We have been absolutely blessed with sunshine for most of this week – it has been lovely feeling the warmth of the sun on our skin – Spring is definitely here! We’ve had a very dramatic week in Birch Class, writing, practicing and performing our own versions of ‘Life doesn’t Frighten Me’ – a poem by Maya Angelou. I hope you’ll agree the children’s writing and art work look amazing!

We’ve now completed our 15th consecutive daily mile! We’re over half-way to running a full marathon and earning that illustrious medal – they have all been amazing this week completing their laps and supporting their classmates. One of the loveliest moments of my day is watching those that have finished, run-off and complete even more laps with a classmate who is still going. There’s a really lovely, supportive atmosphere on our daily runs and everyone feels good at the end.

We’ve also been enjoying our class story – The Wizards of Once – it’s a fantastic story full of magic, Warrior and… spoons. Crusher the Giant has just been captured and the main character, Xar, may or may not turn into a Werewolf, a Rogrebreath of a Witch… we’ll have to see!
Mr Finch has popped –in to say ‘Hello’ and delivered an assembly on Wednesday. Birch Class are taking all of the change in their stride and were keen to make Mr Finch feel welcome at our school.
 
​Have a great weekend everyone! Mr B

 
It’s been another lovely week in Birch class. Can you believe these children have now run 10 miles altogether as part of their mile-a-day! They all tell me they can feel themselves getting fitter and it’s getting a lot easier now. Great stuff!
We’ve also been busily reflecting on our fears and discussing strategies we can use to help us cope. In English, we’ve been learning about the life of poet Maya Angelou and we learned and performed one of her poems – Life doesn’t frighten me.
As we look forward to sunnier and cheerier (actually and metaphorically) times, the children have been learning Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. Look up at our classroom window to see a beautiful display of spring flowers and lyrics from the song. Hopefully, it will make Chagford smile and give us all hope.
We’ve also finished our World Book Day boxes AND our reflection candles. This week we made holders for the candles and had a talk about fire safety before they brought them home.
Have a lovely weekend, Mr B

It’s been an incredible week in Birch Class! The children have all really impressed me with how they’ve come back to school and got along with one another so well after spending such a long time apart.
Our school value is Kindness this half-term, and I challenged the class to write on post-its an random acts of kindness they spotted and put them up on our kindness cupboard. I was expecting to see a few go up over the week… the cupboard door ended up being completely covered! Amazing!
We’ve not only been extremely kind to one another this week, but we’ve also been busy making and creating….

• Clay Ickabog monsters (see pics!)
• Beeswax candles
• Beautiful cards for a certain special someone this Sunday…
• And very imaginative World Book Day Boxes – it’s been a great week!

The children have also been amazing at supporting one another on our daily mile – this half-term and next, the children are working towards running 26.2 miles (marathon distance) by running a mile a day. At the end they will earn a real-life running medal that have kindly been donated to the school.
Have a great weekend everyone! Mr B

When you come back on Monday...
Ease in to the week gently,
Look forward to new opportunities, and
Consider how
Others might be feeling
Maybe shy, anxious,
Excited

Believe in yourself, 
Achieve great things
Care for one another and show
Kindness

P.S If you have a shoe box at home, bring it in! We'll need it for a Chagford (World) Book Day project :)

Remember, it's screen free Friday tomorrow! 
Draw, play, create, laugh, cook, (clean?) and have fun! 

Well done for being amazing during this period of remote/blended/at-school learning. You have been amazing in so many different ways; from learning to use a new digital classroom, to GoogleMeet assemblies, sharing spaces, computers and the internet at home, staying positive and being engaged with your learning. You have been fantastic. 

I know you might be feeling a little bit nervous about coming back to school, I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm feeling that way a little bit too. I'm also really excited. Excited to see you all again, as well as some new faces for the first time (Phineas and Amelia! Welcome!) Excited for the build up to Easter and the Summer Term which we deserve to be full of sunshine and the outdoors. Hopefully, life will slowly begin to feel a little more normal and we have a summer full of reconnection ahead of us. 

The school, our playtimes and lunch have not changed much since the Autumn term - all of the familiar routines and faces are all still here with some minor tweaks which we'll discuss on Monday morning. 

Have a lovely weekend, I hope it's as sunny as the last one!
Mr B

​ 
 
Well done for getting through the penultimate week of Remote Learning everybody – you’re doing so well! Just one more week with 2/3rds of the class at home and then we will all be back together on Monday 8th March! Quite exciting for lots of reasons but even more so since our class has grown by 7 children!
My personal highlight of the week has been the fantastic art work you made on Monday – we had some very colourful paper weaving going on! Well done for your brilliant work in Science – you all learnt a huge amount about light – I was impressed by your answers! You’ve all been writing fantastically in English this week – some of you have written some quite moving messages to yourself in 6 months time and we even had a video message from Emily! Brilliant!
Keep up the fantastic work guys, just one more week of remote learning to go! Looking forward to seeing you all soon!
Mr B

Well done Birch Class! You’ve got through an entire half-term of remote learning. Everyone at school is super proud of you. You’ve managed to learn how to use an entirely new way of working, manage your own time with your own timetables, become more confident being ‘on-screen’ for Google Meets and Collective Worship as well as support and help one another with this tricky lockdown life. You’ve been brilliant – don’t forget that!
​
In PHSE, and looking after our mental health this week, I asked you to write a few sentences for these sentence starters… ‘I am… I can… I have…’ I’d like to share (anonymously) some of the beautiful things you wrote…
I am…
a loving playful sister.
very lucky to have my family
a good friend
a good cook
talented
funny
I have…
a lovely family and a gorgeous dog
friends with a growth mindset
lots of friends
guinea pigs
a fantastic school
a loving family
the best friends ever who are always there for me
I can…
go for glorious runs
rely on many people in my life
ask for help at any time
help to cheer others up
love my family
bake amazing cookies and cakes
 
Life is tough right now, but try to focus on all of those brilliant things that make you, you! Fingers crossed life will return to some kind of normal soon, but until then, have a wonderful half-term, leave Google Classroom alone for a week, have a break from screens if you can and have a rest. You’ve earned it!
Mr B

​Well done Birch class on getting through yet another week of Remote Learning – you have all been amazing at engaging with the work at home and posting lots of fantastic pictures of what you have been up to. Keep it coming!
It was great to ‘see’ you all at our virtual assembly where we celebrated the great things happening in our school around Children’s Mental Health Week. Your colourful hats were amazing! Over the weekend, try to remember the main message – find some way to express yourself! Whether it is through what you wear, draw, dance, sing, write, play – you all have so many wonderful talents and new skills to explore. 

​

We kicked the week off with some brilliant Andy Goldsworthy inspired Art - thank you to all who managed to send in a pic on Google Classroom or via email - you're a super talented bunch!
​

We've been learning about the double circulatory system in Science - Fergus, who is new to our class - made a YouTube style video and presentation to show the class and the slideshows and diagrams you've been posting on GC have been excellent.

It must be Friday afternoon, because I have Maisie S and Olivia dancing the Macarena in the classroom; they are saying it's for Computing but it's the noisiest computing lesson I've seen. 

It's been lovely seeing so many of you joining in with the Google Meets and the Zoom PE lessons. Lots of our class members are 'hanging-out' on Google Meet throughout the day. They are using it to socialise and support one another with the classwork - it'd be great to see a few more of you on there! 

Have a great weekend! Mr B