PfS on the Road with Towcester Year 5 and 6
Anna Letts and Helena Weedon from Northants Study Centres’ project team are working at the school every Tuesday of the Autumn term with Ravens and Wrenn classes. They are using PfS style activities to raise literacy, numeracy and ICT levels as well as improve confidence and self esteem. School HLTAs (higher level teaching assistants) Mrs Goodman and Mrs Johnson are supporting this project and will be skill sharing to learn how to deliver the lessons in future.
To see the project on the Northampton Town FC website, click here
For the school’s website, click here
WEEK SEVEN
This week was all about newspaper headlines. Children used the computers to write short match reports/news articles about a headline they chose. They could be as amusing and imaginative as they liked, and we came up with some cracking stories. They tried hard to make them exciting, use correct punctuation and spelling, as well as sports terminology. They also had to include 6 key/high frequency words in their story. This proved tricky and sometimes resulted in putting the words in but not concentrating on their meaning. The classes used dictionaries to find out what some of the words meant and thought hard about how to relate them to a sports article. There were many great examples, stories that were very exciting, descriptive and filled with action.
WEEK SIX
In ICT, children used their internet research skills to compile a fact sheet about a premiership football team and it’s home city. They had to find out key facts on: population, accent, city logo, squad, team colours/kit, famous citizens, sports facilities, culture, famous sights….. and so on. The children made some great powerpoints, copying and pasting text and images. The skill was to make the information concise, we did not want lots of text which they had not read or understood.
In the classroom, students worked in pairs to do football geography. They used atlas’ to place all the teams in the premiership onto a map of the UK. They had to use the atlas’ index to help them as well as reading the team cards carefully, as there is no such place as ‘Arsenal’ or ‘Aston Villa’! As well as there being not enough crosses on the map for the amount of teams. Some cities have several teams.
Both Ravens and Wrens enjoyed the geography work and liked relating it to football.
WEEK FIVE
As this week is anti-racism week nationally, (October 20-25th) our classes watched a DVD called ‘Show Racism the Red Card’. This is a national campaign and every football club across the country will have its own slogan and policy, including ‘Stand Up Speak Up’, ‘Tackle Racism’ and ‘Let’s kick racism out of football’. This DVD features famous players such as Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole and Thierry Henry talking about racist incidents in football and their experiences.
After a group discussion about racism and stadium policies, children used the ICT to design a poster promoting anti-racism. They had to think of their own slogan, insert and manipulate pictures and explain why racism must be banished. They could also outline the action that they would take if anyone (fans and players alike) was heard being racist in a stadium. There were some really good ideas and hard-hitting posters.
Wrens then worked on the ‘Away Game’ maths activity (see week 4 below) as well as doing an ‘opposites’ crossword focussing on language and vocabulary. They also hold the title for the highest number of words found in a player’s name when they worked on anagrams of ‘Manchester United’ and ‘Rio Ferdinand’.
Helena Weedon did some ‘Relax Kids’ activities with Wrens. To hear more about these, check out our related page.
Ravens completed a programme trail joint literacy and numeracy activity. They used NTFC programme to find information to fit a crossword. To find the pages they had to solve maths clues.
WEEK FOUR
In the morning Ravens worked very hard planning an away game for the Cobblers.They used their maths skills to work out how much petrol would be used and then used their travel agent skills to choose a hotel with the correct facilities.
There was much discussion about the correct meal a footballer should have before the match which would give him enough energy to play a 90 minute game. Their maths skills were used once again to cost the price of the meals.
In the afternoon Wrens produced some excellent ICT work on the five senses and came up with some brilliant ideas about how the senses would be used by the cricket players.
Wrens used their maths skills in a number alphabet activity looking for the pupil whose names scored the highest. They had to do some pretty tricky sums and even had to use their spelling skills to find an animal which would score the highest. Lots of cheating was going on as the children chose the longest words they could for animals, flowers, cities, teams. (Chicken tikka masala and Tyrannosaurus Rex indeed!)
WEEK THREE
Each week students from both classes will be taking an ICT lesson as part of ‘PfS on the Road’. One of the project’s aims is to raise levels of achievement in ICT. Children uses sporting photos to write newspaper style captions and speech bubbles on a powerpoint presentation. They had to think of a sentence or phrase to sum up the action in the photo in an exciting way. We talked about adjectives and sporting terminology and how to make boring sentences more interesting. Language such as ‘Goalkeeper dives sensationally for the storming ball”, “Cobblers clebrate an amazingly powerful goal” and “Arsenal foul causes ref to protest big style” was commonplace. The classes soon got the hang of newspaper conventions and used the photos of Saints, Cobblers, Steelbacks and Premiership players in action to be very creative. On the ICT side, they honed their skills in using powerpoint, wordart, speech bubbles and speech marks, text boxes, test, font, colour, background and size. Each pair of children ended up with several sports photos with enticing captions.
