⭕ Circles, Crews & Connections ⭕

27th August 2026Laura Parsons

This week in Class Five, we spent some time thinking about something that might seem very simple… circles.

But we quickly discovered that circles can be pretty powerful.

A circle has no beginning and no end. It is strong, connected and continuous. And, of course, circles are a big part of life in our crew. Every day, we circle up together — to listen, share, celebrate, solve problems and make decisions. There is something special about sitting in a circle because everyone is part of it. There is no “front” or “back” and nobody is left out.

Our guiding question this week has been:

Does crew stop at the school gate?

Today, we started to explore that question by thinking about all the different crews we belong to outside of school.

The children came up with an amazing range of crews — football teams, families, gymnastics clubs, church groups, dance groups, friendship groups and much more. We organised ourselves into our different crews and then started to notice something really interesting…

Our crews overlap!

We might belong to different football teams, different families or different clubs, but we often had people in common. We discovered that although we are all wonderfully different, we actually have lots in common with one another.

This led us to think about how we behave in our different crews. Do we act differently depending on which crew we are in? Or do the things that make us us follow us wherever we go?

We thought about our character traits and realised that being kind, respectful, courageous, honest or compassionate doesn’t just belong in the classroom. These are qualities we carry with us into all of our crews.

So perhaps crew really doesn’t stop at the school gate…

In the afternoon, we took our circle thinking into our art.

We looked at the work of Wassily Kandinsky and noticed that he used circles again and again in his artwork. We explored his use of colour, shape and pattern before setting off to create our own Kandinsky-inspired pieces.

This time, we created trees made from circles, bringing together our ideas about connection, growth and belonging with our love of circles. ⭕🌳

It was lovely to see the children begin the day thinking about a simple shape and finish it thinking about something much bigger:

Who are my crews? Where do I belong? What do I bring to each crew? And how are we all connected?

Perhaps our circles aren’t just something we sit in after all… ❤️

Class Six Book Fairies 📚🧚

27th August 2026Lauren Gate

This week Class Six have been thinking about the question “does Crew stop at the school gates?”. As part of this, we have been thinking about what we can do to help our local community and we decided we were going to be Book Fairies!

All week the children have been working really hard. They have been showing respect when listening to the stories and even spent time designing and redrafting their very own Book Fairies.

This morning we have been out on a walk around Norton hiding lots of books! If you are out and about around Norton today, or even walking home from school, make sure you keep an eye out for a book to take home and read!

Our First Community Meeting 🌟

26th August 2026Laura Parsons

What a beautiful way to begin our first Community Meeting together! Our children sat so beautifully, listening carefully and modelling our character trait of respect. It was lovely to see them showing each other that they were ready to listen, learn and share.

We shared the wonderful story Try, which reminds us that things don’t always work the first time. The message is simple but powerful: when something feels difficult, we don’t have to give up — we can keep trying, learn from what happens and have another go. 🌱

This led us into a conversation about heroes. At first, our heroes were the ones we might expect — Hulk, Superman and other superheroes with incredible powers! 🦸‍♂️🦸‍♀️

But then our thinking began to change…

We wondered: Does a hero have to have superpowers?

Could someone be a hero because they are kind? Because they help someone? Because they keep going when something is tricky? Because they stand up for someone else? Because they make a difference in their community?

And perhaps most importantly… could we be heroes too? 💛

It was wonderful to watch the children move from thinking about heroes as characters with superpowers to recognising that ordinary people can do extraordinary things through their choices, their courage, their kindness and the way they look after others.

What a lovely first Community Meeting — and what a brilliant start to our year together. 🌟

🌟 Welcome to Class Five! 🌟

24th August 2026Laura Parsons

What a first day! We have had such a busy, exciting and joyful start to our new school year, and it has been wonderful to see the children settling into Class Five, getting to know one another and beginning to discover what kind of crew we are going to be.

🔐 Our Class Five Time Capsule

We began our day in our Crews, before starting something very special — our Class Five Time Capsule!

We wanted to capture a little snapshot of who we are right now, on the very first day of our new school year.

Each child created their own information sheet, telling us about some of their favourite things, what they enjoy, what they are good at and what they would like to get better at this year. We also took a handprint and measured each child’s height using a piece of wool.

