News
Newsletter for the week ending 28th September
Please read on to find out what has been happening in and around school this week, including a trip to Exmoor Zoo for Key Stage 1..!
AROUND AND ABOUT THE VILLAGE
West Buckland School are hosting an Activity and Open Day on Saturday 29th September at 9.30am and Year 7 Entrance Assessment days commence in November, first one being Saturday 24th November. For more information please call 01598 760178 or email admissions@westbuckland.com
AROUND THE SCHOOL
GOVERNOR NEWS
A busy couple of weeks with the Full Governing Body and the Resources and Teaching and Learning committees all meeting. The meetings following a cycle of required content that includes ratfiying certain policies, progress on school priorities and an evaluation of school progress. Copies of committe minutes are available upon request and more detail about our governing body can be found in the section School Life on our website.
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in FSU we have looked at the ‘Super’ Superheroes – Super Daisy, Superworm and Superman. We have made collages of Super Daisy and on Thursday we went to The Jungle to make our own Superworms and took them on an adventure. We also thought about what else Superworm could be used for. We have painted pictures of Superman, found out about his powers and written about our favourite Superhero so far. We also enjoyed our very sunny walk down to the Library to change our books.
Year 1 had a great day at Exmoor Zoo on Tuesday. We learnt about the different groups of animals, such as mammals, reptiles and birds. We stroked a meerkat, touched a snake and watched an owl fly. As well as looking at lots of exciting animals. We have written a recount of our day at the zoo. We have also planned and written our final versions of Dear Zoo. In Maths we have learnt about the less than, greater than and equal to symbols and used them to compare numbers. To help us learn about this we watched the Numberblocks episode with Blockzilla. Our Philosophy session used the story ‘Not Now Bernard’ and we discussed the question ‘Why did Mum and Dad ignore Bernanrd?’.
The highlight of the week for Lundy Puffins was the trip to Exmoor Zoo in the sunshine. Everyone was very well behaved and had a great time looking at all the different animals. During the education session, they were able to stroke a meerkat, touch a snake and watch a tawny owl fly over their heads across the room. Thank you very much to our parent helpers for joining us on the trip. In English, they have continued with the Traction Man story and written about new adventures he could get up to in the classroom. In Maths, they have been counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. Please practise over the weekend, as they will be doing more counting next week. For P4C this week they read the book ‘Not now, Bernard’. The question they have chosen to discuss is: Why did the mum and dad not listen to Bernard?
Seahunter have had a busy week, finishing units of Maths and English work. In Maths, they demonstrated their place value knowledge well and we were particularly impressed by their ability to explain their thinking and reasoning. In English, we reached the end of our ‘How to be a…’ unit, culminating in a fantastic poetry day on Wednesday. The children came dressed in some very impressive costumes including a mad scientist, several rockstars, a mermaid and some artists. They looked fantastic and were able to use their costumes to inspire some great poetry writing. The children’s work will be available to read at the writing wall in the main building. In philosophy we looked at how families are all different and the children were able to talk about how it is important to respect one another and accept our differences.
HMS Echo have been writing our class story ‘Monkey Mail’ to show what they have learnt during their English unit ‘Meerkat Mail’. The children will be creating their own versions of the story at the start of next week. In Maths the children have learnt how to place numbers on a number line up to 10,000, how to estimate where to place numbers on a number line and practised counting in 10s, 100s, 1000s and 25s. We have been continuing to practise our times tables through songs and on the Times Table Rockstars online game. The class h had an art morning creating excellent collages of Ancient Greek mythical creatures which will be on display at the beginning of next half term! For R.E the children had Reverend Derek Arnold visit on Wednesday afternoon to speak to them about Jesus’s teachings influencing his actions. The children came up with really good questions for him!
This week in Year 5 we have been learning about how to round in maths to the nearest 10 100 1000 10000 100000 so we can estimate the answers to number problems. During English we have been creating our monsters that will be featured in our Anglo-Saxon storyies based on the book about the Grendel and Beowulf. In art we made a back ground for our people the people were made from felt, tin-foil and gold netting with pva glue to stick the materials on. In science we are trying to carry out an experiment about who can make the coldest lunchbox. We used gym equipment to play on and we learnt a lot of safety skills about it. Remember about the Big Bang SOE3 and remember the swimming on Mondays. Written by our class reporters.
This week, in Year 6, we have started to write up our Macbeth stories for a final book. We are writing from a different characters’ points of view. We have also started long multiplication and did some more fractions work. In topic, our class have written about Anne Boleyn who was Henry VIII’s second wife. In science, we have looked at a chart of heart rates when you find your pulse, do different exercises and see how our ‘beats per minute’ changes. In reading, we have finished reading Hamlet and are now reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Tempest. We have been learning about Moses as part of our RE.
Reminder to Parents: Secondary school open days/evenings have now finished. Please make sure you complete your child’s online application for your chosen secondary school soon. Deadline is the end of October.
Have a lovely weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the staff and children
