Principal's Introduction
Dear families,
Well, it has been a short term, but nonetheless, it has been packed with fabulous lessons, challenging activities and memorable learning experiences.
From the high-octane vibes during Funky Friday arrivals to finding inner calm in our mediative immersive experience which was part of our Mental Health and Wellbeing Week and from celebrating the King’s Coronation to celebrating the success of Year 2s, who made us all proud with their efforts in this year’s SATs: the term has seen our children suddenly blossom, mature and we start to see their readiness to move up to the next year group emerging.
Next half term we look forward to the final themes of the year, operatic and animal antics, dinosaur discoveries, Sports Day and wish our Year 1s and Year 4s all the best with the National Phonics Tests and Multiplication Tests respectively.
Lady Grundy
Looking back on learning this half term
Nursery
Theme:- The Deep Blue Sea!
This half term Nursery had been learning all about the Deep Blue Sea. The children enjoyed learning about and writing descriptions of sea animals. They read instructions and followed them to make a jam sandwich; just like the lighthouse keeper in our focus story. We delved into the deep and named lots of sea animals inspired by the story, ‘Billy’s Bucket’. As we explored lighthouses across the world, we found out what a lighthouse keeper does; investigated our new outdoor area, exploring the new maths, literacy and E3L areas and had plenty of opportunities to meet our reading buddies in Year 4, sharing a book with a friend. To finish the term, the children were very excited to go on their first trip to our local library. It was lovely to see so many parents join us for this day.
Reception
Theme:- Into the Wild!
This term we learnt about all things “wild,” in this country as well as Africa and the Amazon Rainforest. We observed a wide range of minibeasts and looked closely at all their body features and habitats. It was extremely exciting to watch our tiny caterpillars turn into a chrysalis and then hatch into beautiful Painted Lady butterflies, whilst reading the story of The Hungry Caterpillar. The children loved using the word ‘metamorphosis' to describe this process. They will never forget this important word! Following this we read the story of Handa’s Surprise and learnt all about African life. We studied all the different African animals and learnt what herbivore, carnivore and omnivore means. The children made African masks, played drums, sang African songs, and also made their own Stop Animation using I-pads animal props and scenes to create their mini film.
Year One
Theme:- Amazon
During our Amazon theme, we have learned all about the Amazon Rainforest and its surrounding area. To start the theme students created their own shoebox rainforests at home to display around our classroom!
The children used our interactive globes to learn more about Brazil and the different animals that live in the Amazon Rainforest and impressed us with their knowledge about the different layers of the rainforest! Pupils were also able to showcase this knowledge in their fact files in which they were very excited to show the facts and information they had gathered throughout the theme!
We also learned all about the Rio de Janeiro carnival and celebrated by bringing Rio de Janeiro to STP! Children enjoyed an immersive experience from Rio Carnival complete with dancing, food, costumes and lots of music! They documented their carnival experience in English with their own diary entry about the day.
In Science pupils have been learning about different plants, how they grow, and what they need to survive and thrive. Students created a year group stop-animation film. Every single child in the year played a key part in this film with some students researching, writing scripts, creating models and backgrounds, and helping with recording and editing.
Year 2
Theme:- Brilliant Bodies
In ‘Brilliant Bodies’, Year Two have learnt about the human body and how we can stay healthy. We learnt about the importance of eating a balanced diet, and investigated the impact exercise has on our heart rate. To learn about the importance of good personal hygiene, we conducted a Science investigation, using glitter to explore how germs travel with contact. The children observed how soap limits the spread of germs and so the importance of regular handwashing. We also created our own ‘survival backpack’ after learning about what humans need to survive.
As well as physical health, we learnt about the importance of looking after our mental health. The children took part in yoga and meditation and noticed how this makes them feel calm, happy and relaxed. We used music and colours to represent our emotions and state of mind and created a piece of art to show this. We celebrated our differences and wrote a poem on how to appreciate our own unique traits and talents.
Animal Man
To support our learning about animals in E3L, in both our ‘Creepy Crawlies’ and ‘Brilliant Bodies’ themes, the Animal lady came to visit us on Monday 22nd May. She brought a variety of exciting animals with her, such as fox cubs and snakes! It was a thrilling day for our children and they enjoyed observing and exploring different animals up close. What a memorable experience for all!
Year 3
Theme:- Zeus
This half term, we have been exploring Ancient Greece through our Zeus theme. We began our theme by travelling back in time with an amazing, interactive tour in the immersive room.
The children loved learning about and researching different aspects of Greek life, including homes, education and society. The children used this information to create some incredibly engaging non-chronological reports. As ever, our amazing Immersive Room helped us imagine what life was like all those years ago.
Children thoroughly enjoyed studying the gods and goddesses, finding out about their powers and what area of life they looked after. Children listened to some thrilling radio plays of some key Greek myths, including Theseus and the Minotaur and The Twelve Labours of Heracles.
