Over the last few days in Year 2 we have been continuing to enjoy our amazing topic ‘The Scented Garden’.  We have been looking at plants, seeds, bulbs and using our senses to smell and feel different herbs.

We have been on a nature walk, planted some sweet peas which will be some wonderfully scented flowers when they grow. We are learning that we need to be patient while we wait for our seeds to germinate and grow. It has been wonderful watching the children explore all the different herbs and plants. We will be planting some sunflowers, growing our pizza garden, and learning how to look after plants as they grow in our school garden.

Here at the academy  we will be providing a broad and balanced curriculum based around the Cornerstones Curriculum, a nationally recognised approach for delivering outstanding learning opportunities for children.

What is the Cornerstones Curriculum?

The Cornerstones Curriculum is a creative and thematic approach to learning that is mapped to the 2014 primary national curriculum to ensure comprehensive coverage of national expectations. It is based on a child-centred pedagogy called The Four Cornerstones and is delivered through Imaginative Learning Projects (ILPs) and Knowledge Rich Projects (KRPs), which provide a rich menu of exciting and motivating learning activities that make creative links between all aspects of children’s learning. We believe children learn better when they are encouraged to use their imagination and apply their learning to engaging contexts. Our curriculum provides many learning challenges throughout the academic year that require children to solve problems, apply themselves creatively and express their knowledge and understanding effectively. Cornerstones also provide a rigorous skills and knowledge framework that outlines the end of year expectations in all subjects. These skills and knowledge are tied to activities and are age-related so that staff can track children’s progress and identify their individual learning needs.

These are the following ILPs/KLPs that each Year group will be covering, each one will start with a ‘memorable experience’.

Summer Term:

Nursery: Can I have a dog?

Children will begin to gain knowledge of how to care for animals

Reception: Do cows drink milk?

This topic will be an opportunity for children to learn about farm animals

Year 1: Childhood Experiences & Family Life

Children will spend the term exploring childhood experiences, and compare their own to those of children from the 1950’s.

Year 2: The Scented Garden

For this topic, we have planned some amazing activities linked to gardening, and will be creating a herb garden for everyone to enjoy.

Year 3: Rocks, Relics and Rumbles

Children will be learning about different types of rocks, volcanoes and earthquakes, and we will be looking at world maps, locating where volcanoes are around the world.

Year 4: Traders and Raiders

Year 4 will be looking at the collapse of the Roman Empire in Britain, and how the Anglo-Saxons stood up against the Vikings. Children will also be using their geographical knowledge to help them with locating famous Saxon sites around the UK.

Year 5: Sow, Grow & Farm

During the term, children will become gardeners with a passion for growing and encouraging the environment, and will learn about sustainability and the way in which all different manner of food is grown and harvested.

Year 6: Victorians & The Revolution

Pupils will explore and sample life in the Victorian times and much more!

This week, our new topic is all about the life and workings of a farm. We have been learning about all the animals that live on the farm and the important jobs that farmers have to do.

Our new story, Farmer Duck, is about a duck that does all the work for a lazy farmer! We have spent this week learning the story and making our own story maps to help us retell it. We have also been engaged in lots of farm themed enhancements including making animal masks and using our new farm shop role play.

We received a special delivery of eggs that we are hoping will hatch into adorable chicks for us to care for. The chicks will then return to the farm to do their job and lay lots of delicious eggs. 

In Maths, we have been practising subtraction. Now we have become more confident, we have been using Numicon and Numicon covers to help us write our own number sentences and check our working out. We have been working hard at number formation to demonstrate our knowledge. 

Meet Ollee

Parent Zone have developed the app ‘Meet Ollee’ who is a virtual friend that helps your child think about how they’re feeling.

Meet Ollee is aimed at 8–11-year-olds and their parents. https://parentzone.org.uk/Ollee

PlayStation

We’ve put together a few pointers to help keep your child safe whilst online. We would always recommend that you check the age ratings of any games your child is playing/wishes to play to ensure they are appropriate and also spend time with your child playing on their games console so you can monitor what they are doing and who, if anybody they are interacting with.

This will also lead to more open conversations.

PlayStation Network Rules

Playstation have created the PSN Rules for children to read specifying what players aged 7-17 need to know before going online with friends.

