Hawes Side Primary School Blog Community, Learning & Creativity in Harmony

As you know we will become an Academy in September and as part of this change we have consulted the children and staff on changing our uniform to mark us becoming a ‘new school’.

So far, the members of the school community consulted have been massively in favour of a change with the school council surveying the children for their thoughts.

Above are pictures of some of our pupils in the uniforms that came out as favourites. All consist of a jumper/cardigan (logo to be added) white shirt and tie (exact design of the tie to be finalized) with grey trousers/skirt and tights and black shoes.

The pictures shown are only of boys as we couldn’t source cardigans to show girls’ options. (Of course the girls can wear jumpers and trousers if they wish, as is the case now.)

Within school the favourite was the blue colour shown, followed closely by bottle green, grey and red came in third. Before we finalise we would like to gauge opinion as to your preference. You can do this by voting on the survey below. As mentioned any change will be phased in from september so existing uniform can still be worn until the time comes when you need to replace it.

Thank you for your help and we will let you know the outcome.

Tiegan, Shannon, Casey and Elizabeth have been looking at number sequences.   Can you work out these patterns?

Recently the children have been enjoying making mini lessons, or micro tutorials, to help each other learn. It is often said the best way to consolidate learning is to articulate it to someone else. We’ve been using this approach in school and with the ‘Show Me’ app on the iPad we’ve been able to take things a stage further.

The children love using this screen casting application to record micro tutorials. They rehearse their learning and then record a short  two minute explanation of a key concept or idea. This recording is then embedded on their class blog for other children to view and learn from. It is a great way for the children to support each other with tricky areas of learning.

This week I have been promoting this approach by showing the children the micro lessons in assembly and encouraging them to find areas they think would be best explained via a short peer screencast.   It not only helps the children who watch the presentations but also those who are making them.   More children are now coming forward with areas they want to teach and we hope to build a powerful peer based resource in school via this method.   There are a few  examples of how ‘Show Me’ is supporting the children’s learning already appearing on the blogs.   Have a look at the Book Club, 6S and 6A to see some recent posts.

The children had a great time and we raised lots of money to support sport relief today. The children really entered into the spirit of things, coming dressed in a range of sports wear and sports related costumes. Cricketers to the 118 crew graced our grounds and made their way around our circuit that was carefully measured and marked out by Mr Smith.

Good luck to all those children who are going ‘the extra mile’ in the one of the many events being held on Sunday in aid of Sport relief. We love to hear about your fundraising efforts.

Hawes Side has once again been recognised for its outstanding work, this time in the field of Internationalism. The International School Award is presented to schools who work hard to promote and develop partnerships across the globe. We are lucky to have partner schools in Australia, China and across the European Union. We are developing many exciting opportunities within our curriculum and beyond, that not only enthuse the children and help them learn about many global issues, but also give them a worldwide audience to share their learning with. Many thanks to everyone who has helped Mr Livesey put together the application for this award.

We kicked off Fair Trade Fortnight this morning with a special assembly by 4J.   Thanks Mr Livesey, Mrs Butterworth and the class, for telling us all about what fair trade means and how we can help. 

The Fair Trade tuck shop will be open after school on the following four evenings 3.30 – 4.00pm:

Tuesday 28th February

Friday 2nd March

Monday 5th March

Friday 9th March

Why not pop along and show your support  by purchasing some fair trade goods from the shop?   It will be situated by the Ocean Room, on the corridor leading to Y5 and 6.

The school performed at the annual schools alive extravaganza. They performed a scene from Blood Brothers. Here they are waiting for the curtain call backstage. Very excited!

Last year we saw a rise in the use of techology to support learning beyond the classroom and the installation of our green screen further supported us in extending learning opportunities.   Here are some of last year’s biggest successes in the use of technology to take learning beyond Pedders Lane!

Blogging – this has continued to rise and be utilised to support and share learning.     The live blogging this year, from York and Robin Wood, were really powerful and got parents engaged like never before.   The live blogging made it easy to follow the children’s exploits on these two residentials and to comment back.   Pupils and staff blogged about everything, from the coach journey and what they had for breakfast to the Minster, the Jorvik Centre and much more.   Seeing what they were up to and being able to comment on things as they were happening was a revelation for many.   It is now very much a part of how we intend to take blogging forward.

Green Screen – we were fortunate enough this year, to work closely with CMS, a Blackpool media company who fitted us a green screen sudio.   We have met with the company regularly to develop the system and now have a great little set up that the children have confidently made excellent use of.   There are many examples of how this has helped extend the childen’s learning but my favourite story from the green screen was Emily’s advert.   6S  were filming adverts they’d written to support work on persuasive writing.   I watched some of them on the class blog and was impressed with Emily’s as she is such a quiet girl and her advert belied this fact!   Mr Tobin, a teacher in Bradford asked if he could use the advert as a stimulus for his  Y3 writing lesson!   Emily was delighted when Ian sent pictures back from his own class showing them watching her advert and producing their own work based on it!  The green screen is certainly something we wil be expanding on in 2012.

Web 2.0 – like children in a toy shop we have continued to play with lot of web 2.0 tools and made use of some more than others. Among the favourites in school are wordle and tagxedo, wallwisher, voki, voicethread, photopeach, animoto and prezi.   Wallwisher has been used well to link with partner schools around Europe and Australia, to gauge views on things and collect thoughts and ideas.   We have used it to ask questions of our parnter schools and community and it is a simple and effective way of collating feedback.

QR Codes – the children have really enjoyed using QR codes.   They stick them on displays to lead viewers to further informaion, they stick them in their books to link to online content and each class door displays a QR code that leads to their class blog.   Next year we intend to create trails with facts and puzzles around school to make a tour of the site an interactive experience!

School Website – our website is always being developed and last year we changed a lot of content and its look.   Thanks to the green screen we have added video introductions and tours with testimonials from staff and children.  We have moved away from a text heavy site that no one really wants to wade through and replaced it with a more fun, interactive and engaging experience.   We have woked with a company called Virtualsixty to build what we hope is a more appealing and exciting introduction to the school and more.  The use of programmes such as I am Learning ensure that children and families are able to extend their learning by logging on via the website.

To celebrate National Poetry Day each year, we run our school poetry competition which is always lots of fun.   This year class heats took place one Friday 7th October with the finals taking place in front of the whole school yesterday.   It was great to hear so many children sharing the results of their hard work.   Many recited their own poems and everyone had worked hard on the expression, movement and delivery of their chosen piece.   It is a nerve wracking experience standing on stage in front of 500+ children and our finalists did very well.   The audience played their part to, listening carefully and supporting with generous applause.   Our congratulations go to this year’s winners, Chloe, Thomas, Georgie, Eleanor, Hanna and Chloe;  their names will be added to the school’s ‘Thomas Poetry Shield’.   They all chose books as their prizes last night at the Book Fair and these are being presented this week at phase assemblies. 

Do you have a favourite poem?

Perhaps you’d like to share it? Or make a film using the green screen?

Let us know and we can film it and then play it on the TVs around school.