School days – VIP, forest school and recorders

There’s been lots going on this last week with school, most of it good. It’s been a fairly successful week for N, and I think he’s enjoyed being back at school after Easter.  And it’s nice to see it’s been warm enough for him to be in shorts.  Needless to say, when I wanted to buy new shorts for him, I struggled to find the size we needed in M&S. Thankfully, although the huge retail park store didn’t have any, the small town store did. I can always rely on that one.

This is this last full week of Key Stage 1. Scary how fast school life goes.  Here’s this week’s school days.

Forest School

3 of the boys from N’s class were chosen to go to another school for a morning of forest school. They do a few weeks of it in their class and N loved his experience back in the autumn term, so he was excited to be one of those to go. Of course it was on one of the hottest days of the year, and he’d had to have long trousers and long sleeved t-shirt. Plus he wore his wellies. He didn’t seem to worried, but enjoyed building dens at the other school’s forest area they went to.

After school tennis

It seemed that there were fewer children than they’d wanted for after school tennis. N’s in his last term – they only do tennis up to year 2 for after school club because they hit it too hard for the school hall where they play most of the year.  Because there’s fewer children, they’ve started working them properly towards the similar levels they do in N’s out of school tennis lessons. Hopefully we’ll see more consistent improvement, because twice a week should be seeing reasonal improvement and I’m not convinced at the moment.

His out of school tennis this week was irritating – firstly they played indoors despite the weather being proper tennis weather. And then they seemed to combine the younger group with N’s to have a mammoth group which meant less tennis was played. Hopefully it was a one off otherwise I’ll be asking questions because the same happened last year when N was stuck with the younger group rather than the older one.  Before Easter, his group seemed to be playing quite well, and having more smaller group work.

SATs help and maths boost

I’ve mentioned before how N just will not read comprehensions, or anything that isn’t a school reading book.  The teacher is worried that because he won’t read the questions properly, and will just guess the answers to comprehension that he’ll not get the scores that he should be getting.  I know he can do reading comprehension, because he’ll read worksheets at home and then find the answers when he gets set them as homework. He just won’t read them in test situations or when there’s not someone sitting beside him checking what he’s doing.

So I had to go in this week and read over a request for help for him for the SATs tests this term. I think it’s just for English, and requesting that he has someone sit next to him, in the hope he’ll actually read if there’s someone to remind him to.  It’s really frustrating because I know he can read, and answer most questions correctly, if only he would read the text.

They’ve also been doing english boosts and maths boost for some children. N has been doing a maths one. His maths is good, but again, he doesn’t read the questions properly so hopefully these boosts will get him concentrating on the questions before going straight for one answer (where sometimes there are 2 requested).

Reading levels

N’s been doing lots of reading in class too, to the teacher, TA and also in their guided class reading. It’s really showed because he’s gone up to Stage 9/Gold level. Yay, final key stage 1 level and hopefully some more interesting books.

VIP and Learner of the week

N was chuffed to come home with a VIP sticker one day, for english or fractions, he wasn’t sure.  Then on Friday he came home with Learner of the Week for his fractions. I’m really pleased he got awarded it because they’ve got a massive year group compared with most of the others, so his year have to work so much harder to get awarded it. His cousin was awarded it for his own year group – the 2 of them quite often win VIP or weekly awards at the same time which is nice.

Recorder progress

N hasn’t practised any recorder properly since before Easter. But he came home this week with 2 littled beads tied round his recorder. A beginner’s one for starting to play which they all have, and a second one for being able to play Hot Cross Buns off by heart.  I’d say it still needs a bit of practice but he’s happy and he’s enjoying learning.

How’s school been going for your children?  And for those of you whose children start school this year, hope the school allocations went your way.