Well, I think this week, I do need to change my Autumn display to Winter! There is no going back now, and I would suggest the cold weather is here to stay. It does make you feel quite Chrismassy though. As a young teacher, I spent a couple of Christmases in New Zealand and the warm, sunny weather made it a bit of a non-event in my opinion!

We have four weeks to go, which is four action-packed weeks. I aim to send a letter out tomorrow reminding everyone of what is happening and when. As singing lead, my Christmas kicks off with the Winter Voices Concert at Pudsey Civic next Monday. Always a joyful performance and this year, I will have my tissues ready, as in practice the children’s harmonies are just beautiful! Seth is busy looking for a “Cool Song” for some solo performances at our own Carol’s in the Yard. Clearly, I don’t know what a “Cool Song” is! But we have both agreed, it won’t be a Taylor Swift track.

Year Two went out to Tropical World last week as part of their current learning. Arthur was so worried about the tarantula, understandably. He really impressed me, as it was not going to stop him going, but he had a plan should he see one. So resilient and solution focused. A brilliant day was had by all, in the crisp cold sunshine.

On Friday, we had a teacher training day, whereby we covered a lot of ground. Although Mr Popple did smell out the Y3 classroom where we were working, by eating his leftover pizza from the night before, for his breakfast! Not very healthy. I and Miss Knight-Francis implemented some CPD. I did music around the theme to The Pink Panther and Miss Knight-Francis did MFL. Did you know she is fluent in French and Spanish? What a skill. I also implemented some training on using artificial intelligence safely, to support learning and to support a work-life balance. Our children will not be using AI themselves as they are under 13, which is inline with rules around the use of social media and whats app. As someone who has been teaching for nearly 30 years, to be talking about AI when I started my career, writing on a chalk board, and handwriting reports and planning, I certainly don’t refer to that time as the good old days! Modern technology is exciting, it brings knowledge, freedoms and opportunities. But, it must be used safely, which is a priority for us at Westroyd.

On Friday, we spent a long time talking about spelling. It is a current developmental focus for us as we strive to improve our children’s transcription skills. With the long term goal of allowing more cognitive space in the writing process to produce high-quality sentences. We spoke to the children about how we teach spelling, and they made some very, very valid points which are steering our next steps. Comments such as, “Why are you teaching us words we never use?” “We want more time in class to practice the words you give us.” “To help us learn them, we need to write them out, over and over.”  “We need to learn words we use all the time” So, also taking what we know about how children learn, we are trying out a new approach. Mnemonics will play a part, and we will then come back and evaluate the impact. The fact is, we do need to teach the words that we use a lot, that have irregular spelling patterns, but we do also need to teach spelling rules. Such as when to add a suffix or double a letter in a word. So the words they come home with will be a combination of both of these. A piece of action research, driven by the children. Everyone has a voice at Farsley Westroyd and we are always listening. How very exciting.