I abandoned my blog last week, so apologies there! Here I am again, with a few messages of congratulations…firstly, to all of the children in year six who worked so hard in their SATs last week and to Mr Blackburn and his team for all of the hard work they have put in, preparing the children for this, in their general education and in preparing them for life at high school – well done all.

Well done too, to all of the children in year 2 (and Miss Ellison and Miss Hargreaves too!) for all of the hard work going on in the SATs that they are doing this week. It is lovely to see so many smiley faces on the children and staff, who all know that they have put and are putting their best efforts in.

I have been doing learning styles questionnaires with all of the children in Early Years, new arrivals and (last week), with the year four children. We all learn differently and it is important that we know what kind of learners we are and for us teachers, to know how our class learn best. The questionnaire we use, just looks at three main learning styles: Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic. These learning styles refer to our preferred learning style and roughly mean the following:

  • Visual learners: May prefer using pictures, images and spatial understanding. Mind mapping might be a good technique for you to develop to help you to revise and learn about things.
  • Auditory learners: May prefer using sound and music. They might like to discuss information they are unclear about in order to ‘make sense’ of it. They may also find that putting their times tables to the tune of a favourite song, helps them to learn how to recall them.
  • Kinaesthetic learners: May prefer using your body, hands and sense of touch to help your learning; actually having a go at an activity (rather than looking in a book or talking about it) is more useful for you.

Some people are very clearly one type of learner, whilst others are a mixture of different learning styles. A good website with further information of learning styles (that looks at seven different kinds) can be found at:

This also contains a link to a learning styles test you can do online.

 

Finally, I have been working with Indy, Bobbi-Jack, Oscar and Eliza on their phonics and was very proud of how hard they worked with the sound buttons and blending words. Well done all of you and it was lovely to see how much you have all come on in your phonics since I last worked with you. Well done Mrs Keating and Mrs Gibson there too!

Finally, the challenge this week is phonics-related and is a game on the BBC website. Are you up to the challenge of trying the ‘really hard’ level?

 Have a safe and fun half term and enjoy!