Possibly the most common conversation starter outside the school gates at pick up, ‘What did you do at school today?’ and more than likely the most common response you get from your child is, ‘Nothing.’ or worse still a shrug of the shoulders.
We feel your pain and we can assure you that your child has not sat the entire school day doing nothing. In fact, your child has been kept busy from the moment they entered the building to the moment they leave the school gates at 3.30pm.
We thought we’d give you an insight as to how the school day is structured so conversations, hopefully, can flow more easily.
What did you do at school today?
A typical Riverview Junior School day
8.40 – 9.00 Doors open. The children come into school and hang their coats and bags up in the cloakrooms, lunchboxes are placed on the trolleys ready for lunchtime and water bottles are taken into the classroom and placed in their designated area. The children settle at their desks, take out their reading book and sit quietly whilst the teacher calls the register and asks for lunch preferences.
9.00 – 10.00 Maths time. The first hour of the day is dedicated to learning maths. Lessons are structured with an initial explanation from the teacher and then exercises where the children get to have a go. Each term parents can access the newsletters sent out for each year group on our website to stay up to date with what the class will be learning throughout the year.
10.00 – 10.15 Lower school break. Years 3 and 4 are the first to go to play and unless it is raining, the school policy is to get them outside to let off steam! There is a staff rota of who is on playground duty and each area of the playground is supervised. The upper school breaks from 10.15 – 10.30
10.15 – 10.45 Guided Reading. This part of our day is dedicated to reading and comprehension. The children will be working on a book or an extract from a book and once read, they will find questions to answer and other activities to complete. This exercise not only looks into how the child has understood the reading and is able to respond to the questions but also will focus on their punctuation and grammar, picking up any areas that may need a stronger focus.
10.45 – 12.00 English. Each term the class will be following a new project together. They will read through it many times until they have a thorough understanding of what happens. They study the setting, the emotions of the characters and they look into how the story opens, how the author keeps them entertained. Punctuation and grammar are a fundamental part of the lesson too. The children will complete lots of ‘shared writes’ during the first weeks leading up to a ‘warm write’ around the end of week 3. The term is completed with a ‘hot write’, where each child writes independently everything they can remember in their best handwriting.
12.00 – 1.00 Lunch. The lower school eat first in the hall where our fabulous team of dinner ladies are waiting to look after them. Upper school start to make their way to the hall at 12.15. Long tables are set out to accommodate each class, at one end the places are set for those choosing to eat school dinners and the children with packed lunches sit in the remaining free spaces. Once they have eaten their meals, it’s off out to play in the playground under the careful watch of our dinner ladies.
1.10 – 2.45 After the midday registration various subjects fill the timetable, science, games, RE, Spanish, Music and ICT are some examples. PE and Games are also afternoon subjects.
2.50 or 3.00 Assembly on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. This is where Mr Kendall speaks to us and hands out Core Value wristbands, Ninja Maths wristbands and Achievement and Attitude certificates.
3.30 Hometime.
We realise that, even with this extensive knowledge of how the school day runs at Riverview Juniors, it may not be enough to get your child to engage with you so, we came up with a few conversation starters for you to try…
How was your day? Conversation starters
- What made you smile today?
- Who did you sit with at lunch today?
- Tell me something you know today that you didn’t know yesterday.
- If you could change one thing about your day, what would it be?
We’d love to hear if you managed to spark a conversation on the way home, let us know in the comments below and if you have any to add to our list then pass them on!
Blog Club is held on a Monday evening and is a group of about 20 pupils from Riverview Junior School who choose their own content and with the help of the teachers, create blog posts for you to read.
I love the conversation starters! Now use them on my children and are starting to talk about their day. Thankyou!
This is brilliant! Thank you. As a brand new mum to the school it is just what I needed to help me fully engage with Samuel and to get to grips with his new routine. I’m all signed up to receive more great blogs .