Home Learning

Thank you to everyone who has sent your pictures of your home learning. It looks like you are keeping busy and enjoying yourselves at the same time.  Robyn was first to email in her, followed Ellen’s fantastic pictures and tasty cookies. Also,

Amelie would like to say that she misses everyone. Keep those pictures coming in.

Tameside Library Service

Reading remains an essential part of children’s education and development. Even though children may not be able to access books at school or their local library, Tameside Library Service is offering a wealth of free content to keep both children and adults reading during this time.

BorrowBox lets you borrow, renew, reserve or return e-books and e-audiobooks round the clock, seven days a week. You can read them online or by downloading the app: www.tameside.gov.uk/libraries/ebooks

RB Digital – www.tameside.gov.uk/libraries/emagazines – is the gateway to popular magazines while PressReader – www.tameside.gov.uk/libraries/pressreader – provides national and international newspapers and comics.

If you’re looking for information or help with studying, or want to find out about something, then try our virtual reference library – www.tameside.gov.uk/libraries/onlineservices#EB

For full details of Tameside Libraries and how the service is being provided visit www.tameside.gov.uk/libraries

Chester Zoo – Virtual Zoo

At 10am tomorrow Chester Zoo will be having a virtual zoo day. Once their virtual gates open there timetable is as follows:

10:00 ???? Red pandas ????
11:00 ???? Rothschild’s giraffes ????
12:00 ???? Asian elephants ????
13:00 ???? Butterflies ????
14:00 ???? Sun bears ????
14:30 ???? Sumatran tigers ????
14:45 ???? Humboldt penguins ????
16:00 ???? Aquarium* ????

They have stated that there may be some surprises too!

Follow the the link:

Keeping in touch – pupils@stmarysdenton.com

At St. Mary’s we would love to hear about all the activities and work you have been doing at home during this unusual time.  Therefore, we have set up a dedicated email address for you to send in pictures and explanations of your work, activities and anything else you have been getting up to.  We will then add these to the school website so that our whole school community can keep in touch with each other. The email is:

pupils@stmarysdenton.com

It is now up and running. I wonder who will be send the first email…

Online Safety

ThinkUknow

Interland– Online safety games for KS2 children

Childnet  – Visit the ‘Know It All’ section for an interactive guide about online safety.

Get Safe online  – Free up-to-date security advice for parents/carers

Clever Click Safe – Internet safety advice for young people and parents/carers

BBC online safety

Safe network – Online support for children

Parent Info -Expert information to help children and young people stay safe online

NSPCC Online Safety -Helpful advice and tools you can use to help keep your child safe whenever and wherever they go online.

Safer Internet Day 2020 – Resources/information for children and parents/carers

Being creative in a range of subjects

 

Free education subscriptions

Below is an entire list of websites offering free subscriptions due to the school closure

2Simple 

AdmitHub

ABCMouse/Adventure Academy

ALBERT

Alchemie

American Chemistry Society

Backpack Sciences

Boardmaker

BookCreator App

BrainPop

 

Breakout Edu

Buncee

Century

CheckMath

CircleTime Fun

 

CiscoWebex

CK-12 Foundation

ClassDojo

Classroom Secrets

ClassHook

Classtime

CMU CS Academy

CommonLit

Conjugemos

Coursera for Campus

Curriki

Deck. Toys

DeltaMath

Discovery Ed

Dyslexia Academy 

Ecoballot

 

EdConnect

Edmodo

EdPuzzle

Education Perfect

Eduflow

 

Edulastic

Edu-Together

Elementari

Emile

Epraise

Epic!