All of these precious pieces are now going into our time capsule, ready to be sealed away until the last day of school.

We wonder…

How much will we have changed by the time we open it? ❤️

Will our favourite things still be our favourites? Will we have grown taller? Will we still enjoy the same things? What will we have learned? And, perhaps most importantly, who will we have become?

We can’t wait to find out!

🧚 Does Crew stop at the school gates?

We have also started thinking about our first week back question:

“Does Crew stop at the school gates?”

This is a question that we will keep coming back to throughout the week as we explore what it really means to be part of a crew and how we can look after and support one another both in school and beyond.

Today, we began designing our very own Book Fairies to help us explore this question. Our Book Fairies are going to have an important job to do, and we can’t wait to see where this learning takes us!

🧚📚 Keep checking our blog throughout the week to find out more…

👀 Our Classroom: Look, Sound & Feel

We then spent some time thinking about something really important:

What do we want our classroom to LOOK like?
What do we want our classroom to SOUND like?
What do we want our classroom to FEEL like?

We talked about what would help everyone to feel happy, safe, included and ready to learn. We thought carefully about how the choices we make and the way we treat one another can help us create the kind of classroom we all want to be part of.

There were some fantastic ideas, and we are going to keep building on these throughout our first week together.

🔎 The Mysterious Envelope…

And then, after our afternoon break, something very mysterious happened…

We discovered a mysterious envelope waiting for us!

Inside was a message telling us that something special had been hidden in our classroom — but there was a problem…

It could only be found if we worked together as a CREW!

And so began our very first Class Five Treasure Hunt!

We had five challenges to complete: building the tallest tower we could, taking part in some very silly charades, keeping a balloon off the floor, spotting what had changed in our classroom and completing a very special kindness challenge.

There was lots of laughter, lots of teamwork and lots of excitement as we worked our way through the challenges.

Most importantly, the children were already showing us what we had been talking about all day:

Listen carefully.
Help each other.
Have fun!

After completing all of the challenges, we discovered our final clue…

WE ARE CREW! ❤️

What a perfect way to finish our first day together.

We ended the day knowing a little more about each other, having shared lots of smiles and laughter, and already beginning to build the classroom community we hope Class Five will become.

Day One was pretty special.

And this is only the beginning… ✨

Celebrating Our Learning

2nd July 2026Claire Goodyer

In crew this week, our Year 1 children have been busy preparing for their Student-Led Conferences by practising how to share their learning with confidence. They spent time showing their chosen pieces of work to their friends, explaining what they had learned and why they were particularly proud of each piece.

The children worked hard to speak clearly, listen carefully to one another and celebrate each other’s achievements. It was wonderful to see their growing confidence as they reflected on their progress and practised talking about their learning. We are so proud of the enthusiasm and pride they have shown, and we look forward to seeing them share their beautiful work with their families next week!

Crew Nightingale Hunt for a Rainbow in the Rain!

11th June 2026Claire Goodyer

The rain certainly didn’t stop Crew Nightingale from enjoying their outdoor learning this week!

Wrapped up and armed with their colour charts, our Year 1 crew set off on a colourful adventure around the playground. Their challenge was to find natural and man-made objects that matched each colour on their chart. From bright green leaves and brown tree bark to colourful flowers, the children became excellent colour detectives.

It felt especially fitting that we were hunting for the colours of the rainbow whilst exploring in the rain! Although the sun didn’t appear to create a real rainbow for us, the children discovered plenty of rainbow colours all around them.

The activity encouraged careful observation, teamwork and discussion as the children shared their discoveries with one another. It was wonderful to see their enthusiasm and determination, even with the drizzle falling around them.

In Crew Nightingale, we know that learning can happen anywhere, and our outdoor sessions with Mrs Jackson provide fantastic opportunities to explore, investigate and connect with the world around us. The rain simply added an extra layer of adventure to our day!

Well done, Crew Nightingale, for embracing the weather and becoming brilliant rainbow hunters!

Crew Parkinson: Building Resilience Through Tangrams!

10th June 2026Laura Parsons

Resilience was out in full force this morning in Crew Parkinson!

