Westonzoyland Primary School ‘Achieving, Learning and Growing Together’
Buzzard Home Learning
WB 15.06.20 - Westonzoyland’s Virtual Sports Week
As you know, during this term we would have usually had our sports day, which will unfortunately not be able to go ahead this year. However, we have been thinking about how we can provide the children with a chance to showcase their sportsmanship values, to get active and to have lots of fun doing so. Therefore, we would like to propose Westonzoyland’s first ever virtual sport’s week! Our Virtual Sports week will be held on the week beginning: 15.06.20.
We want all children to be involved with this process, whether they are at home or at school. Firstly they will work together to create ten activities for children to compete in. Then, in the following week, we will be asking children to send it their photos or videos of them taking part in the events. We are even going to be asking children to design their very own house mascots and slogans for our sport’s week.
We are hoping that by opening the planning and designing process to the children, we can make sure that everyone takes part in some aspect of the week. Our aim is for the children to connect with each other and to highlight just how amazing the Westonzoyland children are!
Every child who takes part in any aspect of the week will win points for their house and at the end of the week we will be awarding the Sport’s Day cup to the house with the most points across the planning, designing and participation aspects.
On the main class page menu there will be a sport’s week section where you will be able to see the events as they all happen. We will be starting next week by providing time during home and school learning for children to engage in the planning process, we hope that this will be exciting and will motivate the children to all join in.
Please keep your eye on your class page for more information.
UPDATED 24.05.20
I have provided a couple of stories to support children's well-being and understanding during this time on our page. However, please head over to our wellbeing and welfare page to see more stories, Lucy's Blue Day and Lucy in Lockdown have been recommended by Mrs Legg. There are also some fantastic exercises to do with the children that we find are very useful at school 
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This is a lovely story for children who are missing a big hug from their friends or family.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2PnnFrPaRgY
21.05.20
ELSA Support have provided another fantastic story to help children with the transition back to school. It is also a great resource for explaining why only three year groups will be returning as this can be hard to understand for other siblings. As you know we will find out if we will be back on June 1st on Thursday 28th May. Some of you may feel that it would be appropriate to share this story after this date. I would like to say a special thank you to Mrs Legg for continuing to support our children with their emotional and social development whilst we have been doing our home learning.
21.05.20
Mrs Legg provided some great stories that I shared with the children before we closed to the majority of pupils. They really helped them feel safe and not so worried about the situation.
One of my favourites was 'The Invisible String' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rZNTFf35Aw. We read this together and on the last day they all tugged their invisible string to keep us all connected. This is a lovely story to use if they are starting to really miss their family and friends (particularly grandparents).
Hand Washing Advice
Notices
04.05.20
Here is some inspiration for the challenge set by Leo and his nanny in our last group zoom call. As it is a bank holiday on Friday, I will be rearranging our zoom call for Wednesday afternoon. Please bring your collages to show then!
Thank you for sending in your collage Leo! I like the flowers you have included in your picture 
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We loved Archie's collage made from natural resources he found on his walk .
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15.05.20
Thank you for sending me your flower collage after seeing Leo's version Ella! It is beautiful and I love the colours 
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29.04.20- Buzzard Zoom Sessions
As some of you know I have set up a zoom account to do some video calls with the children. I have been thinking about doing some group sessions and how to run these best. I am going to schedule our first group zoom call this Friday (01.05.20) at 1pm.
I am going to start this Friday's zoom session with our star/s of the week and reading awards. Then after hearing about the success of Mrs Bell's scavenger hunt, we are going to do our very own using the things we collect to create our own pictures. I imagine that the first few zoom meetings will be very useful in highlighting what works best with the children using this forum. There might be lots of us on the call all at the same time and as you can imagine this could be quite hard to hear each other especially with excitement of seeing friends on the screen! I will continue to evaluate these sessions and brainstorm how they will work best.
I would also like to do another zoom session perhaps reading a story each week and then discussing it with the children as we would at school. I think that this might work best on a Monday or Wednesday. Please let me know which works best and I will go with the majority.
I think it would be a nice idea to ask the children to send suggestions about what they would like the focus of our zoom calls to be. I will then look at these and see how I can make them happen!
I will be sending an email with the scheduled zoom meeting for this Friday soon. 
20.04.20
Good morning Buzzard class, what a strange start to our Summer term, I am hoping you can make it a little more normal by sending me some emails so I can hear about your Easter holidays. I hope you have all had a well deserved break and have found the Easter activities on the website useful! Mrs Hall is missing you all and sending a big virtual hug. I am also missing you lots and am really looking forward to seeing the lovely learning you get up to this week. We are both very proud of everything that you are doing!
I hope you all have a fantastic first day back. 
Love Miss Crowe and Mrs Hall.
03.04.20- Happy Easter Holiday!
Thank you so much to all the children and parents of Buzzard class for your hard work over the last two weeks. I cannot express how proud I am of the children in our lovely school and how well they have adapted recently. You have all shown how conscientious, resilient, hard-working, supportive, caring and kind you are. You have brightened up my days with your amazing emails showing us what great work you have been doing. I have appreciated not only this, but the kind, compassionate messages from children and parents checking up on myself and our team.
