Stonewall School Champions Gold Award

Windhill21 has achieved the Gold Stonewall School Champion Award. This is a sector-leading award programme developed by the charity Stonewall and demonstrates our schools commitment to LGBTQ+ inclusion. It shows that Windhill21 is leading the way in celebrating diversity and supporting LGBTQ+ children and young people to fulfil their potential. Our application for the award demonstrated particular strengths in embedding diversity and equality within our curriculum and our use of pupil voice to receive feedback and make changes to our practices within school life. 

Reception Newsletter

The Reception children loved taking part in Equality Week. They immersed themselves in a book called And Tango Makes Three, about two male penguins who fell in love and had wrote their own versions of the story during their literacy lessons. The children then continued on with the penguin theme and learnt all about the life cycle of penguins. We looked at the features of penguins, labelled pictures and made their own collages and illustrations of the birds with oil pastels.

 

In maths we have been looking at doubling and relating it to odds and evens. The children did really well with this and were able to show us their own doubles and not-doubles with unifix cubes and Numicon. We were talking about the odd Numicon pieces looking 'odd' because they have a bit 'poking out'!

In our RAW lesson this week, we've been looking at homes. How homes are different all over the world and why. We then tried to make a home for Bertie the Owl and discussed what a good home would need. Some children then made their own homes out of junk modelling, drew their own homes and labelled them and went outside and made Bertie a different home choosing any resources they could find. And last but not least, we've been looking after all the beans that we planted and making sure they've got enough water in all this heat! Another busy, but fun, couple of weeks in Reception!

Year 3 Newsletter

 Year 3 newsletter

Writing

In writing, we have been inspired by the poem "The little boy who cannot see." This poem is a great reflection on Equality Week and what it means to be different and view the world from a different perspective.

We met with the Guide Dogs Charity and discussed how blindness can affect a person's life and met some very important furry guides that help visually impaired people with their daily lives.

We went on a colour walk and investigated the other sense that could be used to describe colour like 

• Yellow is the feeling of the sun on your face.
• Green is the smell of freshly cut grass.
• Blue is the taste of the sound of a whale's song.

Year 4 newsletter

 This week our teachers have been SO impressed our poetry writing.  We have been writing in the style of Maya Angelou ‘Still I Rise’. The vocabulary that we gathered linking to the topic was amazing and it has made our poems really emotional and hard hitting.  We chose this poem as Maya Angelou writes about equality between races and her message is important for everyone to listen to.  This is part of our equality week work. 

We have also focused on poetry in our reading lessons as well.  Last week, we focused on The Tyger by William Blake and we performed the poem in small groups. We put actions to our performances after watching a few different versions/performances by other people. This week, we will be focusing on poetry written by Benjamin Zephaniah - including Everybody is doing it. 

Votes for Women!

 Year 5 this week have been examining multiple sources of evidence to understand the deeds that suffragettes committed in order to get the vote! 

Deeds not words, was a famous phrase used by the suffragettes. The children were shocked to learn about some of the actions the women took and were able to draw opinions on our key question, whether or not the suffragettes were clever or criminal. 

Reception: Black History Month

Reception have been learning all about Trish Cooke, the author of our special book for our topic called 'So Much'. We discovered that her family came from a place called Dominica, a long way across the North Atlantic Ocean from where we live in the United Kingdom. 

We learnt that Trish enjoyed writing books about families like hers at that her background and culture influences her books enormously! This inspired the children to make marks and write or tell their own stories based on their experiences. We all agreed that it was important to see pictures of people that looks like us in books to help us relate to the stories. 

"If all the pictures look the same, that's not fair"

- Charlotte

We also enjoyed sharing Handa's Surprise, amongst other stories from a variety of different cultures. The children found it really interesting that Handa carried her fruit basket on her head, and we enjoyed exploring this further, looking at information books to learn more about it.

The children have also enjoyed exploring atlases and maps, finding out where different family members are from, or where the authors who wrote our favourite stories came from too!

 

Year 5 Newsletter

What a great week in Year 5!  One of our highlights has been writing persusive leaflets in science in order encourage others to make wise choices when it comes to packing a packed lunch.  "Don't let your lunch cost of the Earth" is our message.  Look out for leaflets in packed lunch boxes and around town as we spread the word!  In English, we have been looking at how to write formally in the context of persuasion.  Interestingly, using long words and avoiding contractions can make us sound both clever and persuasive at the same time (even if others don't even understand what it is that we are trying to persuade them to do!).   Following the theme of Global goal number 5, gender equality, we have been planning and researching out topic write.  Many of us were particularly outraged to discover that the prize money in the women's FA cup was 100 times smaller than the prize money for men!  We have also really enjoyed exploring 3D shapes in maths, particularly, understanding the origin of cube numbers and understanding the differences between cubes and cuboids.

