EFL U11 Kids Cup 2021

On Friday 26th November, nine children from Year 6 had the opportunity to represent Ben Jonson Primary School at the EFL U11 Kids Cup at the Feel Good Too Sports Centre in Leyton. This was a 16-team competition with four groups of four teams, the winner of each group playing a semi-final match leading to a final, with the winner representing Leyton Orient Football Club. In the group stages, our Year 6 team won two of the first three games (4-0 and 1-0) and got to within one game of making the semi finals but lost out to a last minute winner. The Leyton Orient football coaches were incredibly proud of the children’s effort and teamwork, despite having travelled furthest to attend and competing against players that were playing at district level. We are extremely proud of you all. – Aaron

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Sports Day 2021

For Sports Day 2021, each year group stayed in school to complete their events on their own set day. To make it more competitive, we introduced a housing system whereby each class teacher put their class into four different houses.

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Each colour was allocated an ocean for a house name followed by a famous explorer. 

Red – Indian Ocean – Gertrude Bell
Blue – Pacific Ocean – Amy Johnson
Green – Antarctic Ocean – Ernest Shackleton
Yellow – Atlantic Ocean – Sir Ranulph Fiennes 

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On their chosen day, teachers from each year group took their classes to one of the seven events in the playground on a carousel which included: 
50m sprint, javelin, target throw, egg & spoon race, nuts & squirrels, standing long jump and the infamous relay race.  
Luckily we had the weather to match and much fun was had by all!

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e-Safety poster competition

Our e-safety poster competition is now closed. We made our selections and awarded the prizes. Congratulations to all our winners and well done everyone who entered the competition.

We had 25 Google Internaut trophies to use as prizes and we received 49 entries. Our panel had a difficult time choosing the best ones from each year group.

The posters will be put on display in the corridor near the computing room for all children to admire. Below is a selection of some of these amazing e-safety posters.

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e-Safety poster competition.

Thanks to Google: Be Internet Legends and Parentzone we have received more Google Internaut trophies. As a school we have decided to make these available as prizes for our e-safety poster competition to raise more awareness about e-safety.

For more information see the attached flyer and our posted messages on Google Classroom and Twitter.

The closing date for the competition is Monday 14th June.

Eid ul Fitr 2021

Home Learning edition 5 – Frogplay

Frogplay User Guides

Hello everyone and especially our Year 1 parents and pupils. Over the last couple of weeks more Year 1 children started using Frogplay, to do some of their Home Learning. As we have not introduced Frogplay to Year 1 children, we will be adding some guides to their year group page on how to use Frogplay. If the children have older siblings, they will be able to show you some of the main features of Frogplay and help their younger brothers or sisters.

These guides will also be helpful for other adults and children new to Frogplay or who want to find out more about this learning tool. This week we will focus on the main features. The guide will tell you how to change the wallpaper in your room, create your avatar picture and of course how to get to your homework!

Click on the link to read our first guide:  FROGPLAY 1

Find out more about games to play and unlocking codes in our next guides.

 

Home Learning edition 4

First of all a Happy Eid Mubarak to all our families celebrating the end of Ramadan. We hope you all had a lovely day with family and friends, even if it was from a safe distance or video chat.

This week we have quite a variety of Home learning to share, starting with a poster from Mahdia and Adyan’s family, with pictures of some of their main events during the lockdown.

We recently added a picture of Yusuf and his Stick Man to our Home Learning Gallery. Now we can add the whole Stick Man family, thanks to Talha and his family. Based on the book Stick Man by Julia Donaldson, the literacy homework was to make Stick Man and his family using real sticks!

Talha really enjoyed this task. The family all went out for a walk to collect sticks and leaves. Talha made his stick people completely by himself. Including breaking up the sticks to the right sizes and using his sister Hikmah’s glue gun to stick the pieces together.

Ophelia sent a Get Well Soon card, hand made by herself, to our Prime Minister Boris Johnson while he was struggling at the hospital due to COVID-19. She did receive a postcard as a gesture of reply from the Prime Minister, showing his appreciation on Ophelia’s effort.

We did receive a few more pieces of Home Learning work and we will add these all to our Home Learning Gallery.

Yusuf and his Stick Man

Tazmeen (Y6)

Space poem

To see more of the children’s splendid work go to:

Home Learning Gallery

If you would like to send pictures of your children’s work, please send these to:

ict@benjonson.towerhamlets.sch.uk

Add the name and age of your child and remember that if the picture shows your child(ren), school must have your parental  consent to publish these on our school website.