EverFi

Explain Everything

Fiveable

Flipgrid

Fluency Matters

Freckle

Free Math

Gamilab

Genially

GoGuardian

Good2Learn

Google For Edu

Gynzy

Hapara

Hawkes Learning

HippoCampus

Ideas Roadshow

IDEA

InThinking

i-Ready

Izzit.org

Kahoot

Kami

KET’s PBS Learning Media

Khan Academy

Kids Discover Online

Kognity

LabsLand

Learning Apps

Libby App

ListenWise

Manga High

Microsoft Education

Minecraft: Education Edition

MobyMax

Mozi

MusicFirst

Mystery Science

NearPod

Newsela

Nimbus Capture

Outschool

Otus

Packback

Parlay

Pear Deck

PebbleGo By Capstone

Peergrade

PenPal

Prodigy

Pronto

Rockalingua

Salesforce

 

ScienceWerkz

Schoology

ScreenCastify

Seesaw

Seneca

Seterra Geography

Scholastic

Shmoop

Sight Reading Suite

SmartMusic

StoryBoard

Tailor-ED

TechSmith

Tes Blendspace

Twinkl

Typing Club

Vidcode

ViewSonic

Voces Digital

Vroom App

Wakelete

We Video

Zearn

Zoom

English, phonics and early reading

Below are a range of websites that can be used to support children’s reading, writing and phonics whilst home learning.

TEN:TEN prayer resources

Below are links to the Ten:Ten resources which can be used to support the prayer life at home during these difficult times.

  1. PRAYERS FOR HOME
    For the time being, we have suspended our normal Assembly and Daily Classroom Prayer resources and in their place, we have produced new resources which you can share with your families:

    • Sunday Liturgy for Families – an opportunity for families to lead their own Sunday liturgy following the order of the Mass, leading to ‘Spiritual Communion’.
    • Daily Prayers for Home – daily prayers rooted in the Sunday Gospel for families to pray together.

    We plan to make these resources available throughout the Easter holidays and continue until normal service resumes in schools and churches.

    Go to ‘Prayers for Home’

  2.  FREE EXTENDED TRIAL TO ‘LIFE TO THE FULL’
    If you are not yet a full subscriber to ‘Life to the Full’, we’d like to let you know that we are now offering a Free Extended Trial to the full site (previously this was only allowed for 7 days).

    This is an opportunity for your staff – including home-working staff – to fully review the materials and plan your Relationship and Health Education programme in readiness for statutory RHE, starting in September 2020.  This free Extended Trial be available until Friday 22 May 2020.

Free Extended Trial to “Life to the Full”

Reading resources

Follow the links below to have free access to a wide range of reading resources which can be used at home to support children’s reading whilst they are at home.

Collins is giving free access to its online learning platform, Collins Connect, for the length of the school closures. The platform is for both primary and secondary schools and is home to learning and teaching resources for a range of subjects including English, maths and science at all levels, as well as international curricula. It includes more than 300 e-books from its Big Cat reading programme, activity sheets, a times tables practice tool, revision and PDF downloads of many of its titles. Collins is adding resources daily to the site.

Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell has launched a digital hub with reading charity BookTrust. BookTrust Home Time contains free books, videos, games, recipes, competitions and quizzes. A menu of ideas including activity sheets and live draw-alongs has been created by children’s authors and illustrators.

National Literacy Trust Family Zone is a one-stop shop for families. Drawing on both expertise and incredible partnerships with teachers, authors, publishers, educational organisations and corporates.

https://literacytrust.org.uk/family-zone/

SLA is updating their list of resources.

Open University RfP ambassador’s list of online literacy resources.

Octopus is launching a Meet The Author series on Instagram. Twice a week an Octopus author—across all subjects, including cooking, health, mindfulness, fashion, design and gardening—will introduce themselves and their book, and answer five questions that they feel readers would most want to know.

BBC to offer pupils missing school daily TV tuition aimed at different key stages, including GCSE and A level.

Families and children can now easily discover a wide range of entertaining and educational shows and films, with the launch of a new children’s experience on BBC iPlayer, including older shows returning to iplayer.

 

CAFOD – What’s your goal?

Children from F2 to Year 6 took part in our Lent fundraiser – What’s your goal? Throughout the day children showed exceptional skill, determination and knowledge to perform keepie-uppies, score penalties, hit the crossbar and demonstrate their knowledge of football teams. The event was expertly organised the Year 5 children, who despite the cold and wet weather, maintained their enthusiasm throughout the day. Thanks to the children’s fantastic efforts we raised a brilliant  £122.  Thank you for your support. 

