We came up with our designs independently and everyone had a completely different approach.

We refined our original idea until our back scratchers worked effectively and then we tested them out on our friends.

Red Kite class have been curious learners over the last few weeks. During a recent Science lesson, children were asked to use cells, wires and bulbs/switches to create electrical circuits. One pupil asked the question 'How can we make the bulb brighter?'

The group then investigated what would happen if more batteries were added to the circuit. A pupil then asked 'Would a buzzer get louder?'.

We recently had parents into school to share a reading session. Children and parents were engaged in purposeful tasks that would develop their understanding of a chapter of the text that they are reading. It was great to see the focus and collaboration from all pupils.

Heron class have created some wonderful pieces that link with our learning. We learned about different habitats in Science, including rainforests, deserts, oceans and Polar Regions. We visited Thrigby Hall to identify animals, and learn about how they use their habitats to survive! We encountered Red Pandas living in the trees, Meerkats living in sandy conditions and alligators living in the humid swamp house. We also met a critically endangered Sumatran tiger named Kubu - and identified the need for space and stimulating activities for Kubu to survive.

We used our knowledge to create a real life habitat replica. Some pupils used resources from outside e.g. grass and sticks to bring their habitat to life. Others printed animals to enhance their habitats and show where certain creatures would live. 

Barracuda Class from Henley and Eagles Class from Helmingham collaborated to take part in a Design and Technology project day. They worked in groups to design and create a model vehicle that could move using an electric-powered motor. They took on different roles, including engineers, suppliers and builders and were responsible for their own jobs within their group. They had to be adaptive when things didn't go as planned and reflect on their final products. They all had a lot of fun and worked really well with their peers from different schools. 

 

At Helmingham Primary School, in the Key Stage 2 class, Eagles, they have been working together to come up with new and innovative ways to use the outdoors to support their learning. They have spent time as teachers and children, brainstorming ways in which the outdoors lends itself beautifully to their learning opportunities and curriculum. They have been looking closely at their learning objectives, learning characteristics and the curriculum threads and they are always coming up with creative new ways to use the outdoor space at school. The children cleverly use the space and natural resources to support concepts in Maths and to spark interests in English - influencing reading and writing opportunities. They've been demonstrating their creativity and taking it to new heights!

KS1 children at Henley have been looking at hot and cold colours in their art work as part of their opposites work this term. They discussed how the different colours made them feel and then used them to create hot and cold pictures. This is the start of their topic so it will be interesting to see how creatively they use opposites in their art work.

At Kirkley nursery we love to get creative. 

The youngest children at the Nursery (Hedgehogs room) are currently exploring the core text “that’s not my owl,” they have created their own colourful owls using their fine motor skills to glue multi-coloured feathers on to the owl and staff have introduced vocabulary such as fluffy.

The Hedgehogs also worked together as a team, following visual and verbal instructions to make their own playdough. They followed the process and identified each ingredient that was needed from the photos. They each took turns to mix the playdough together and showed great delight at the end result.  Sparkly blue playdough to play with.

The older children have been focusing on how to keep our teeth healthy. We have been using our own large set of teeth to practice brushing them before we had a visit from Marijka the dental nurse.  During Marijka’s visit the children sat beautifully listening to her talk about all the things we can do to keep our teeth clean and healthy.  They confidently identified which food/drinks are good for you and your teeth and food/drinks that we should avoid.  The children were excited to talk about how and when they brush their teeth at home. All children then had the opportunity to brush Barry the dinosaur’s teeth. (Barry was a cheeky dinosaur who wanted to bite the toothbrush).  We also learnt a new song to help us remember to brush our teeth.

     

This year the children at Middleton Primary School are developing their creativity in numerous ways. Their curiosity of learning is enhancing their musical creativity and during this year they are showcasing their talents in many ways.

During the Autumn Term, children in Spruce Class benefited hugely from their participation in The Big Sing at the nearby, world famous concert hall at Snape Maltings. The rehearsals for the event included an in school workshop led by a professional musician. This experience developed the children’s breath work techniques and enhanced their understanding of vocal rhythm and pitch.

Following their successful participation singing at The Big Sing, Spruce Class showcased their singing talents further at the local church for their annual carol service.

Ash Class, comprising of Reception, Year 1 and Year 2, have also explored their musical creativity this year.  Alongside, their exploration area outside where there has been development of rhythmic patterns and tunes heard from a range of percussion instruments the children also performed their own nativity play.  ‘The Ordinary Ox’ was a wonderful display of the children’s growing awareness of rhythm and musicality. 

Looking ahead there are plenty of further opportunities for musical enhancement including learning the links between Disney and classical music to enhance emotions and learning to read musical notation in order to play the recorder.  We are also looking forward to a Summer production.

