Working on our Heat Maps

Crew Hamill were inspired by last week’s TTRS battle for NSPCC in which they came first in the school and earned themselves some scooter reward time. Since then, we’ve worked hard to improve our times tables and have tried our best to improve our heat maps. We’re excited to see if we can use our new times table knowledge to beat Mrs Ibbotson in today’s times table battle!

Silent Line up

This morning in Crew we were set a challenge to line up with a predetermined characteristic but we weren’t allowed to speak. We had to order ourselves in height, shoe size and hair length. We worked in 2 groups which worked very differently. One group had 2 children who took a lead and directed the rest of the children with hand signals or guiding them to where they needed to be. The other group figured it out between them and didn’t have anyone that appeared to be leading the rest of them, however, both groups were successful.

Reading Prosody

In reading yesterday, we focused on our reading fluency and reading with expression. Miss Shields did an echo read to model how to read with expression then the children worked in small groups to work on a small section together. They had some time to practice before performing to the rest of the class. I was very impressed with how quickly they picked it up.

Sharing our Stories: 14/02/2025

Beautiful Work This Week

Here’s a selection of beautiful work from across the XP Trust from this week. To read about other stories from across the XP Trust, visit xptrust.org.

Top of the Blogs

Play is the work of childhood @ Norton Infants

Class 12: working on conjuctions @ Green Top

Great Maths Learning @ Plover

Bob Marley is 80 @ Carcroft School

Celebrating Rosa Parks @ Norton Juniors

Weekly update for families @ XP Gateshead

A star in the making in Crew Pasteur @ XP

What a treat! @ XP East

Share your stories with us!

We now have a new dedicated news email so that you can send your stories, updates or ideas about potential news articles directly to us in Comms.

It might be something you or your students have achieved, a charity you’re supporting or anything at all that deserves a wider audience.

Write to us at [email protected] –  we want to hear about it, write about it and celebrate it!

RE – What is a soul and does everyone have one?

This was a lovely session as it was great to hear the children discussing their views on a soul and what they think it is responsible for. One child was a little shy about sharing how they believe God is responsible for our soul but we encouraged them to be proud of their beliefs. Children then drew what they thought a soul looked like which was really interesting.

Subordinate Conjunctions

In writing on Friday, we learned about subordinate conjunctions and how they add further information to the main clause. We learned I SAW A WABUB to help us remember the subordinate conjunctions. Then we worked in pairs to experiment with the position of the subordinate clause. We realised that the subordinate clause can either be at the start or end of the sentence. However, if it is at the start of the sentence, we must remember to use a comma to separate the main clause and the subordinate clause.

Bob Marley is 80!

On Friday, we celebrated the birthday of Bob Marley by singing a melody of his songs. What a wonderful way to start the day. It was lovely to see the children singing along and some of them starting to move with the music.