Primary and Foundation Stage: Master the art of self-directed play!

Our community continues to work hard together during this period of VSE. All areas of the school: students, parents, teachers and admin staff have been working extremely hard to create the best education they can under the circumstances.

New Staff In Primary
Last week we welcomed 6 new members of staff to the Primary team. Miss Pamela in Year 4, Miss Theresa and Miss Marian into Year 5, Miss Kate our new Primary Counsellor, Mr Colin, a teacher who has been at the school previously, into our EAL department and a teacher you all know well, Miss Heidi who will be covering Miss Gemma as she takes some time out to look after her new child. Mr Geoff will be sending out an email with some more details about these staff shortly.

Wonderful work by our Year Groups
Our Primary students continue to produce some wonderful work online! As you can see from the following statistics from Seesaw this week the students at STA have been incredibly busy:

Below is the impressive work our year groups have been producing whilst learning from home...

Year 1
In Year 1 this week the students have been finding out how to draw Roses with some fantastic results. Some students tried once then looked at their result and saw how they could improve the work to end producing something absolutely brilliant! Well done Year 1 and thank you to Khun Da for producing the video to help the students:

Also in Year 1 this week we saw the return of ‘Percy the Park Keeper’ with some more Maths problems! Percy had to work out a problem for Miss Emma, planting kidney beans and mung beans in egg boxes. This activity helped the students learn about and work out number bonds and using systematic methods:

Year 3

In Year 3 the students were doing some fantastic art, looking at nature’s symmetry and then creating butterflies using natural resources, this was a Global Campus Junior initiative from the Forest Schools section. Some of the students have uploaded their work onto the site! Well done.

Year 3 have also been exploring the music of Camille Saint-Saens who wrote 'The Carnival of the Animals'. This week the children had a think about what kind of music would suit birds and they thought about the tempo, dynamics and pitch. Here is a selection of their work and you can compare their musical ideas with those of Saint-Saens as you listen to 'The Aviary'. Thank you to Miss Alice for providing a video to enjoy.

Here's a link to the video…

Year 6

These photos from Year 6 were actually done last week but are so good that I wanted to share them with you. As a side challenge Mr Ross’ students were asked to do some photography at home based on reflection. I think you’ll agree the results are wonderful:

I would also like to share with you this amazing Fraction booklet that Grace L, in Mr Matt’s Maths class, put together. I think you’ll agree that a lot of hard work and effort has gone into this. Well done!

Grace's Fraction Booklet

As always, thank you for your continued support with all of the VSE and let’s hope we can see each other again here at St Andrews very soon!

Self Directed Play

Our Early Years Foundation Stage Leader, Ms Meg, takes a few minutes to discuss the importance of Self Directed Play in helping our youngest learners develop cognitive, social and emotional, and physical skills.