We’re here…We’ve made it! I want to start this blog by congratulating each and every child. At times as a teacher, it can be hard to recognise the incremental progress our pupils make each day (a little like a parent noticing how much taller their child has gotten in a week). The wonderful thing about writing these blogs is that it forces me to stop and consider what we’ve attempted, what we’ve achieved and where success genuinely deserves to be celebrated. Thinking back to the classroom of apprehensive, wide-eyed faces staring up at me on the first day, they bare little resemblance to the confident, enthusiastic, knowledgeable pupils that sit in front of me now. You should all be immensely proud of your little ones; they have been absolutely amazing!
This week they have been truly challenged by the breadth and complexity of the work we’ve done in class, no-more so than in Maths. The class have been focussing on challenging, 4-digit subtraction with exchange problems. On Monday we were all ready to pull our hair out but after a couple of days of practice, it’s wonderful to see them all applying the processes independently and genuinely enjoying mastering a new skill.
In RE this term we’ve been learning about Judaism and particularly focussing on how Jewish people use their religion to help them lead a good life. In our last lesson in this module, the class were asked to think about how they could apply these principles to their own life by making 4 promises. Each promise linked back to a key component of Judaism and as an extra challenge, they had to consider how they could extend their promise to affect as many people as possible. There was a lot to think about and I can assure there was a lot of earnest thinking going on. The promises that the class made further demonstrated what a lovely group of children they are.
In Science we worked on developing food webs to understand the interdependency of an ecosystem (or in simple terms, how plants and animals rely on each other). Some of the vocabulary was completely alien to the class but the way they applied it was so encouraging. They also managed to produce some exceptional pieces of work.
Finally, I want to make you aware of our final couple of days of English. Your children REQUESTED a series of comprehension tasks (that was a first for my career so far) based on our history topic of Ancient Greece. We read myths involving monsters, heroes and some pretty grizzly endings whilst applying a range of comprehension skills to each text. The class loved the stories and were so motivated to completed the work, it was a genuinely a fantastic couple of lessons.
As always, I wish everyone a safe and enjoyable break (it has been more than earned by everyone!). The hard works starts again in November, but for now, RELAX!