Our children were challenged to create different animals using tangram puzzles. It wasn’t always easy, and there were plenty of moments where we had to persevere, rethink our ideas and try a different approach. The children showed fantastic determination as they grappled with the challenge and refused to give up when the pieces didn’t quite fit the first time.

Once everyone had chosen their favourite animal design, we set about transforming it into our own tangram puzzle. The children carefully added colour and features to bring their creations to life, thinking about how they could make them both attractive and challenging for others to solve.

Next week, we’ll be sharing our puzzles with our crew mates and putting each other’s problem-solving skills to the test. We can’t wait to see who can crack the challenges that have been created!

A wonderful morning of creativity, perseverance and teamwork—well done, Crew Parkinson! 🧩✨

“Oh that’s rubbish!”

12th May 2026Sarah Winkley

During our first week of case study one “How can we help save the ocean?” Nursery were outraged to discover that someone had been into Nursery and thrown rubbish, mainly plastic, all over our environment. The children were totally hooked into the case study immediately and shared some of their thoughts about how could we play and thrive in this environment? How did all of the rubbish make us feel? “Sad”, “Angry”, “Messy”, “Cluttered”, “Dirty”, “Shocked”, “Fuming”, “Cross”, “Upset” were some of the words that the children used.

They then drew faces using different emotions to share their feelings. Some children attempted to write initial sounds of feeling words.

This led to us introducing our first key text “The Odd Fish” by Naomi Jones. A story about a fish who finds a lonely “odd fish” (a plastic bottle) who hasn’t got a family of it’s own and they go on a journey to find the odd fishes family, only to find more rubbish. We consolidated our learning by immersing our water tray and sea creatures in plastic. The children attempted to help the animals by putting all of the rubbish into a bin.

On “Wise Wednesday” the children went on a gallery walk to observes real life pictures of creatures trapped, stuck and tangled in plastic. From this the children were guided to created an anchor chart of all the reasons why plastic is not good for our seas and the environment.

As part of our thoughtful Thursday Crew we thought about ways in which we could help the creatures, by thinking about getting rid of the plastic and rubbish properly. The children were introduced to recycling and were shown how to sort materials and put them into the correct recycling bins. The children each had a turn at this and did a great job.

Sleep & Feeling Ready – Supporting Healthy Routines in KS1

6th May 2026Laura Parsons

This week in our Key Stage 1 community meeting, we explored another important part of our guiding question: How can I be the healthiest version of me?

Our focus was on something simple but powerful—sleep—and how it helps our brains and bodies feel ready for the day ahead.

Why Sleep Matters

We began by thinking about how it feels when we are really tired. The children shared lots of honest and relatable ideas—feeling grumpy, slow, a little bit silly, and sometimes finding it hard to concentrate.

This helped us understand an important message:

Sleep helps our brains and bodies get ready for a new day.

Tired vs Well-Rested

To bring this to life, we acted out two different learners:

  • One who was tired—yawning, not listening, struggling to focus
  • One who was well-rested—standing tall, smiling, ready to learn

The children quickly noticed the difference and were able to explain why sleep helps us to be focused, kind, and ready for school.

What Happens When We Sleep?

We talked about what sleep does for our bodies in a simple, child-friendly way:

  • Helps our brain grow and learn
  • Supports our mood (less grumpy!)
  • Gives us energy
  • Keeps our bodies healthy

We described sleep as a way of recharging our brains—just like an iPad charging overnight!

Building Healthy Bedtime Habits

We then discussed what helps us get a good night’s sleep. The children shared some fantastic ideas, including:

  • Having a calm bedtime routine (such as a bath or story) 
  • Turning off screens before bed 
  • Going to bed at a similar time each night 
  • Creating a calm, quiet space 

It was lovely to hear how many children already have positive routines in place.

A Moment of Calm

We finished by practising a simple breathing technique to help our bodies feel calm and ready:

  • Breathe in slowly
  • Hold
  • Breathe out gently

This is something the children can use at home as part of their bedtime routine or whenever they need a moment to reset.

Our Key Message

We reminded the children that sleep is one of the best ways to help us feel ready for school. When we are well-rested, we can learn better, feel happier, and be the best version of ourselves.

We were so impressed with how thoughtfully the children engaged in this conversation. Why not ask your child what helps them feel ready for school—you might discover some great ideas to try at home together!

Thank you for your continued support.