PlayStation: https://bit.ly/2M5jMMP

Block Players

Show your child how to block players should they need to: https://bit.ly/3aiocYu

Report Inappropriate Behaviour

Show your child how to report any inappropriate content/ conversations. https://bit.ly/3cj3RoI

Parental Controls

Make sure you set up appropriate parental controls (as well as any additional settings that are offered within any games your child is playing). Parental settings on a PS include features such as restrict communication with other players and setting spending limits.

PS4: https://bit.ly/39ptQce

PS5: https://bit.ly/2KXO3fJ

Further information https://bit.ly/2YnW6FE

Accessing Microsoft Teams Via a Games Console

Below is a link to a guide on how to access websites and Microsoft Teams via a games console, which you may find useful. Modern day consoles, such as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, come with internet browsers pre-installed. These browsers enable you to access remote learning sites and Microsoft Teams. www.sway.office.com/

To kickstart the Summer term, the students at Bloxwich Academy had a memorable experience day on Monday. Throughout the day, we took part in many activities and had a lot of fun doing so. You might have seen some of the different activities Year 1, Year 3 and Year 5 were doing in the newsletter. Below is a summary of what Year 2, Year 4 and Year 6 were doing during the day.

Year 2

What an amazing start to the beginning of the summer term!

Year 2 had the most amazing day learning to be florists, gardeners and woodland explorers! The children had a fantastic time. Everyone had the opportunity to make a flower posy using the most beautiful roses, spray carnations and chrysanthemums! Lots of the children are natural florists and gardeners.

We are just beginning our adventure and will be planting sweet peas, herbs and many other wonderful flowers and vegetables to use on our pizzas at the end of the term.  We have even designed and are planning to build a couple of amazing scarecrows to keep the wonderful plants we are growing safe. Watch this space for more exciting gardening adventures. 

Year 4

For our memorable experience day, Year 4 spent some time learning about who the Vikings were and what they are famous for. We started the day creating some fantastic Viking silhouette pictures. We used watercolour paints for our sunsets and then cut out longboats to place on top. We think they look absolutely amazing.

In the afternoon, the children were tasked with a challenge of making boats that could float on water. They had access to a range of materials: plastic, paper, wood and foam. The children were really inventive and came up with some brilliant ideas. We then tested our boats on water to see if they would float or sink.

Year 6

On the first day back after the Easter holidays, Year 6 completed an amazing Victorian day. The children roleplayed what it would like to be at school during the Victorian era and how different this would be do their normal day to day lives. They started by learning how to bow and curtesy and used this to respond to the register before completing the three Rs of Victorian teaching, reading, writing and arithmetic. In the afternoon, the boys completed some technical drawing whilst the girls completed some weaving using paper. 

The children really enjoyed the entire day, and this will lead perfectly into the rest of their topic.

Since returning, Bloxwich Academy have celebrated the love of reading in many ways.

Firstly, we have introduced a new reading scheme called ‘Accelerated Reading’. Your child brings home a reading book every day and they take a test after every book, which checks your child’s understanding of different vocabulary and their book. This has been a fantastic success. The children have loved to celebrate changing their books, they have loved choosing a new book and they have loved reading at home with their parent/guardian.

Secondly, we have celebrated ‘World Book Day’. This was a fantastic day, both online and at in the academy, for all of our Bloxwich children. Some were asked to complete a variety of reading activities: designing their own book character, writing part of a new book, creating and designing their own character and others were encouraged to dress up as their favourite book character. This was an enjoyable day, which was celebrated by all.

Finally, we are so pleased that our parents/ guardians have supported their children to develop their love of reading. You have listened to your children read, you have offered encouragement and positivity when your child has read well and you have challenged your child and checked their understanding of certain vocabulary throughout their book.

Thank you to all our pupils for their amazing reading this term.

In Nursery, we have had an ‘eggcelent’ week celebrating Easter. The children have enjoyed many Easter themed activities ranging from counting eggs and comparing numbers to going on egg hunt. The children really enjoyed the experience of hunting for eggs and using some fantastic positional language to describe the location of the clues. We have made Easter cards and Easter boxes using a range of bright colours.