Year 2 World Book Day

Year 2 thoroughly enjoyed World Book day this week. They came to school dressed up as their favourite book characters. We had a classroom filled with Harry Potters, Where’s Wallys and many more. Their favourite part of the day was having a guest come and tell them a story – Mr Whittle! Another special part of the day was the opportunity for the whole school to silent read at the same time. Year Two were excellent at this and liked reading their favourite books. Another Great World Book day – Well done Year Two for your fantastic costumes!

World Book Day in F2

The children of F2 have had a wonderful time celebrating World Book Day, what a fantastic array of characters!  The children loved sharing their costumes and favourite stories.

We have had a range of fun activities running throughout the day.  Every class in the school had a special story time, where another teacher from our school visited our class to read one of their favourite stories.  Mrs Farrell visited our class and shared a fantastic story with us.  We also joined in with the whole school silent read in the afternoon, where we dropped everything, sat down and read some of our favourite books.  Even the teachers brought their books to school!

In our classroom the children enjoyed several fun activities.  We designed our own bookmarks, created our own character masks and wrote about our favourite characters.  We also enjoyed some drama as we acted out the characters in our current class book, Commotion in the Ocean. 

We love books at St. Mary’s!

Year 5 Bronte Museum

Year 5 enjoyed an eventful day at the Bronte Museum, Haworth. After an eventful journey the children finally arrived ready to undertake their day. However, due to the adverse weather conditions their moorland walk had to be cancelled. The children did not let this dampen their spirits though. They had the opportunity to look around the Bronte Museum and discovered the places where Charlotte and her family grew up. Also, they performed a drama workshop acting some scenes form the book Jane Eyre which they have been studying in class. Despite the weather, the children had a fantastic day and it helped to bring the novel to life for them.

Phonics Stay and Learn in F2

This week in F2 we had a phonics “stay and learn” session. The children were focusing on the ‘oa’ sound. We played some games to practise reading ‘oa’ words and even had a special visit from our friend the Wise Wizard, who we are teaching to read!

For those unable to attend, a handout has been sent home which explains how we teach phonics at St Mary’s and how you can support your child at home.

Year 2: The Lowry Art Gallery School Trip

This week Year Two  went to  The Lowry Art Gallery.  The children particularly enjoyed a special workshop where they studied the famous LS Lowry painting – Going to the Match.  They then used Lowry’s techniques when drawing buildings and produced some fantastic pieces of Art work!  The children also had an opportunity to look around the Art Gallery and expertly completed a tricky quiz.  Well done Year Two!

Shrove Tuesday – St Joseph’s Penny

As part of our charity work to support the ‘St Joseph’s Penny’ appeal, we decided to sell pancakes at break time as a way to celebrate Shrove Tuesday, before we start our journey through Lent.  St Joseph’s Penny is a very important charity that supports vulnerable children and families in our local community.  We enjoyed our pancakes especially sprinkled with sugar and lemon juice – delicious!

Year 6: Peer Mediation

Year 6 held an assembly to launch the ‘Peer Mediation’ scheme, after completing their training the Year 6’s then explained in assembly how the scheme would work.  Peer Mediation is a way of helping and supporting children to finding a resolution to any disagreements or conflict, the children are encouraged to explain their point of view and feelings about a situation that has arisen.  The ‘Peer Mediators’ will then help the children to find a resolution that is fair for all.

Investigating ice in EYFS

As part of our winter topic, the children of EYFS have been investigating ice.  In nursery the children have enjoyed playing with ice in the water trays and the small world area, we even tried some frozen paints!  We used describing words looked at how the ice was changing throughout the day.  The children of F2 have been very hands on too.  We have investigated freezing and melting, describing the changes that we have seen and thinking about why the ice is melting.  We than experimented with freezing different things such as orange juice and jelly to see if those would freeze too.

Then disaster struck: we found three Stick Men stuck inside blocks of ice!  We thought carefully about how to melt the ice to rescue them.  We knew that we needed heat, so placed one on a radiator, one under a light and one outside.  The children predicted which block of ice would melt first.  We are happy to say that all of the Stick Men were eventually freed!

Basketball

St. Mary’s entered two teams into the Tameside Schools Basketball finals on Wednesday after they both qualified from their heats last. Both teams played extremely well. They ended playing each other in the 3rd place play-off with the A narrowly winning 1-0. Well done to all involved.

