Headteacher Weekly blog week beginning 23rd January
Date: 28th Jan 2017 @ 4:14pm
This week I have enjoyed teaching various booster sessions within Year 6. My maths booster group have been an absolute joy and I am most impressed with how confident they are with their formal methods. We worked hard on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions and with the use of practical apparatus the children cracked it.
One thing I am very excited about is the work we are doing as a school on improving handwriting. Mrs Wakefield organised whole school training on a new handwriting policy and we are busy implementing it across the whole school. The Year 1 and Year 2 classes are so proud of what they have done, they have displayed it in the corridor. I went into Year 5 and I was blown away with Connor's and Travis' handwriting - it puts mine to shame! We aim to share what we are doing with parents so that similar messages can be given at home and we will also put the information on the website under the literacy tab.
In maths, we have done a lot of work as a staff on the new "mastery" curriculum. We are now following new medium term planning where we don't "jump" to new objectives. Teachers now focus on a strand and teach it until secured and then pupils are expected to apply it to reasoning problems. Teachers also use the CPA approach. New methods are introduced with apparatus (Concrete materials) and then Pictorially. We then move to an Abstract approach which means solving sums independently. I saw fantastic examples of this in Year 2 when they were learning about multiplication. They were using cheerios to make arrays and then painting dots to pictorially show multiplication. Harry looked to have cracked it as he solved some hard reasoning problems.
Now the consultation period for our possible change in intake is over I have had preliminary meetings with architects and contractors on the future of our school buiding. Initial meetings have been very positive and once we have the outcomes of the consultation process we will share our plans with the whole community in school. The date will be on the website and the community notice board.
It was great to see the parents in Reception on Friday who came in to celebrate the Chinese New Year. The Early Years children had a wonderful time welcoming in the Year of the Rooster.
On Friday, I was pleased to launch our Time Tables Challenge in support oF Claire House. Being able to recall times tables quickly is hugely important in the new curriclum. I really hope that the children work really hard to learn their tables so that they improve on their tables knowledge and can then raise as much money as they can for such a worthy charity.