If you want to add some more information as some of the parents did above,  we could even include this in our next BJblog post.

 

The Covid19 board game

You might have seen some of the board games designed and made by the children during our Space themed week (See Matt’s first BJblog post), but we definitely have to share this one with you all.

This is Amal’s board game. It’s a revamp of snakes and ladders into a Corona virus and ladders and it actually made us all smile.  A good and interesting way of learning about the virus. Thank you Amal and her dad, for sharing it with us.

Matt’s first BJblog post.

Dear Ben Jonson,

Can you believe it has been almost 8 weeks since schools closed for most children? What a long time it feels – longer than the summer holidays! I am thinking of you all. I hope you and your families are all healthy and happy. I have spoken to most of the children in Coral Class on the phone and generally everyone is well, but a little bored. I completely empathise with this feeling, as I am feeling it too. Having said this, thankfully the weather is very nice at the moment.

What are you doing to keep busy in lock down? Have you completed the new outdoor learning yet? If not, please do check it out! Go to the Ben Jonson Primary home page, click the BIG, YELLOW home learning link, find your year group and click ‘Outdoor Learning’ in ‘Week 7 Activities’. Getting outside is a crucial ingredient for overall health; it triggers the body’s production of vitamin D, lowers high blood pressure, helps muscles and improves brain function.

Last week I went into school on Monday and Thursday to look after the few children that are continuing to go in. It was lovely to see them all, and catch up with the adults too. We focused on making and creating. Check out the pictures and descriptions below. If you want, you could try and make similar things at home too.

On Monday, we made Paper Mache Space Helmets. This was a big project that took a couple of days. The results speak for themselves though, look how fantasy they looked at the end! If you fancy making your own, there are step-by-step instructions with pictures on the hobby craft website. Click the link below.

https://www.hobbycraft.co.uk/ideas/kids/how-to-make-a-space-helmet

On Thursday morning, we were animators with a simple Stop Motion app. The app is free to download from the Apple Store; it’s called ‘I can animate Lite’. It was a really fun activity that only requires a tablet/iPad and some plasticine. If you don’t have plasticine at home, you could use Play-Doh, toys like Lego or leaves from the outdoors. As you can see from the pictures, we also made a little studio with a large cardboard box and spare paper.

This activity needs time and a few helpers. If your family members are available (brothers and sisters are very useful), get them involved too. Give them specific roles like director, camera controller, set and props maker.

The key to this activity is patience – the more pictures you take (they are also called frames), the better your animation movie will be. The best way of demonstrating this is to download the app and have a play around with it.

For more information, have a look at the Tate Kids website. There are simple instructions and lots of great ideas. https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/make/art-technology/be-animator

On Thursday afternoon, we finished off making board games. Guy started this with the children – I can’t take the credit for this great idea! The children thought about their favourite board games like Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly and Chess. Using these ideas are inspiration, they made their own games out of cardboard. The theme in school was all about space. Check out the pictures below to see what they came up with.

Looking forward to seeing you all soon.

Best wishes,

Matt

Reading comprehension using Frogplay.

This week, some of the Home Learning tasks in Frogplay will be comprehension. You will need to download a text first as instructed in the help video.  This is how:

The download button is in the right-hand corner, next to the help video button.

Open the file and it will appear as an Adobe file   at the bottom of your screen.

A way to help with the comprehension is to have the text downloaded and printed or showing on the screen with the questions, rather than switching between screens. This is called Split screen. There are many YouTube videos showing you how to split screens in Windows or Mac and even on a tablet (Split view and Active multi window).

 

Help videos in Frogplay.

The video option will also you give you an explanation about comprehension and some tips.

Here are some more tips:

1. Read aloud to an adult or older brother or sister. This makes you go slower, which gives you more time to understand what you read and in turn improves reading comprehension. Plus, you’re not only seeing the words — you’re hearing them, too! You can also take turns reading aloud.
2. Reread to build fluency. To gain meaning from text and encourage reading comprehension, you need to read quickly and smoothly — a skill known as fluency.

Rereading gives you a practice at decoding words quickly, so you’ll become more fluent in reading comprehension.

3. Talk about what you’re reading. Ask your reading partner, the adult or older brother or sister, about words and sentences you don’t understand, before starting the comprehension activity.

This post can also be viewed as an PDF on the Computing Home Learning page.