Year 4
Theme:- Savage Settlers
It has been wonderful to learn all about how the settler’s clothes were made, and what food they ate this half term. We looked at the typical foods that the Anglo-Saxons would have eaten and even created our own recipes of these tasty treats. We certainly didn’t burn any unlike King Alfred!
We also looked at the Maya and Benin civilisations and used Now Press Play, our immersive audio resource, to experience the Maya religion and culture as well as the different Maya societies. Finally, we conducted an in-depth study of Baghdad which the class found fascinating.
Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Year 4 are due to visit to the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire to watch the summer opera ‘The Enchanted Pig’ on Friday 9th June. We were lucky enough to have a workshop before our visit where we were introduced to key characters and music. BBC Midlands Today were interested in the project and visited us to film and speak with our fantastic pupils, focusing on the cast of opera singers, actors and the background story. Look out for the photos of our visit in June in the Summer 2 newsletter.
PUPIL NEWS:-What Our Pupils Have To Say – in their own words!
Reception
“Our caterpillars have made a chrysalis now; you can see them wriggling inside. I cannot wait to see them hatch out into butterflies. We can let them go in our garden and they can fly off”
By Zeryan
Year 1
“I have really enjoyed Maths, especially partitioning numbers. Partitioning numbers is when you split the number to find out how many tens and ones are in them. It can help you to see how big or small the number is, then you can easily compare it.
This is me partitioning the number 73 into tens and ones!
In English we have had so much fun! We went to the immersive room to find out what it was like to visit a real-life carnival, it was loud, bright and there was a lot of performers and dancers.
We’ve been talking about using past tense verbs, do you know what a past tense verb is?
A past tense verb is a word you use to describe something that happened in the past like ‘yesterday I danced happily at the carnival!’ Danced is the past tense verb in the sentence, it tells you what I did!”
By Theodore
Year 2
“Our topic has been brilliant bodies and I have loved learning about our bodies and how they work. I can’t believe how much mental capacity humans have in comparison to animals.
This half term I have loved learning about the importance of washing our hands. We did an experiment to see how fast germs can be passed around between people in our class.
We used glitter and put it on our hands, then we washed our hands to try and get the glitter off! The glitter represented germs. When we washed our hands with water, the glitter stayed on our hands. When we washed our hands with soap, the glitter came off our hands much better.
We’ve also learned how to keep our bodies healthy. Did you know healthy eating is so important? You must eat a variety of food and do physical exercise to stay fit and healthy.
Fruit is great for our brains, it contains a good type of sugar!
We talked about how to keep our mind healthy by spending time with our friends and doing things we love. Smiling is great for your mental health too!”
By Ahmed
Year 3
“I have thoroughly enjoyed having our own laptops in class! We set up our own usernames so we can save our work and share it with our teachers, this means it is easier to keep working on the same project because I always know where all my work is! For example, if I’m writing a longer piece of writing, then I can always go back to it and edit it without losing my work! Great!”
“I have also used my laptop to research all about Ancient Greece, can you believe that there were 12 Gods and Goddesses? Each one had a special responsibility. There was even a God of wine- which was a very important drink to the Greeks because they didn’t have clean water. This God was called Dionysus and he was a little bit crazy!
We have made PowerPoint presentations about life in Ancient Greece too, learning all about the food they ate and about how they built their houses. We even learned about the great thinkers of the time, these were called The Philosophers' and included people like Socrates, Aristotle and Hippocrates. These people are important as we still value their knowledge today.”
By Eakampreet
Year 4
“We have all really enjoyed our theme, Savage Settlers! Did you know the word savage means fierce, strong and ruthless? We have learned all about the past, a bit like when we learned about the Romans but I personally, have enjoyed this theme more! It’s been so interesting to research about the Anglo-Saxons being from 3 different tribes- all very fierce! We have used laptops to research them, and then used a program called Canva to make our own posters. Using Canva has meant we can be very creative, and it also looks extremely professional!
We did a cooking activity which was amazing! Firstly, we measured and mixed the ingredients, pouring them carefully into a huge, metal bowl. The finished product was fantastic, it tasted sweet and crunchy, even chewy in places. We took some oat cakes home, but I didn’t share them, I ate them all! Delicious!”
By Annabel
King’s Coronation
The coronation celebration was marked with so many acts of kindness from our wonderful pupils at STP. The school looked amazing with bunting running through every corridor and classrooms decorated by pupils themselves. Seeds were planted to help the environment, litter was picked and new friends were made with service users at Fountain Court Care Home as their living spaces were filled with pictures and bunting made by our kind and creative classes. Everyone played their part in making it a celebration that united us and reminded us what was important about community.
EYFS Outdoor Area
Staff have worked hard continuing to enhance our outdoor area to maximise learning opportunities for the children - a space that we take pride in and want to keep in excellent condition for many years and children to come. We place great value on our environment and use it as a third adult.