Next the pupils took part in a listening and note taking exercise (called ‘kit bag’) whereby they listened to a talk about the Northants County Cricket equipment. They discussed how to write notes (study skills) and listened out for key information on materials, health and safety, position worn by, comfort, sponsorship, flexibility, shape and cost. The helmet, wicket keeping pads and gloves, batting pads and gloves, bat, shoes and thigh pad were examined, with children having the opportunity to try them on afterwards. There were many intelligent questions raised and various class members knew more about cricket equipment than professional cricketers it seems!
Using their copious notes, children then designed a cricket shop advert detailing why people should buy their items. They looked at examples of sports adverts and slogans and thought of their own. Many opted for the ‘BOGOFFS’ (buy one get one free) offers, as well as enticing prospective buyers with detailed information about comfort and flexibility. We had lots of claims such as “Wear out helmet and you’ll always be safe”, “Be one of the team, buy our batting pads” and “Come to the cricket warehouse, we have the best equipment in the world”! People got quiet arty and made the posters/adverts stand out with colour, lettering and pictures.
In between all this study support, Helena Weedon did a ‘Relax Kids’ session, which got everyone out their chairs, brains in gear (a bit like brain gym) and faces and bodies relaxed. These ‘brain breaks’ are really good for having a rest from working, gives the body a chance to stretch and move around as well as re-energising the mind.
WEEK TWO
This week was all about fantasy football with a mix of literacy and numeracy. Students acted as football team managers and had to choose premiership players, only being allowed to spend £50million. As they found, this wasn’t a lot if they wanted all the best players, they had to chop and change quite a few times. Many got into ‘debt’ by several million!
They had to mind map on the whiteboard as a class what attributes are required of a footballer, including skills, personality, approach to media and attitude. We discussed what makes a manager more likely to choose them or not.
Once all the players were chosen, children had to write paragraphs about each one, explaining their choice and why they liked them, using the ideas mind mapped earlier. They had to make sure their opinions would stand up in a boardroom.Some wrote player profiles, covering personal information, career history and football skills. This was scanned from the internet or printed profiles.
Then, shock of shocks, every fantasy team got relegated and dropped from the Premiership to the Championship. Each pupil’s club and team lost £30million and had to start sacking some of their expensive players. They could replace these with famous people, their friends and family, school teachers and others. (ie: Superman, pet dog, Lisa Simpson, Leona Lewis) 
Once again, as manager, they had to explain their choices.
As an arty ‘brain break’, we made origami T Shirts and decorated them with a personalised logo, sponsor and number.
WEEK ONE:
As well as ice breakers, ‘brain-breaks’ and getting to know you activities, the children worked hard on their mental numeracy skills. They played maths snap, using playing cards and adding/subtracting/multiplication skills, in pairs. This proved very energetic and vocal, shouting out the answers.
Children worked together using Cobblers squad numbers to solve sums. This can be difficult as teams are quite large with ‘too many cooks’! They got the hang of it in the end and their teamwork improved.
A sports themed acrostic poem and self esteem questionnaire finished the session. All children were very responsive and enjoyed themselves. Hopefully they will realise that learning is fun and that the skills they do in these lessons will help them in their normal school ones.
Towcester Primary at Silverstone Study Centre
As a follow up to the PfS on the Road project in school, year 6 students visited Silverstone Study Centre on 17th and 18th May 08. The centre manager Peter Ford led the day, assisted by PfS Curriculum Practitioner Anna Letts, Sponne Literacy co-ordinator Mrs Button and Linda.
Warm up introduction activities to get the brains in gear included ordering racing driver dates of birth and starting a centre/school web blog with a ‘Who am I?’ theme. Children had to come up with interesting nouns to describe themselves as. To see their work, see link below.
The group took the minibus to the Silverstone Track home strait to watch some motorbike racing. Track side maths involved timing the superbikes on their laps, converting them to miles per hour speeds and comparing with track bests set by Schumacher.
This task was difficult to do, especially keeping an eye out for the right biker as they all looked the same and whizzed past in an instant with average speeds of 145 mph. There was a minor accident on the track which called for an ambulance.
The group then visited an area of the track that oversees several bends. Here the children could watch the racers for longer and time how long they could see them for. They compared the biker’s speeds around corners with that of the home strait. A lot of difference! One biker even waved mid corner!
