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We have now completed 3 Master Classes for year 5s, hosted by St Gabriel’s College, using the Royal Institution’s resources. Last week the children explored 2 Special Numbers – Pi and Phi. Children learnt about Pi through practical work measuring circular objects, making a table of the results and noting the constant figures they were getting. They also explored Phi, the golden ratio 1.618 which we see in many features of nature and was believed by the Greeks to be the perfect proportion. The children measured each other’s faces to see who had the perfect Greek god and goddess proportions. Thanks to Mr Luniss from St Gabriel’s for leading this fascinating session for the children.

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Low Cost No Cost 8th & 9th June.docx

Last Tuesday we welcomed 27 year 5 students from across our cluster to St Gabriel’s College for the first of our 6 session series of Royal Institution Master Classes. This master class was led by Ben Dornan from the Royal Institution and focussed on the children learning and doing practical activities on digital computing and how to write in Binary.The children were set lots of binary code challenges, including some to take back to school. Looking forward to our next session after half term, when the children shall explore Special Number. Our thanks to Royal Institution for providing exciting and detailed resources, as well as speakers, for our series.

In the week before half term, 11 year 6 teachers from across our cluster came together to do a moderation session looking at writing examples. The teachers used the Lambeth lead moderators framework to help their discussion and decisions. It was particularly valuable for staff to share and discuss pieces of work from pupils on the cusp of achieving a level at age related expectations. Many thanks to Hill Mead Primary for hosting the process and for teachers inputting their skills to support each other.

Last week was a busy workshop time for our Confident Creators project, funded by The Paul Hamlyn Foundation Teacher Development Fund.Classes across the cluster took part in team taught workshops in Drama, Music and Art. On Monday children at St John’s Angell Town Primary painted watercolour backgrounds for their pictures of Stonehenge, linked to their Stone Age topic. On Wednesday we started our Music workshops series at Archbishop Sumner Primary and year 1 children produced a musical soundscape and a graphic score on the growth of plants. On Friday year 3 children at Loughborough Primary school made a Stone age story together and performed it whilst year 1 children made and performed a story set in a hot climate, linked to their weather topic. Our teachers have become very skilled at incorporating the arts in their lesson plans, delivering warm-ups, main activities and facilitating meaningful reflections on learning with their children. We shall celebrate their work across the year at an event at Royal Festival Hall on 15th July.

Low cost no Cost May half term 2019.docx

Last week teachers from our cluster primary schools met to do some writing moderation together. Our aim for these sessions is to focus on reading work and allowing professional judgements to come through. Here are some of the examples of work they discussed together.

year 3 BLC Writing moderation examples 2019.docx

LOW COST NO COST 18th & 19th MAY.docx

Low Cost No cost 11th -12th May 2019.docx

On Monday we held another busy day of training for all 20 participating teachers on our Confident Creators programme. This was an opportunity to work with our artistic team on a toolkit of activities that teachers will deliver this term, with the artists’ support, in Music, Art and Drama. There has been a real sense of progress during the year, this being the 4th day of training we have held, with all teachers ready to try out new things with their class and valuing the creative process in the development of children in their classes. At the end of the day we welcomed senior leaders from the participating schools to a session of planning for next year, working towards embedding the practice across the schools. We have benfitted hugely from working with our local arts partner Pegasus Opera and visual artist Liz Atkin on this project and look forward to continuing this work into next academic year.