School days – dog walks and target assembly
Ooh, it’s lovely to have got to half term. It doesn’t feel like they’ve had much time back at school after Easter, but SATs are over and it’s in wind down mode with lots of fun class and team activities to come, as well as getting them ready to move up to year 3. I can’t believe N will be in Juniors / Key Stage 2! It feels like he shouldn’t be there yet, but I think he’s quite looking forward to having the same teacher his cousin will be moving on from.
Here’s this week’s #SchoolDays
Blue Cross day
N’s year 2 and year 3 have been having talks from a Blue Cross representative about petcare. But the last day of term became Blue Cross day, complete with all the children wearing something blue (yes, probably the easiest colour for us to do). And not forgetting the dog walk just after drop off. Parents can join in, bringing along their dogs. It was a wet morning, so after having been in shorts all week it was back to trousers and a coat.
VIP
N was VIP again for his maths earlier in the week. He was so pleased to get it, although this week they’ve been doing measuring and his calculation that he is now 133cm was slightly overegged by 6cm.
School photos
This week was class and school photos. The evening before, N announced that he wasn’t having his photo taken. It’s that ‘I’m not being in group photo’ thing that he always does when we’re camping. Thankfully he obviously just got on with it when he day came round.
So far I’ve not bought any of the group photos.. This time I may buy one giving it’s his last in key stage 1. N was excited that he was stood on level 3. I suppose I’ll see what he means when we get the proofs.
Open morning and target assembly
It’s always lovely to go in and look at N’s books. His writing is really quite neat when he concentrates (apart from the random capital letters he insists on throwing in the middle of sentences). His maths continues to look good. Talking to his teacher, it really is his reading we need to get up. Improving the fluency and expression. I know he can do it, he just won’t make the effort.
He’s now agreed that he should be reading a little every day, however we’re 2 days past Friday and he hasn’t opened either of the reading books he came home with. He’s moved onto box 4 in their class’s reading boxes, but back to level 8. I wish there was some consistency. They move it around because within the levels books are different difficulties. But when he’d moved to level 9, then back to the boring books of the last few weeks which I think were lower again, and now back up but not as far. It does get confusing compared to other schools who only use one reading scheme. At least he gets good variety of books.
In target assembly he was awarded his gold target. The school mark off the objectives that they should be achieving that year in maths and literacy, and once they’ve shown they can do the objective 3 times it gets ticked off. Then achieving a certain number of objectives means they get different level of certificates through the year. I was pleased to see he’s achieving his in line with the other children in the class too. It would be interesting to see what his split of achievements is between maths and english.
Swimming improvements
Given it took N 6 years of lessons before he could swim without a float, I’ve been so impressed how fast he’s progressed in the last year. It has helped that he swims twice a week with school and then normal lessons.
This week in his Saturday lessons he was doing surface diving, and then swimming breaststroke with arms and legs. He’s not so keen on butterfly though – legs are hard enough but he explained in their school leson they were doing the correct legs with breaststroke arms. That would totally screw up my swimming brain!
So we’re into half term, and chance for a breather apart from one maths worksheet and 2 reading books. So far, a lot of farming has been going on. It’s shearing time, and he’s so far sheared 3 sheep himself.
What are your plans for half term?