Pupil conferencing Dec 15

Each term a group of pupils from each year group talk to the Head teacher and Deputy Head teacher to share their views about different aspects of the school.

In December we asked about what makes them work better in lessons and about their Religious Education (RE) lessons.

This is what they told us:

1 What helps you to make your work better in lessons?

Year 3 pupils said:
– Listen to the teacher’s instructions and what they tell you to do
– Look around the classroom, on the working wall for adjectives and adverbs
– Check your work and try to improve, check what I’m missing like punctuation.
– Close the gap helps you because it helps you find out what you may have done wrong or missed it and you can add it.
– When you get your books and there is some work with you, you have a line underneath to do your work.

Year 4 told us:
– Close the gap – because when you haven’t done something, Miss gives you examples and you can write sentences giving the examples.
– If you need help and you’ve tried, you could ask a partner or ask the teacher.
– If we have help from the teacher we can make different ideas.
– The cold write and the big write help because sometimes in English we have to use different sentences and practice punctuation for the next cold write.
– The close the gap helps because there are examples the teacher gives in both writing and maths.
– We can do research at home. The marking with the teacher comment can also help.
– In Science and topic, before we start we do a mind map. In Maths we write what we know. Then the teacher teaches what you don’t know and at the end of the unit you write what you know.
– Working on the internet with Mathletics and the Spelladrome websites that the teacher sets you work to do.
– Homework about what you have done in school, you practice at home.
– If you don’t know what something is like Judaism, the school trips help you know more; now we know what a Torah looks like and the writing in there.
– We can ask the teachers, so the teachers support us.
– Topic projects that we do help because we can research at home – we had to research the Torah and made a poster, leaflet, Powerpoint, information or model. Someone made a cake. We like this type of homework.

Year 5 said:
– The success criteria helps me like examples of adjectives I could use.
– The working wall because sometimes I feel like I’m missing things out and I look on the working wall to check.
– When the teacher gives you a head start it makes you confident to do it – he shows you how to do it and then you know what to do.
– What helps me is doing ‘3 before me’ – ask a friend, look at the working wall and then ask the teacher.
– The teacher’s comments help; they give us advice on what we need to include and you can use that to help you write in another cold write.

Year 6 told us:
– Writing information down – jotting down what the teacher may say in Maths.
– Planning for our writing in English. Steps for Success in Maths. The working wall and success criteria in English.
– In English – proof reading and evaluating so we can make it better in the cold write. In Maths the examples the teacher shows ‘teacher modelling’ and in Spanish the vocab sheets help you.
– Concentrating on what the teacher says so you don’t get distracted by others.
– In English marking the work with other people helps because you and the other person gets to learn from what the mistake was, like peer marking.
– In PATHS we have HEY – Heads up Eyes forward and You’re in Control
2. What can you tell us about your RE lessons?

Year 3 told us:
-We went on a trip to a Gurdwara, it taught us more about a Gurdwara. I like RE because we learn about different religions.
– We learned about the Christmas story. I enjoyed it. I like RE because we learn about history too and it is fun.
– We went on a Gurdwara trip and learnt about how Sikhs worship. I like RE because we get to learn about other religions.
-When we do RE we write about the facts we were told about how Sikhs worship. I like writing about what we’ve learned in RE.
– I like it because we can do history and learn religious special days like Christmas. It helps because it shows you about the world and about God and what the world used to be like.
– I like RE because we can understand about the different religions. We learned about Light celebrations and the story of Rama and Sita, then we learned about Christmas.

Year 4 said:
– I like it because you get to learn about other people’s religions and how they pray and where they pray. I particularly like drawing in RE, for example one time we had to draw the symbols for each religion.
– I like it because, when we are learning about RE, we get to go on trips to learn more about the topic and I also like doing research when we come back to school.
– I like it because you hear different stories and I like drawing in RE.
– I like RE because you get to learn about how often people go to their places of worship, when they go, which direction they face, which is their holy book and I find it very interesting.
– I like it because sometimes we carry on what we are learning in RE in English, for example in English we wrote a report about Judaism.
– I like it because you get to draw pictures and I find it very interesting. I like the stories we hear.
– Sometimes the teacher gives us challenges and, if we succeed in these, we get extra tokens.

Year 5 told us:
– They are good because they tell you about religions and how they are followed, who they believe in and if anyone does anything bad.
– We are learning about Hinduism, the teacher asked one of the children in the class about what he does or what he might believe in. This was a different experience and he is the only Hindu in our class.
– In RE we have to write stories, we get a picture in our head – we use what we learn in writing lessons in RE.
– We learn about different faiths and find out about things we didn’t know.
– It is good to do RE because you get to learn about how other people worship in their religion and learn about the different cultures.
– I think they are a good thing, if you are a Christian student and you learn about Christianity, you could learn about something that you didn’t know even if you are a Christian. Your friend could tell you about it if it isn’t your faith. We can respect their religions.

Year 6 said:
– We have had a wide range of lessons, we have learnt about Buddhism.
– I like RE, we learn about different religions and places; something new that you might not know about such as Buddhists and unity and harmony.
– I found it hard, the things we learn are different but the teachers help by giving us more information.
– It is good because if you’ve never learnt about something then you can find out about things. I enjoyed writing about how Buddhist have 4 noble truths and the beliefs; if nobody did anything bad then the world would have unity and harmony.
All pupils said they enjoyed visiting the Buddhist centre and one said she enjoyed meditating.