School Council Update – Spring 1

At the end of last term a few of us went on a School Council / Pupil Voice awareness course at High Street Primary school. Glenda was awesome and we learnt that we must listen to all pupil voices.  We must let the younger children have their say and be heard. It is challenging sometimes to listen to the younger members of the council as we do have lots to say.   However, we have installed some of the ideas from the day and are now letting everyone have their say. We have introduced a feedback form so after every School Council meeting members have to report to their class on what has been discussed. This is working well.

The focus this half term has been on anti bullying, cyber bullying and e safety. We started the term by delivering a whole school assembly about “peer mediators”.  We thought it was important that every child in the school knows who they can turn to when playing, and that they feel safe at play within our school.

 

 

We told the children about the role of the peer mediators and acted out different scenarios. We then introduced the peer mediators to the whole school and told them to look out for the yellow hats for a friend when they are in need.  Our aim is to ensure the school stays a warm and friendly place to play and have fun at lunchtimes and break times.

  

We then discussed the question “do we feel safe in school?” We all agreed that we do feel safe and that we know who to turn to if we were troubled and needed help. We then discussed the school and its ability to keep children safe when using the internet and technology.  We all agreed that the school was very good at ensuring trust in the children in BIPS  not to abuse the fantastic technological learning opportunities we experience.

 

 

  It is also very good at blocking any unwanted websites. Mrs Evans asked if we knew what to do if something did come through the web filter and we learnt that you simply switch off the monitor and tell an adult who can report it to Mr. Williams. This week we are having a visit from a safety officer at the Vale of Glamorgan to discuss e- safety. We cant wait!

 

One of the ideas in the BIPS views box was to improve wet play times and the equipment within the classrooms. We asked for ideas from the whole school and have devised a list of equipment we would like to buy.  The games and toys will develop skills in Literacy, Numeracy, problem solving, geography  and general fun.  M and D are currently pricing up the buckets of wet play fun so we can fund raise to buy them.

 

The biggest achievement this half term was hosting the Super Ambassadors Webinar on Safer Internet Day.  The theme was e-safety and it was lots of fun and really interesting. We got to meet Keith Towler, the Children’s Commissioner for Wales and it was good to share with him and the other schools involved what WE think.

 

 

 Ending on a positive note, the school achieved the platinum award for Healthy schools and we were able to design the award. We look forward to seeing the award once the design has been finalised.  The school also raised £110 for wearing a Christmas jumper to school for the day for Children In Need. 

Thats all from the BIPS School Council, thank you for reading.

 

Spring Term Dosbarth Onnen

Wow, what a term of learning!  The half term was filled with lots of lovely learning and the introduction of “Marmite Monday”.  The children were roving reporters  and wrote a report about Paddington Bears visit to the supermarket.

 

 

 

Over the term we looked at supermarket art and used charcoal to create our own modern day versions of the art we looked at. By Doron Viner.  We also developed our line skills by drawing a vase of daffodils, experimented with colour mixing and used ICT to design our own pop art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In ICT we started off the topic with a bug hunt in the school garden and made a tally chart of the bugs we found.  We then came up with questions to see if we could sort the animals.  We used 2Connect to create a branching database and then used excel to draw a table of data and ‘chart wizard’ to create a bar graph of our data.  WOW!!  The children never cease to amaze me how good they really can be when using ICT.

 

Our topic this half term has been ‘Supermarket” and it kicked off with the children building their very own role play area. They brought in lots of  empty packages and labeled them all with a price tag.  They went shopping, made shopping lists in English and Welsh and pretended to be a baker or checkout assistant.  Creative play personified.  I feel saddened at the prospect of taking down their lovely work and making a new role play area for Orchestra!! 

 

Our PE lessons have been a huge success this half term and the Games we planned, tried and revised were tested by our lovely year 5 pupils in dosbarth Bedwen.  First we had to work collaboratively in small groups to devise our very own game.  We decided on the rules and tried out the game.  Then we had to adapt our game to make it simpler and harder.  The children were very creative and all of them were successful in achieving their goals.

 

We look forward to another busy but fun filled term with such lovely children.

Mrs.D.Evans and Mrs.S.Mellers