Year 5 and 6 Victorian Day

As part of our whole school Spring theme of Inventions, our Year 5 and 6 classes have been answering the big history question of “What was the Victorian’s greatest legacy?”

To launch the learning in an imaginative and creative way, which truly fuelled the curiosity of the children, Year 5 and 6 pupils and staff took part in a fully immersive Victorian Day in school.

The day was split into two parts enabling the pupils to experience both life in a Victorian school and a Victorian workhouse. All pupils were allowed to choose their own Victorian name for the day and to come to school in Victorian clothing; further developing their creativity and imagination.

Teachers took on the role of School Masters and used traditional punishment methods such as the dunce’s hat and the cane (no children were harmed!) to manage behaviour. Every child had to pay 1p for their education on the day. Pupils also regularly had to take part in finger nail inspections to check that they were keeping their hands clean throughout the day. The following poem was chanted during the day to keep up the realism:

“Good, better, best,

Never let it rest,

Til your good is better,

And your better, best.”

Everything planned for the day was purposeful in that it enabled the pupils to fully engross themselves into what life was like for a Victorian child – further building links for their history and English learning this term.

The following week pupils were treated to a further workshop led by Grace Wellfare from TATA (The Actors Training Academy. Using drama pupils had to collaborate to create freeze frames and tableaux’s looking at how life differed for workers and owners of Victorian factories – this allowed pupils to continue to build and refine their links across the curriculum.

Jenson Brett said “It was a fun experience for Year 5 and 6 because we had the chance to feel what it was like during the Victorian era. The Victorian teachers were much more strict than they are now, I am glad to be back at normal school now!”

William Woods said “The Victorian day made me realise how life in that time could be very boring – writing out our times tables and some of the workhouse activities were exhausting and boring.” William also said that he regretted taking a penny in to pay for his education because he did not think it was good value!

All of the children agreed they would not miss Victorian schooling and were glad to be back in modern day schools.

We are looking forward very much to our new assembly rota starting next half term;  We are having three assemblies each week, with a mix of ages and abilities to encourage learning about other pupils and their skills.  Each assembly will celebrate our achievements and will have a collective worship focus around topical events, and we’ll join together to sing, sign and celebrate!

 The signing choir is proving really popular and it is lovely to see such a wide range of ages and abilities attending – it’s always really good fun and the signing (and singing) is fantastic!

 All classes continue to enjoy making music, experiencing sensory stimulation, dancing and singing, and it’s always wonderful to see our pupils developing their listening, anticipating, sharing and performing skills.

Written by David Bloomfield: Imagination & Creativity Lead

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EYFS

Lions class have been busy exploring paint to make some winter pictures. We sprinkled rock salt on to make them look icy.

Elephants class enjoyed making edible snowmen in cooking. They were tasty to eat!

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In Lower School  classes  have really enjoyed going to and spending time in the library exploring all of the books.  We have been choosing favourite stories to sit and listen to with adults and peers.  Children  engaged well in the sensory story for this term - Farmyard Hullabaloo, and liked finding and matching the farmyard animals.

In Upper School we have been exploring letters and sound, we have been looking and recognising the letter for our names, as well as the names of our peers in class.

We have also been exploring the Interactive White Board and all the additional programmes available.

 

In the Nurture Pathway we have been exploring the sounds we can make with different musical instruments. We have been trying to play along with music, identifying rhythms and tempo that match the music we are playing along with.

At Southwold we have introduced a range of new after school clubs to engage our children in different activities in order to develop their creative skills.

Dance club is energetic and fun, consisting of unique moves, fancy foot work, big leaps and quick turns. It helps increase flexibility and strength as well as creativity. We love to end our dance club with some relaxing yoga. 

Community club is an opportunity to support our local community. We have talked about the local area and what we know about Southwold. The children were keen to help the school community by litter picking and we took this out in to the local area too in a very purposeful manner.  We visited the library and shared some books about the environment and why it’s important not to litter but recycle.

 A wonderful time is being had at cooking club. Lots of new skills are being learnt with delicious results at the end!  This club really is developing independent thinking skills whilst engaging in the practical activities.

Across this half term, a number of our learners have attended the North Suffolk Sports Partnership events held at The Ashley School and Waterlane Leisure Centre. They have competed in a range of games such as Boccia, Long Jump, Curling and Cricket, against schools from Lowestoft and Beccles.

Post 16 have been working hard to build links with the local community and exploring career opportunities. Over the last few weeks, they have visited the Carlton Marshes and spent time with Charlotte who gave them lots of information about looking after the wildlife and about what staff do there. They have also carried out work experience in Asda – making pizzas and pancakes, bagging groceries, click and collect and working on checkouts.

