Special Events 2022-23

During Summer 1 Ellise Owen visited all the classes in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. The focus of the wellbeing sessions was Teamwork incorporating ‘Connecting’, which is one of the 5 ways to wellbeing.

Ellise held an assembly for all of the children to discuss the theme of connecting. She also held workshops for each class, which involved them taking part in different games to practise working as a team.

This included working on listening skills, patience, being kind to and communicating well verbally with others. Some of the games included passing objects down the line, moving a balloon with a partner from one end of the hall to the other, moving sensibly around each other when changing places in a circle and passing an imaginary bubble from one person to the next gently.

The children all worked well together as a team and enjoyed the different activities.

Children at Toftwood were treated to a lesson in Rock n Roll this week when we were visited by Jeff Rich, best known as the drummer from the legendary group Status Quo.

Jeff talked about how he learned to play the drums and the dedication and practice required over many years to hone the skills needed. He invited pupils to try their hand on a range of drums and cymbals as he explained the evolution of drumming from a hollow log slit drum, all the way to the full, professional drum kit that he would use for concerts and recording.

After introducing all the components of the drum kit, from kick drum and high-hat to snare and toms, the ex-Quo drummer dazzled us with an improvised solo. All children (and teachers) were then given percussion instruments and invited to join in a massive jam session!

Mr Hardy was particularly thrilled when Jeff autographed a chord sheet for ‘Rocking all Over the World’ that the Toftwood Ukulele Group played after school that day! (For some reason the veteran Rock n Roller seemed to find Status Quo on the ukulele an amusing idea!)

“It was really loud and really funny!” – Isla-Rose

“When he played, it was amazing and impressive.” – Olivia

“I liked it because we got to use all of the instruments.” – Henri

“He showed us how he improved by practising for hours and hours.” – Imogen

On Wednesday 15^th March, the children in Year 1 and Year 2 took part in a British Sign Language lesson. The children learnt different signs for a range of words including “Good Morning”, names for members of their families, the colour names and names of animals or pets.

The children all really enjoyed learning the different signs and were able to use the “Good afternoon” to answer the register after lunch!

Thursday 2^nd March was World Book Day. At the junior school we celebrated by enjoying all things “book related”.

Many of the children came in some amazing costumes, which we looked at in assembly. All the teachers shared their favourite books from their childhood; there was a wide variety from Narnia to picture books by Julia Donaldson.

Later in the morning, we were very fortunate to enjoy a live webinar with the children’s author Michael Morpurgo. He talked about what inspired him to become a writer and read some material we hadn’t heard before.

All the children received their Book Day £1 voucher to spend on a book of their choice from the special World Book Day collection.

World Book Day in Year 3, Spring 2, 2023

This year, we asked the children to dress up as a character from their favourite storybook and to bring their book in.

We enjoyed the assembly where we listened to Mrs Hughes introduce World Book Day and saw all the teachers dressed up in their world book day costumes which was very funny. All the teachers had chosen very different costumes!

In class, we used one of our reading techniques to ‘skim’ the text for interesting words as we were making our very own vocabulary dozen for our books.  We loved ‘skimming’ as it is a new technique we have been taught and we thought it was lots of fun. 

We were creating a story hat and were putting the vocab on bands across our heads.  Once we had chosen our 12 words, we drew the main characters from our books and placed these on our hats. 

Some of us, then chose four words from the vocab dozen to intersperse between our characters.

We had a great time. We really enjoyed bringing our books to life and sharing them with our friends.

Reception

The children have had lots of fun dressing up for World Book Day and sharing their favourite stories. They played “Name that story,” which was a game involving guessing the traditional tale, when given some clues. The children also focussed on The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson, Owl Babies by Martin Waddle and Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell. They looked at photographs of the authors and answered questions linked to these stories.

Year 1

In year 1, the children focused on a series of stories by Tom Fletcher from, There’s an Alien in your Book and There’s a Unicorn in your book to There’s a Witch in your Book and There’s a Superhero in your Book.

The children planned and wrote their own book using the same template, including using imperative verbs and making the book interactive for the audience! They designed their own front covers and look forward to taking their books home to share with their families.

 

Year 2

In Year 2, the children looked at the book ‘Inside The Villains.’ The children thought of synonyms for ‘big’ and ‘bad’ to come up with new ways to describe the ‘big, bad wolf.’ The children then thought about designing their own villain, and wrote a character profile to include their appearance, enemies, strengths, weaknesses and favourite food! The children used their DT skills by creating their villain with moving parts. It was great to see the children thinking of imaginative characters and ways to make different parts of their character move. We made our own class book of villains so the children can enjoy looking at each others’ villains.