I wanted to give you some ideas of different activities that you could do over the holiday as I believe that this will be a different break than we all had planned! I have added these ideas in a separate tab (Easter Ideas) on our home learning page.
Please enjoy this well deserved Easter break to spend more quality time as a family. I look forward to hearing from everyone again after the two weeks on Monday 20th April when I will resume posting home learning. I will be checking my emails once daily, please use this for important or urgent messages.
Happy Easter Buzzard Class! We miss you all.
Miss Crowe and Mrs Hall 
26.03.20
I just wanted to send a message to say thank you to Buzzard parents/carers. You are all doing amazing jobs- I really appreciate the emails and well wishes from all of you. Week one is nearly completed! Have a fabulous Friday and a lovely weekend. 
Maths Resource
I have set up a Numbots and Times Tables Rockstar account for everyone in Buzzard class.
Please can you email me if you would like your login details.
NumBots has been designed to help boost addition and subtraction skills. They advise that you use this little and often, children should regularly play for short bursts (10-15minutes per day).
In Story Mode the emphasis is on learning the ideas and concepts behind addition and subtraction, therefore it features more diagrams, shapes and question styles. In Challenge Mode the emphasis is more on speed of recall of key facts, like number bonds to 10, doubling small numbers or adding and taking away in your head.
Home Learning
After the decision by government to shut schools from Monday onwards for most children we have created home learning pages to help continue to educate our children at home. We know that many of you will be nervous about the situation and the implications it has for you and your children. We hope that the steps we have taken will reduce this anxiety and give you support over this time. We have been working to put together packs of activities, tasks and resources for your children to complete during this time. I have sent paper copies of the first week home with your children.
I will also be regularly updating this page with specific work and challenges to complete daily. I will also be giving support and advice alongside these activities if you have any questions about work given. Please stay in touch and email me with queries this can be anything from how to structure your day, explaining concepts or just to let me know how the children are getting on. I would love to hear from the children too, so if they want to send a message within your email please do! Pictures of children completing tasks will also be fantastic. The Buzzard email account is: 414.buzzard@educ.somerset.gov.uk
I have looked at a range of activities that you can do without printing these off. We are also sending home a workbook so you can access the materials online and do not need to print things out if unnecessary. I know that the children have been concerned this week at school and it has been appropriate to come away from timetabled lessons at some points during the week to focus on personal, social and emotional development. If you feel this is appropriate at some points during your week please do this too. Enjoy this time with your children. Please continue to keep in touch with us, we will love to hear what you are doing together.
Love from Miss Crowe and Mrs Hall.
Reading
Reading is an area that we would love you to focus on. Please continue to read with your child, this includes reading stories to your children, looking at different books online, reading websites such as Newsround, and getting them to read as much as possible to you. Whilst you do not have access to our reading scheme these sites will help you ensure they are experiencing a vast range of reading materials:Bottom of Form
- Bug club: https://www.activelearnprimary.co.uk this is something that the children are very familiar with and access in school. They provide electronic books that are specific to the child’s reading level and can be adjusted where necessary. All children will be provided with an individual log in for this. Please get in contact if your child needs more books added or needs their reading level adjusted.
- Spreeder: Spreeder https://www.spreeder.com/app.php is a fun activity to try and improve speed of reading by copying a text into the box and increasing the speed that the words are shown on the screen. See how quickly you can read (and understand!) the words!
Spelling
- Phonics play: https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/ This website has a number of games and activities to increase children’s phonological awareness. This is, again, something that we use regularly in school and will be very familiar to your child. They should be able to access this independently. The children in Buzzard Class love playing obb and bob. The website are providing free access for the duration of school closures and can be accessed using the following log in details:
Username: march20 Password: home
- Children will be provided with high frequency words relevant to their stage of development. They can practice writing these into sentences, spelling and reading them. I have also included a common exception words booklet.
Writing
- Start and continue to write a diary entry each day writing about what you have done during your day. You are part of history! You never know, someone might be reading your diary in 20 years’ time!
- Write shopping lists, cards, letters, postcards or emails to friends. I would love to hear from you, please email me and write about what you are doing at home.
Maths
- For quick fire questions on a number of different maths facts, try hit the button (all of kestrel love this one!) https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button
- ICT games have a wide variety of maths games for the children to explore. https://www.ictgames.com/mobilePage/ They love playing ‘counting cars’, and the classic ‘whack-a-mole’ is always a big hit!
- Times table rock stars (https://ttrockstars.com/home) has been set up for each child. This is a fun and interactive way to learn times tables. An account on this site also gives children access to Numbots (https://play.numbots.com/#/intro), a platform to practice addition, subtraction and number bonds, using the same log in details.
Topic
- Show Me: http://www.show.me.uk/ has a range of museum activities about any topic. Use the search function to find The Stone Age, Dinosaurs, Evolution or anything else you are interested in and then try out some of the activities.
- Take a tour of the Natural History Museum and look at the vast array of past and present exhibits https://naturalhistory.si.edu/visit/virtual-tour. All of them are pretty interesting so have a good look around, but there are a number of specific rooms that are really relevant to our ‘land before time’ topic, such as the dinosaur and fossil rooms. We have just learnt about Dippy the Diplodocus and measured ourselves against his femur.