Our children thrive in our carefully designed space which encourages exploration, experimentation, allows them to develop their own ideas and sense of the world around them. Our well-planned, well-constructed and well-resourced outdoor area offers plenty of irresistible learning opportunities. This helps develop children’s enquiry skills, critical thinking and reflection. We provide plenty of opportunities for play, exploration and learning in our outdoor area and is often led by children’s interests and curiosity.
We know that outdoor play is vital because it enables children to become independent learners, encourages social and moral development and allows children to grow in confidence and self-esteem. It allows time to consolidate skills learned and promotes and enables physical activity. Our outdoor space allows for motor development giving opportunities for children to strengthen their large muscles to improve the control of their smaller ones.
Year 4 CBSO: The Planets Project
We are delighted to share with the CBSO news story for The Planets Project https://cbso.co.uk/stories/the-planets-a-cbso-schools-project. Here, you can listen to the compositions created by our pupils and view photos of the artwork created during the project.
Over the 2023 Spring term, Shireland Technology Primary took part in a creative project entitled The Planets. The pupils enjoyed a live City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra ensemble visit, creative music workshops and visual arts workshops, which culminated in the creation of new, exciting compositions and artwork. Pupils developed their instrumental and vocal skills throughout the creative process. During the final music workshop, each composition was recorded by the CBSO Learning & Engagement team and edited by a professional sound engineer.
Family Forum – Wednesday 17th May
Our Family Forum is families opportunity to come into school and let us know what is going well and what they would like us to focus on improving.
On Wednesday 17th May, we held our third Family Forum of the year. We hold a Family Forum each term and try to hold them at different times of the day to allow every family to attend at least one forum.
This time Mrs Highfield led an interesting and important session on how to keep children safe online. She also discussed how to set up and use parental safety features on different platforms.
The meeting then moved into the forum stage where families shared their views on different aspects of the school. It was great to hear such positive feedback from the families that attended and even better to find out the areas that they would us to improve. We’re committed to making Shireland Technology Primary the best it can be, and pupil and family input are vital in making that happen.
Key Stage Two and Nursery Library visits
KS2 and Nursery visited their local library, Thimblemill Library. This was a great opportunity for our children to explore the world of books and literature. The library visit aimed to promote a reading culture among children and fostering a love for learning. Children were given a class library card and had the opportunity to take a book back to school to enjoy.
Children were also introduced to the library's resources, including books, magazines, and other reading materials, learning about the different sections of the library and how to locate books based on their interests. The librarians were so impressed with our children’s behaviour and could not stop complimenting them on how well behaved they were. They said that of all the schools that had ever visited, our pupils were by far the best behaved and were real role models and ambassadors for the school. Praise indeed and lovely to hear!
Afternoon tea at the Hyatt
As part of our weekly Passport to Success family offer, we gave parents the opportunity to attend a prestigious event. Here is an image of the parents attending the Women in Business Empowerment event at the Hyatt Regency in Birmingham. We provided them with complimentary tickets worth £47 each. Those that attended said what a wonderful experience it was and how much confidence and ideas it had given them.
Well-being and Mental Health Awareness Week
During the 15th-19th May it was Mental Health Awareness week. We had a full week’s worth of activities including an assembly, different lessons and tasks such as completing an anxiety thermometer. We rounded off the week by having a mindfulness day. Each class practised some meditation in the immersive room, completed some mindfulness colouring and got the chance to experiment with sensory toys to relieve stress.
We were so proud with how all the children listened to the instructions and took it seriously. It really was wonderful to see the children fully immersed in the meditation and after a few minutes you could see them totally relaxed and chilled – we did have a few little ones take the opportunity to have a morning nap!
Year 2 SATS
Everybody at Shireland Technology Primary is so proud of our children in Year Two, who have completed SATs tests over the last few weeks. Every single one of them has worked incredibly hard completing tests in Maths and Reading and they have achieved a fantastic set of results – this is testament to their efforts and hard work. We would also like to thank all parents in Year Two for supporting your children with additional work at home – a fantastic example of how we achieve amazing things for our children when we work together!
Visit from Ghana Headteacher
In the final week of half term, we were excited to welcome a special visitor to our school. Naomi Adjepong, Headteacher of the Alpha Beta Schools in Accra, Ghana wanted to visit to see our special school. She spent the time talking to teachers and pupils with the day culminating in a special assembly on the afternoon where our children sang traditional African and British songs and she spoke about life in Ghana and about the schools that she runs.
For a number of our children whose families are from Ghana, it was a special day for them and it gave them a chance to share with class mates all about the similarities and differences of life in Ghana and UK.
We hope that this is the start of a relationship between the schools and countries where children meet virtually and share experiences.
Attendance
Finally, as you know the last half term, we have really had a big push on getting all children back in school every day after a torrid winter and early spring.
We thank families for the concerted effort to get to school every day and on time. It has made a massive difference to the progress of our children and the vibe in school which has been extremely positive. The ice-cream treats that were part of our Challenge 14 went down a treat on the final Friday of half term.