The Last Prep School Update of the Half Term!

February 11th 2021

Safer Internet Day 2021

This week, Miss Newnham held an assembly for Year 5 and 6 pupils on Wednesday morning and Years 3 and 4 on Thursday morning all about Safer Internet Day, with the focus of An internet we trust. This made us think and consider whether we could trust what we saw online and explore reliability in the online world.

Throughout Safer Internet Day, pupils from all year groups took part in various activities to learn the importance of internet safety. These activities included learning about what you can enjoy online and why the internet is useful such as watching videos, listening to music, video calling family and friends, learning new things and especially online lessons!

Our Year 5 and 6 pupils took part in a game of Trust or Check where Miss Newnham put up a list of messages and scenarios and asked children whether they should trust what they saw or check it with a trusted adult. The awareness of our Year 5 and 6 pupils was very impressive by saying that they would check things they saw with an adult.

Years 3 and 4 used an interactive sheet to look at whether news items were real or fake and how they should check this. They were then challenged to write their own fake news headlines! Some things we looked at were fake news items, invitations to enter prize draws and messages from gamers.

Other topics covered in Safer Internet Day also included how certain things that children see online can potentially make them feel; happy, curious, confused, shocked, angry or worried. Miss Newnham talked about who to turn to if they themselves were feeling that way.

When discussing internet safety, emphasis was placed on the fact that our pupils should think of themselves as a detective - be prepared to question what they see, check online and offline and most importantly ask for help.

A Note From Miss Newnham

This week has been a cold and wintery final week of the half term. This week, we had a very interesting infant assembly where Chester performed an amazing magic trick and he bravely then joined Years 5 and 6 in their assembly and performed this for our older Prep pupils. Assemblies this week were also opened with a montage of fun photos so we could look back and reflect on activities from last term.

Flickr album: Prep School Assembly Montages | Height: auto | Theme: Default

Year 5 and 6 key worker pupils have continued their hard work by continuing to build shelters for the local wildlife animals that take residence in the Ford Park school grounds.

In Pre-school, children have been looking at the story of ‘Lost and Found’ Not only have they design and made boats from a variety of materials, we also became illustrators! Look at how proud Lily was of her artwork.

I was also delighted to see that Years 1 and 2 are continuing to learn sign language songs with a wonderful Makaton interpretation of True Colours from the Trolls film:

Especially over the period of Home Learning, I am often forwarded some amazing work that our pupils are doing during this time and I was particularly impressed with Edie’s (Year 4) presentation of her own PowerPoint on echolocation. - amazing!

Furthermore, Year 4 pupils performed some amazing poems that they had written in their English lessons. Well done to Seb, Alex, Freddie and Jack for taking us on a virtual tour of all things great about Plymouth and the surrounding areas with your poems ‘My heart’s in Plymouth’. Freya in Year 3 also read her excellent Perseus myth to us. We were joined by my Year 6 class for this, a lovely treat for them on a Thursday morning!

Awards this week:

Awards in Year 1 are made, this week, for working hard and gaining confidence in online lessons to tackling tricky spelling challenges. Year 2 pupils are showing their independence and love of learning by researching and writing projects on inspirational women.