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.

Nursery staff would like to say a big well done to all Nursery children this week. It is fantastic to see children walking into Nursery and waving goodbye to their grown-up with such confidence. We have missed you all!

In the Nursery setting, we have been focusing on settling back in and getting into a good routine. We have been really impressed with the work children have produced at home. It is evident that many children have been practising writing their name. Keep up the good work everyone. 

In class this week, we have enjoyed exploring our environment and listened to a range of stories including: ‘The Very Ugly Duckling’ and ‘The Enormous Turnip.’ The children are really enjoying accessing our Farm Shop role play area. We will be planting some seeds soon and making observations on what plants need to grow. Watch this space… 

We have really enjoyed welcoming all the children back to reception. It is wonderful to see how they have become much more confident learners whilst working from home. All the children have settled back into the classroom setting with ease and we are so proud of them all.  

During the first week back at school, we have focused on well-being activities and have been allowing the children lots of time to play together. Miss Thomas and Miss Harper have enjoyed watching the children continue to develop their strong friendships in class. The children have enjoyed talking about what they would like to learn now they are back in school and their aspirations for the future. Following our return to school, we have started to take part in the daily mile to keep ourselves fit and healthy. We have challenged ourselves to see how many laps of the playground we can walk, jog or run every day. 

In class this week, we have continued to learn about topics that we covered during home learning. In literacy lessons, we have continued to learn about Jack and the Beanstalk. The children have really enjoyed accessing our giant’s castle role play, retelling the story with confidence. During our child-initiated learning session, the children have enjoyed drawing their own story maps. In class, the children have been getting sticky, making their own collage of the beanstalk to display in our classroom. 

During our maths lessons, we have been recapping all our skills through daily maths meeting sessions. We have practised counting, number recognition, positional language, pattern, 2D and 3D shapes and much more. The children have been applying all the learning they completed at home during their play. 

We look forward to seeing how much the children progress through the rest of the Spring and Summer term. Once again Miss Thomas and Miss Harper would like to thank parents/guardians for all their hard work during the period of home learning, it is clear that this has had an impact on all of the children. 

We are approaching the full-time return to school…hooray!

This week, Year 5 have continued with their learning in Maths based on properties of shape (angles). The children have used their knowledge of types of angles and developed their skills further to find missing angles on a straight line and in a full turn. The children working online have used the digital whiteboard to complete their calculations and have applied this within their independent work.

Following lots of discussion about animals in captivity, in both reading and writing, the children have used an example text to explore their opinions further within a discussion text.  We have worked together to write a shared example each lesson using various grammatical features, and then the children have used their own ideas, alongside shared examples, to begin building their own discussion text.

When animals are put into captivity, they are given the right habitat so that they can survive in the right temperature and not die in the wrong habitat. They are also fed whenever possible, so they won’t die or be too full because they were overfed. The zookeepers also train the animals, so they won’t attack, kill or hurt humans when walking past them. Although the animals might not be happy, they will still be looked after with good care and medicine when it is necessary otherwise, they will die.

Throughout this term learning at home, Year 5 have worked hard to improve their comprehension skills whilst reading a range of texts. This week, the children have used the new vocabulary linked to animals in captivity, alongside our discussions to answer a range of comprehension questions, and it is clear that they are becoming more confident to answer long response questions.

Based on our whole school project, the children in school have worked extremely hard to create some posters about deforestation, highlighting the key problems that come from this global issue. They have been learning how to draw rainforest animals, which have looked amazing on their posters!

Both Miss Hughes and Miss Jones would like to say a massive well done and thank you to all of Year 5 for their hard work and resilience during this term so far. We can’t wait to see you all on Monday 8th March to continue this fantastic work!

This week is National Children’s Mental Health week and this year’s theme is Express yourself! We would love to see how you all express yourselves whether it be through art, story writing, dressing up or singing. Upload pictures/videos or stories to your teachers on teams and let them know it’s for Children’s Mental Health Week.

The latest statistics show that 1 in 10 children have a diagnosable mental illness. However, in these trying times, it’s understandable that most children are feeling the pressures. Things like mood swings, being low and problems with behaviour is to be expected. 

Thursday 4th February is Time to Talk Day. On this day, we would like for you to spend some time talking to each other about anything and everything. 

The best way to encourage your children to express their feelings is through general conversation. So here’s a family challenge for you. 

Play a game where each of you chooses one of your favourite things in the world and don’t tell anyone else. Take it in turns to ask yes/no questions to find out what that thing is. For example, is it an animal? Is it a toy? Is it blue? Etc.

See how quickly you can work out what it is.

If you would like any more information about Children’s Mental Health week or resources to use at home, please visit https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk/

If you have any concerns about your child’s mental health, please contact the school for further advice. 

This week in Year 5, we have continued with the exciting new topics we started last week. The children have worked really hard on consolidating their learning of how to read both digital and analogue clocks and how to work out the duration of an event. Children struggled at first but showed excellent resilience and their hard work has definitely paid off!

We have also continued to look at the features we need to include in our writing of a set of instructions. Our writing is linked to our exciting design and technology topic at the moment whereby we are looking at different types of food, healthy and seasonal foods and different cooking techniques. During the afternoon sessions, children have been given the opportunity to cook and evaluate different recipes and cooking techniques at home, and they have created some delicious looking food and smoothies! Children also got the chance to show off their amazing snowman building skills too on Monday.

Year 5 have also been extremely lucky to take part in Learning by Questions online with Miss Jones, Miss Hughes and Mr Watters, and it has been a great way of engaging learning and allowing children the chance to show off all they have learnt since the start of Year 5. Each child joins in a quiz using a unique quiz code and answers a series of questions. Their teachers are then able to see how well they are doing while the quiz is happening and are also able to offer some guidance on some tricky questions. We hope to continue to use this during our remote learning sessions to check that we have understood the topics that we have been learning.

We encourage children to be completing extra-curricular activities at home and share them on their Class Notebook in the ‘Other’ section – please tell us when this has been completed so we can share this amazing work with everyone!

In school and at home, the children have been talking and learning about birds. We have learnt all about how important birds are and the different types of British birds. In school, we have made bird feeders which we will be placing around the school grounds. We are looking forward to all the wonderful types of birds that will visit us. Next week we are even going on a bird watching walk.

We have been working very hard on our weekly project. The children have been making houses out of re-cycled materials. As part of the project, the children planned their design and added features such as doors and windows.

We are really happy with all of your hard work this week and we can’t wait until we see next week’s learning. Well done Year 1!