Winter Topic in F1

This half term in Nursery we have been very busy learning all about Winter.  We have used our senses to look for signs of Winter outside and discuss the changes we have seen.

In Literacy we have focussed on the books ‘Say hello to the snowy animals’ and ‘Lost and Found.’  We have been working hard on developing our mark-making skills practising different patterns each week and also thinking carefully about the initial sounds in words we can hear.  The children have helped to create story maps of each story and also innovated the stories to change and add our own pages and endings.

In phonics we have focused on alliteration and played lots of fun games to get us tuned into hearing the initial sounds of words.  The children have especially loved making our own silly soup!

In Maths we have continued to focus on numbers to 5 but also been working on suing some new vocabulary to describe quantities- ‘more, ‘less’ and ‘same’.  The children have enjoyed singing new counting songs and rhymes around our polar animal theme and have also been practising counting other things that can’t be moved such as jumps and claps.

We have been thinking a lot about changes we can see outside during Winter and also exploring ice in different forms.  The children have discussed clothes to wear in Winter weather and also learnt the names of some arctic animals.  We found out that Penguins are from the South Pole and what it is like there.  We have also celebrated Chinese New year and tried some yummy Chinese food. The children enjoyed making lanterns and finding out about the Zodiac calendar and animal race.

In R.E we have been getting to know Jesus and how he showed love to other’s.  We have learnt about some of the miracles he performed and also thought about how we can show our love and be kind to others.

We have loved our new weekly dance lesson in the hall, practising some basic movements and also listening carefully to instructions. The children have mastered taking off/ putting on their shoes and socks in record time!  Their favourite activity was singing ‘sleeping bunnies’ but changing the names and movements to some of the arctic animals we have learnt about in class.

In PSHE we have been learning about how we are all special and unique and the children have been able to think about what makes them who they are.  They particularly enjoyed making their ‘I am special crowns’.

Outdoor learning has been fun with lots of discussions around the Winter weather we have experienced and also the signs of winter in the environment.  Children have been busy making winter soups in the mud kitchen, fixing things in our new tool station and dressing the dolls ready for the winter weather.

Our next topic is ‘Under the Sea’ with a special trip to the Sea life Centre planned for 10th March.  We will also be beginning our ‘Little Biker’s course in school each Friday next half term where children will learn to ride a balance bike.

What a great start to 2020 it has been in F1.  Have a lovely February half term everyone 🙂

Friction Footwear

Continuing their science topic on forces, Year 5 this week tested how much force would be needed in order to move a variety of footwear and see what resistance was created through friction caused by the soles. The children used forcemeters to pull the shoes and see how much force was needed. After their predictions, the children came up with some surprising results.

Stick Man

As part of our winter topic, we have been learning all about Stick Man by Julia Donaldson.  We retold the story using role play and small world characters.  We made maps of all of the places that Stick Man has visited and made our own speech bubbles showing things that Stick Man might say.  On our creative table, we got busy making our own Stick Man hats to use for role play outside, as well as making Stick Man characters and split pin Stick Men.  In literacy we made a Stick Man story map and made up our own actions to retell the story.  Then something terrible happened… Stick Man went missing again!   We came up with lots of describing words and made our own ‘Lost’ posters to display in our school.

We have been thinking about the author Julia Donaldson and all of her fabulous stories.  We have shared lots of them in class and gone on Julia Donaldson book hunts in our homes.  What is your favourite Julia Donaldson story?

Science – Light and Shadows

Year 3 have been learning about Light and Shadows this half term and have really enjoyed experimenting with  different light sources, reflections and shadows. Last week the children created shadow puppet shows to explain all they have learnt in this topic and had fantastic subject knowledge. 

 

 

Year 6 Talk from Sister Dolores about ‘The Mass and how it evolved’

Sister Dolores came into Year 6 to talk to the children about the Mass, looking at how it has evolved from ‘The Last Supper’ and then subsequently the Apostles meeting together after Jesus’ death, into the Eucharistic Service we celebrate today. Sister was able to give the children lots of interesting information and explain the different parts of the Mass, looking at the meanings and symbols. It gave the children chance to ask questions and gain a much better understanding of the Mass we celebrate today.