Back in the study centre, children used the applemac laptops and the ‘photobooth’ programme to take creative photos of themselves, use an internet based photo editing programme to add text captions (preferably witty or amusing) and add to the centre’s live web blogs. The students took to blogging quickly and competently and saw behind the scenes of a website. See the results below:
Next it was on to another area of the Silverstone track: the mechanics garages. Here we were able to look around the garages at all the expensive and state of the art cars used in racing; from lotus’ to ferarris’. Peter talked about the various design mechanisms on the cars and students answered questions about racing, accidents, road testing and tyres. Outside they saw the rather ordinary Ford focus car that is used for the “Silverstone Drive Experience” where people pay to drive the car on a raised chassey that can’t crash to experience skidding an wet road conditions.
Great days were had by all and the children were engaged, enthusiastic and motivated at all times. Their behaviour, attention, concentration and listening skills were superb and they are a credit to the school.
For further information on the Silverstone Study Centre see link below:
Classroom based sports work in school
For 5 weeks, year 6 pupils at Towcester Primary took part in PfS lessons with PfS teacher Anna Letts. Started in January, year 6 will have 5 mornings of english and maths sports based work along the ‘PfS on the Road’ premise.
Students already attend Silverstone Study Centre as part of the Sponne Cluster of schools, the literacy consultant of which is Shirley Button who has organised this project.
Teacher Belinda Walton says “This is an exciting and innovative approach to learning. The children were motivated and learning, even the reluctant learners.”
PfS teacher Anna Letts says “I have been most impressed with the children at St Lawrence, they always try their hardest and seem really into sport based learning. They are always enthusiastic and asked me to teach more maths using football statistics. They work well in pairs and groups and are always willing to help one another and share their knowledge about different sports, players, clubs and subjects.”
The first week (31.1.07) the children wrote some sports poetry: an acrostic and a ’sport and the 5 senses’ poem based around what a player or manager or spectator or ball would see, hear feel… The result was some excellent emotive and inventive work, crammed with exciting adjectives. They read some exisiting poems ‘Star Performer’ and ‘Girl Goalie’ to get the idea of what form poems can take, not always rhyming.
Students also showed some great teamwork when it came to the cricket player maths cards. They worked together to create their own sums to test each other.
Last week children used statistics from the Rugby World Cup 2007 to solve maths equations: fractions, percentages, decimals and word problems. They also calculated area and perimetre of various sports pitches and courts. Their literacy lesson was to write a persuasive letter to the organisers of the world cup to let England hold the next tournament in 2015. They worked in groups to thought-share and mindmap their ideas then turned these into sentences. This session coincided with national book day so children were dressed up in all sorts of weird and wonderful costumes of various fictional characters.
In previous weeks, year 6 have done ‘Premier places’ geography; using atlas’ to find out where each premiership football team belongs on a map of the UK.
Anna brought in cricket equipment from Northants cricket club and the students took notes about safety, materials, cricket players and sponsorship. They tried the batting pads, helmet, gloves, wicket keeper pads and thigh pads on.
The final week (13.3.08) was spent on some literacy work analysing sports headlines from newspapers and creative writing using key words. Students had to write an article or match report based on the headline and what it led them to think and their imagination.
The numeracy lesson involved the ‘Double Dice’ game where small groups threw dice to answer mental maths questions. Each right answer earns a football counter. Some groups got onto the spelling version.
In the school’s ICT suite, children wrote up their headlines work as well as work from previous weeks such as: sports poetry, captions and acrostics.
Anti-racism in sport was discussed and some posters designed. Children looked at national campaigns such as “Show racism the red card” and “Let’s kick racism out of football.”
Students Comments on this project:
Richard Parker: “The lessons are different , fun and interesting. It makes you think what you have to do. I liked the maths better but still did the english.”
Jake Dairy: “It is fun because it’s new. We played fun games in maths.”
Emma Hooper: “I think the lessons were fun because I was around my friends. Working together using literacy and numeracy in a different way.”
Laura Sandham “You use different skills. Some people are good at different subjects and we can help each other”
Jack Shakeshaft “Its really good, you don’t have to listen for ages. I learnt that maths is fun”
Libby Connelly “These lessons are good because we do different things.”
Lawrence Benham “It was fun, you get to write about stuff you enjoy. You do games for literacy and maths.”
Philip Lymm “I have learnt where football team are in geography. I liked doing the brain gym (ABC arms in the air)”
Sophie Welch “It’s fun because you can work with your friends. We learnt a lot about sport.”
Rhascia Pitts “These lessons aren’t boring, we have fun.”
Georgia “Its good, I liked it”
Helen Buckley “Its more fun than normal lessons”
Ben Newlyn “I wouldn’t have thought it’s learning.”
For more on the school: http://www.towcesterprimary.northants.sch.uk/