Equaliteam Blog- 24.2.20

This week in the Equaliteam meeting we discussed our upcoming Anti-bullying day.

The children shared ideas of what they thought we could do on the day, including hosting an assembly for their peers in the morning to introduce the day.

They also thought:

We could tell people how to address it, where to get help

Show people how to reflect somehow, be kinder to people

Make things for our friends to show them we care about them

Role play- role playing the bully and victim, experience bullying in the role play

Hot seating a pretend character who bullies or a victim to see how they felt

Play games

Have worry boxes in every class

Watch this space for updates on our plans for the day!

Equaliteam Meeting: Week 2

This week in Equaliteam club we looked at the representation of Gender Diversity in pictures and displays in our school. We started at the front of the school, looking at posters on show to demonstrate what our school is all about.

The children were impressed with the Equal representation of girls and boys, however they wondered about having more photos of girls in sport to promote this. 

Next we looked in the library and we discussed displaying books that would suit everyone, as well as finding a way to encourage boys and girls to read different books and not be afraid of 'stereotypical' books which they would usually avoid.

We shared some of our ideas with Mrs Moore and she said we had made her think about the representation now too.

Votes for Women!

Year 5 this week have been examining multiple sources of evidence to understand the deeds that suffragettes committed in order to get the vote!
Deeds not words, was a very famous phrase used by the suffragettes. The children were shocked to learn about some of the actions the women took and were able to draw opinions on our key question,  whether or not the suffragettes were clever or criminal!   

Equaliteam Meeting: Week 1

During our first week of Equaliteam club we introduced ourselves and discussed what Equality meant to us. We spoke about the protected characteristics and how we must include everyone in our school.

We shared some ideas of successful things we have done in the school so far as well as ideas of what the children thought we could do better.

Reception: Zero Discrimination Day

To celebrate Zero Discrimination Day, the school came together to challenge discrimination in its many different forms and celebrate the diverse country that we live in. The Equali-team delivered an assembly that informed us all about different people and different ways of life. During the day, children throughout the school took part in activities that celebrated difference and challenged stereotypes.

In Reception, we had a visit from Julian Peedle-Calloo and Adele his sign language interpreter, who taught us a number of different signs used by the deaf community to communicate. Two of the children's favourite signs were 'rainbow' and 'gold'!

Gold

Rainbow

 We then spoke about different families and shared stories from our our lives with our partners. We discussed how our families and ways of life were different to our friends, and decided that this was actually something to celebrate! 

"It would be so boring if we were all the same!"

-Ethan

We read The Family Book by Todd Parr as a stimulus for discussion. During choosing time, we wrote our own Family Books, focusing on celebrating differences between one another's families and experiences.

Year 3 Newsletter update

Year 3’s summer topic, ‘Take a Walk on the Wild Side’, has taken a very exciting turn as we have been given the challenge to help Mrs Moore develop the outdoor learning provision!  We brainstormed some ideas on how we can do this and decided that we need some information posts with plant and animal identification cards around the grounds to help all pupils to learn more about the wildlife living around us.  We began last week by completing an audit of the wildlife in our school grounds.  We identified four main habitats in the grounds – the forest, the garden, the field and the playgrounds – and split them between the two classes so that we could collect as much data as possible.  We then pooled this information and will use it to help us decide where to put the posts.  Some of the interesting things we found: slow worm, ground beetle, centipede, millipede, large long-horn (a type of day flying moth), hairy shield bug, hawthorn (hedge), maple and silver birch (both trees) and cowslip! 

In other areas of our learning, we have been reading more fables in English and have created a toolkit to help us write some in a few weeks.  In Science, the children have been building on their previous learning in Year 2 on food groups and what our bodies need for a healthy balanced diet.  We are developing our throwing and catching skills in PE so that we can play games such as rounders later in the term. They have worked hard with this and so all children have made great progress! 

