TEAM – Together everyone achieves more!
This has been our focus for the half term. Our “Curriculum for Life” plans cover several important aspects of social and emotional development, supporting children in their understanding of themselves, their sense of belonging and working together both in their immediate social groups and in the wider community. We have talked about changes that we experience and the feelings these times generate, sometimes these are positive feelings but sometimes we can experience anxiety, sadness, even fear when we are facing different times of change. We can practise using different strategies to help us manage these more uncomfortable feelings and we have spent some time this term exploring things we can do or ways in which we can work to transform negative feelings into something better or more bearable. We’ve explored what we mean by teamwork and how we all can make positive contributions to the groups we’re in, both at home and school. We are able to identify ways in which we can support each other, we understand our responsibilities in lending a helping hand to others, and the importance of celebrating each other’s successes and achievements. We are working on developing emotional intelligence. Every Friday we fill in “How you’re feeling Friday” Children have an opportunity to reflect on their week and give their week a rating from 1 – 10, 10 being the best week, nothing to worry about. I invite children to then add a note on the back if they choose to, if there’s something they’d like us to know. We start every morning evaluating how we’re feeling and continue checking in throughout the day. Every child has made their own “strategies” card which reminds them of things they can try to manage feelings. Please ask your child about their feelings card.
Class 3 have worked on reading comprehension skills this week. I love hearing children read. The teaching of English is my passion and it never ceases to delight me when I see how children progress in their reading and writing skills. Reading comprehension exercises are an integral part of school life but it can be something that some children find more challenging. It’s not surprising as it involves so many higher-level skills! Children are expected to read a text with understanding, then read and understand a series of questions, find the answers in the text or apply their knowledge to answer, then write their answers, thinking about word order, word choices, spelling, handwriting and so on! That’s quite hard! So, we’ve had a week focussing on strategies to help with this. I always like children to read through twice; once to work out what the words are and the second time, hopefully more fluently after the initial read, to understand what is being said. I encourage children to do the same with the questions; what exactly are we being asked to answer? Where was this information in the text? Sometimes children get multiple choice questions, sometimes they are asked to find certain words or phrases, all of these things require different skills and we can’t practise them enough and we’ll keep on practising together throughout the year.
We have completed the final part of our unit on settlements by suggesting ways in which we might improve our town. We’ve recapped what we’ve learned so far about the development of Willington, how our town looks and the facilities we have today. We’ve talked about how places always change over time and why. Willington today is very different to how it was when I was a child! It will be as different again in 50 years time when these children are older and time ticks on. I am very impressed with the suggestions we’ve had for Willington. I hope we see some them come to fruition and our town I hope you like the work we’ve shared.
And, just like that, we’ve completed our first half term. Everyone has made a wonderful start to year 3, I’m so proud of this whole group. Great work, my chicks x
