Ashdale

HOME LEARNING

ASHDALE BUBBLE

Dear Parents/Carers,

As you are aware, Ashdale is having to restrict the amount of children attending school to ensure the correct level safety is in place for both children and staff. As a result, we are offering children at home the opportunity to access high quality virtual teaching and learning.

This will take place on the following platforms:

• Zoom/Google classroom
• Tapestry
• Classroom 360
• Education City
• Oxford Owl
• Posted resources (at families request)

There are five key elements of our home learning offer:

1. Home learning packs
2. Personalised targets linked to EHCP, basic skills and life skills
3. Activity suggestions
4. Whole group  zoom sessions
5. Online learning sessions

Home learning will be used to support the transition between school and home and will encourage a healthy routine when the children are not in school. We will support this transition with visual resources and daily zones of regulation check in’s.

Virtual home learning:

Home learning days will begin at 9.00am where the children will be invited to join a whole class zoom call with a familiar adult. This session will last 15 – 20 minutes and will include a weather/story massage routine, zones of regulation check in and a makaton sign of the day.

The children will then be invited to join various subject specific zoom learning sessions throughout the day (a timetable will be uploaded via Tapestry).

The day will end with a show and tell session with a member of the home learning team, the children will be encouraged to talk about something they have learnt/made that day. The zoom call will end for the day with a zones of regulation check in and a story time.

We ask that you ensure that an adult is in the same room as your child whilst they are on the zoom call, this is to safeguard both staff and children.

Tapestry:

The home learning team will also upload various ‘Winter Themed’ activities which you can use at home. These will be updated regularly and you will also be able to gain access to Education City and Oxford Owl through the login details which will be posted on Tapestry.

Teachers have created life skills documents which include a range of targets that we aimed to work on with your children in school this half term. Teachers have added suggested activities to these targets for you to work on at home.

Tapestry can also be used as a way for you to communicate with staff at school and show us the lovely activities that your children have been doing at home.

If you require any further information please do not hesitate to contact us at school on 01670 336906 or by emailing demi.stroughton@thedales.northumberland.sch.uk

Thank you for your continued support.

This week in 4A we found a dinosaur poop in our class! We read the clues the dinosaur had left to find out where he had left the book. We then used our imaginations to write our own stories about what would happen if we were given a dinosaur that came to life for Christmas. The stories were excellent!

We also started our festive activities. In keeping with our dinosaur theme, we made some dinosaur decorations to hang on the tree. We had a snowtastic time in the Winter Wonderland, where we made festive sensory bags and tried to make igloos out of sugar cubes. We finished our rather short week by making some lovely festive cake pops to take home.

I hope you are all having a nice rest at home class 4A, stay safe!

This week we continued looking at traditional tales, reading Hansel and Gretel. We ordered and acted out the story then used coloured symbols to answer questions about it. In maths we revisited capacity, using water and other objects to fill, sort and order different containers. In science, this week, we continued looking at liquids and solids by making our own slime and chocolate bars though melting, freezing and mixing.

Most excitingly, we started our Christmas activities! We explored the winter wonderland that the elves had made for us. We loved the North Pole room as it had snowballs for us to play with. Our classroom has new fun things, like the reading area igloo, the North pole tough tray, the Christmas art area and the elf workshop, where we can build and wrap toys for those on Santa’s list. We also began making things for our Christmas goodie bags, making cards, ornaments and crowns. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in 2A.

This week class 5 have had a really busy week with Charlie and the chocolate factory coming to an end. This week we have made our own edible wall paper and discussed what makes a good egg and a bad egg. We have also carried a cookie excavation and then made our own! We made our own Christmas cards for a competition, and then made some tree decorations for our class tree.

On Thursday we went Orienteering to QE2 park in Ashington. We are getting really good with our map reading skills.

Next week we are going to begin our Christmas activities!

Another great week Class 5, Only 2 more weeks to go!

This week class 3A have conducted lots of interesting investigations.

First we made our own bubble solutions and experimented with how many bubbles we could make inside a bubble.

Next we tested which type of water would make our gummy bears grow the biggest, we tested warm water, salt water and sugar water. We left our bears for 12 hours to grow and then we found out that the bears that were in warm water had grown the most. We also found a gummy bear escape scene in class, there was a trail of red gummy bears and jelly slime which led us to a gummy bear web. We had to use the tweezers to rescue the bears from the tangled web.

Then we carried out a cookie excavation! we used magnifying glasses to look closely at the cookies and think about what was inside them. We wrote our own cookie recipes then followed our recipes to bake our own chocolate chip cookies. They were very very tasty!

Next week we will begin our Christmas themed activities.

Class 4A have worked so hard this week and put a lot of effort and creativity into their work! At the start of the week they created their own rollercoasters, which would fit in well at any theme park. We put our taste buds to the test and created our own fizzy lifting drinks. Luckily we didn’t fly out of the classroom! We made some fantastic edible chocolate factories, some of them looked just like the one in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! We have also learned a lot about the journey of the cocoa bean, and we realised that there is a lot of work that goes into making the yummy treats we can buy at the shops!

You have all done a fantastic job this week, let’s continue the good work next week!