Air Resistance

During their science unit on forces Year 5 have been learning about a variety of different forces. Last week they studied the relationship between weight and mass and used forcemeters to test and this week they studied air resistance. Their challenge was to come up with the best possible parachute design so that a person would fall slowly and safely to the ground. The class had some very interesting ideas and a range of shapes of sizes but they were also very careful to ensure that it was a fair test.  By the end they had a good understanding abut which shapes and sizes made the best parachutes and why.

Children’s Mental Health Week – ‘Find Your Brave’.

The theme of this years children’s mental health week is ‘Find Your Brave’.

Bravery comes in all shapes and sizes and is different for everyone.  Bravery can be about sharing worries and asking for help, trying something new or pushing yourself outside your comfort zone.  Finding Your Brave can build your confidence, self-esteem and make you feel good about yourself.

The children have attended an assembly today about mental health and the link to the theme ‘Find Your Brave’.  Throughout the rest of this week, in all the classes the children will be continuing their learning around this highly important topic.

 

Chinese New Year in EYFS

Today we have been learning all about the Chinese New Year.  We found out about the different ways that Chinese people celebrate the New Year and listened to the story about how the different years got their animal names: this is the year of the rat!  In our class we have looked carefully at different Chinese artefacts: the children particularly liked the red envelopes which are given as gifts with money inside.  In our maths area we have been having a go at writing some Chinese numbers. We have been very creative, making dragon masks, Chinese red lanterns and Happy New Year cards.  We also enjoyed some Chinese food tasting.  The jury is still out on sweet and sour sauce, but the prawn crackers were a big hit! Happy Chinese New Year to all who are celebrating.

Our Visit to Denton Library

Today our class had a wonderful visit to Denton library.  We listened to stories and had a chance to look at their fantastic selection of picture books.  We learnt about library books and how to scan books out of the library.  The children loved the visit, especially choosing their favourite books and talking about why they liked them.  They are very keen to visit again soon!  Every child will come home with an application form to join Tameside Libraries.  If you wish for your child to join, please visit during the staffed hours (please see photos for times) and they will be signed up straight away and able to borrow lots of exciting new books.  Happy reading!

Feeding the Birds

Our current topic in F2 is winter.  We have been reading a non-fiction book about winter and also used the internet to find winter facts.  We have been looking for signs of winter in our school environment and comparing winter to the other seasons.  You can help your child in their learning by talking to them about signs of winter: perhaps you could go for a winter walk or explore your back garden.  How does it look different to the Autumn time?

One thing that we learnt from our non-fiction book is that birds struggle to find food in the winter time as the trees are bare and also the ground can freeze, making finding worms quite tricky.  We followed a set of instructions to make our very own bird feeders to help the birds in our school grounds.  We used the words ‘first’, ‘then’, ‘next’ and ‘finally’ in our instructions.  We all had fun getting very messy!  We hope that the birds will enjoy visiting our school this winter.

EYFS: Teddy bears picnic: finding number bonds of 5.

In maths we have been looking at splitting 5 in different ways using objects. The two key words that we have been using are “whole” and “part”. To begin with, we had a teddy bears’ picnic in our classroom with fruit! We put 5 pieces of fruit (the whole) into a hoop, then looked at different ways that we could split the whole into two different parts for two hungry bears e.g (five and zero, four and one, three and two…).  We have continued to explore this in our maths work using different contexts, using cubes and pictures to represent different objects.
You can continue to have fun with this at home during your daily routine: how many different ways can you split five grapes or five toothbrushes into two parts?

 

F2: The Christmas Bear

Here in F2 we have had an exciting present in our classroom from Santa himself – a special book called The Christmas Bear by Ian Whybrow. In the story, The Christmas Bear gets left behind in Santa’s workshop and has to travel many miles to catch up with him in his sleigh. The children have made maps to help the Christmas Bear to find his way. We also decided to design and and make some new vehicles for the Christmas Bear so that he would never be left behind again!
We have also been learning about the journey of a letter. We learned about what happens when we post a letter or a card and have enjoyed being postal workers in our post office role play area. We decided to take a trip to our local post box to post our vehicle designs to Ian Whybrow to pass on to the Christmas Bear.