    

    

We are very excited to announce that we have built links with our local church, where the learners will be engaging in ‘Explore Easter’ and visiting the church in coming months. Reverend Helen is looking forward to meeting all the learners!

Starfish Class

The artist that the Starfish Class are learning about this half term is Claude Monet. We are particularly focusing on his Water Lily collection. We worked on our own water lily artwork over two weeks, using sponge and brush techniques to create effect.

We looked closely at a Monet quote describing how he wanted his water lilies to be displayed. Taking inspiration from this we displayed our artwork to create a space, in the words of Monet, to “Provide a refuge of peaceful meditation in the middle of a flowering aquarium.”

Seal Class

Seal class has been learning about explorers in history and have thoroughly enjoyed learning about expeditions to the north and south pole.

In science, we have been looking at magnets. We have carried out scientific observations and investigations and recorded our findings. As a class, seal's observed the attracting and repelling of poles and which materials are magnetic.

Seal class thoroughly enjoys books and reading and have loved finding books about Matthew Henson and some of the other explorers we have been learning about in history.

Shark Class

Shark class has been studying the still life art of post-impressionist artist Paul Cezanne.

We started by developing our skills in composition, overlap and hierarchy by designing our own still life scenes and using coloured paper to identify the position of each part. Once we were happy with the positioning of our individual parts, and we were sure that our work demonstrated overlap and hierarchy we stuck our compositions down.

We have also started to use oil pastels to demonstrate shadow and tone using an arrangement of fruits, gourds and pumpkins.

Some Sharks have even started to draw our class pet - Shaun - in preparation for creating our final arrangements of objects in the style of Cezanne's painting "Still Life with Skull".

The Waveney Valley Partnership of Schools have been extremely Purposeful in their learning recently. This is one of the three overarching features of our School Culture which is now fully embedded across both schools in the hub.

Our Year 5 and 6 pupils have been studying Fractions recently and held ‘races’ as they rolled dice to find different numerators and denominators. They all chose their animals and participated enthusiastically.

Class Teachers have been very creative in delivering experience days to the pupils to engage them fully in their learning. Years 3 and 4 at Mendham dressed as Gladiators as they thought about what life would be like as an Ancient Roman. Whereas at St Edmunds pupils had the opportunity to design and make items for the ‘The Lost Thing’ to eat! This really brought their learning to life and presented interactive experiences - they really enjoyed their work!

 

As the children move through the school pupils are always encouraged to be curious - whether that is in making different patterns with cubes in Early Years or working in the dark to understand the importance of light to our daily lives.

We are always looking for ways to develop our experiences for our pupils and this term Mendham will be participating in an ‘Invention Day’ where they will work in teams to design products that will make our lives easier. These will be judged and form part of Mendham Church Community Fair to coincide with a visit from the Bishop.

Everyone at St Edmunds will be actively involved in raising money for Little Lifts who support people with Breast Cancer. They will be taking part in a ‘Keep Fit’ workout with all pupils and staff joining in!

Reading for pleasure is an incredibly important part of children’s development towards becoming confident, engaged readers, and creative individuals.   Across the Yox Valley Partnership, we have introduced a number of new exciting initiatives to help our children grow as enthusiastic readers.

We are promoting communities of readers through shared class texts. Pop into any classroom after lunch and you will see children engaged with a class story carefully curated as part of our reading spine to pique the children’s interest and provide the opportunity for all learners to engage with rich vocabulary. By sharing stories together, children develop ‘book talk’ where they can share their discoveries and preferences with peers and make comparisons with other familiar stories.

Additionally, teachers have spent time developing classroom book corners. These inviting spaces are stocked with a range of engaging fiction and non-fiction texts and are used daily by the children as a comfy space to pause and read during the day.

We have also changed our reading diaries across Key Stage 2 so pupils, parents and teachers can more easily record and review home reading. Each time Key Stage 2 children finish their chapter book they complete a book review. This is an important part of children recognising their choices and developing their own personal preferences as readers. They evaluate whether they enjoyed the book, liked the genre and found the author’s style engaging. Once two book reviews are completed, a certificate is awarded by our Year 6 Reading Ambassadors during Celebration assembly. There are six certificates to be collected by pupils throughout the school year.

Our aim is for all children to read outside school for at least 20 minutes each day and we have introduced DEAR (drop everything and read) afternoons to reward pupils’ commitment to home reading. Renowned reading expert Professor Teresa Cremin explains reading for pleasure as ‘reading that children do for themselves at their own pace, with whom they choose and in their own way’. Silver Birch Class was first to enjoy a DEAR afternoon and had a fantastic time wearing pyjamas, setting up cosy dens, reading their favourite books and sharing their reading with friends!