And to top off a great week, we finished with Zero Discrimination Day!  We learned about a Welsh artist called Gwen John who, like many other female artists at that time, was not given the same chances and recognition as the many male artists.  We practised our colour mixing and painted fabulous self portraits in her style.  In another activity, the children discussed discrimination and focused on racial discrimination, particularly in football matches.  We watched a clip from Newsround with an interview with Raheem Sterling who has unfortunately experiences racial discrimination at matches.  Then the children came up with ideas about how to prevent this type of discrimination in the future.  They designed T shirts and badges to try to get their message across.  We also had a fabulous visit from Julian who taught us some sign language and spoke to us about what it’s like being deaf.  It was a truly fantastic day!

Year 4 newsletter

Wow!   We are having an amazing start to summer in Year 4.  As we started our Viking topic, we looked at sources of evidence in history and were shocked to discover that historians and archeologists even use coprolites (fossilised poo!) to learn about the past.  We discovered that the Vikings ate bread, fruit and fish from studying their 'coprolites'.  Luckily the coprolites we dissected were not real because we found evidence of certain microbes...Sticking with the Viking theme in literacy, we have been retelling the saga of How Thor lost his hammer.

One of our highlights of the first week back though, was learning about the process of digestion in science through simulating it in the classroom.  Using potato mashers for teeth, green washing up liquid for bile and sieves for intestines, we followed the journey of beans on toast right through our 'bodies'. 

On Friday, we devoted the day to zero discrimination. We were inspired by inspirational sports stars to write our own 'tweets' to stamp out homophobia in sports.  We learnt about the struggles of Gwen John, an early 20th Century artist, and all women at the time, through studying her portraits.  We were shocked and fascinated at the same time as it provided a valuable opportunity to dicuss equality both in terms of equality for women in general as they struggled for recognition and opportunity on par with men, but also the struggles of the LGBT community at the time.  Understanding these issues, we produced our own self portrait sketches, in the style of Gwen John.

Year 3 Update

During our first week back after half term the children have been very busy! The children have been continuing their multiplication and division journey in maths, securing their understanding of fact families whilst solving complex problems. 

In English this week the children have been learning about gender equality and have been writing their own speeches about their thoughts and opinions on this topic. We encourage the children to practice their speeches at home over the next two weeks as we prepare for our whole school speech competition. 

In our reading lessons the children have been reading and interpreting a range of texts including; non-fiction, stories and biographies. 

On Monday afternoon the children were building on their existing understanding of gender stereotypes and discrimination through group discussion and drama. This has supported our speech writing. 

Whilst Done class have been writing their instruction texts for 'how to mummify a body', Towns class  have been learning more about the construction of the Ancient Egyptian Pyramids. 

We are looking forward to beginning our rehearsal for the year 3 and 4 productions and will be practicing our dances and learning our songs over the next few weeks. 

Interfaith week -Agent Reflector

Last week was Interfaith Week at Windhill21. A time when the school community takes time to celebrate the different faiths in our community. It's a time when pupils and teachers take a deeper look at the values we share and learn about the different beliefs and practices of those around them.

This year we have linked Interfaith week to one of Global goals the children have been focussing on "No Poverty." All year groups started their learning with the story of "The Good Samaritan" from the Bible and took part in a range of activities to compare the Christian response to poverty to that of other world faiths such as Islam , Buddhism , Hinduism and Judaism.

The week included a whole school assembly to launch the week, P4C discussions, drama and a range of Reflection stations in the Atrium for each year group to visit with their teachers.

Here is a flavour of some of the Reflections the children took part in this week.

"Prayer and hope tree"- a place for pupils to take time to consider
things they were thankful for or take time write a hope or prayer.



"The world we live in" - with so much going on in the world pupils were invited to look at the pictures of poverty- including homelessness, hunger, draught and natural disasters and take time to think or find out about these issues and place a candle on the country they were thinking of.

"Climate change"- linked to last terms global goal of looking after the world we live in. Pupils made pledges of how they could help preserve the environment for the future.

"Peace and Justice"- linked to the global goal number 16 "peace and justice" .Pupils were asked to reflect on a quotation from Mahatma Ghandi about responding to those who treat you unfairly and how those from the Hindu faith may respond in situations of injustice.

"The Good Samaritan"- Who is your neighbour?  At this station pupils were encouraged to take time to show empathy and reflect on our responses to helping others we don't know or who do not share the same views as us.

"Reduced Inequalities".
We are all different- we look, behave and believe different things often
but in this diversity we have  different talents and gifts we can use to help those around us.
What is your gift/talent and how will your use it to help others?

Finding out about what others believe- at this station pupils were asked to reflect on the Muslim act of Zakat ( charity) and respond in their own way -reflecting on why this was important and taking time to think about their own point of view.