News
Last newsletter for the half term
All classes have learnt about and aspects of our environment this half term and this week has involved the children sharing what they have learnt, including events such as an Eco themed harvest festival at St Mary’s Church from years 3-6 and children in years 1 an 2 sharing everything they have learnt about bees. Do you know how to make a Bee Bomb or what a Waggle Dance is? If not, ask anyone in years 1 and 2!
I’ve taken children to two events the past couple of days and must say how inspirational they have been. Firstly, attending an environment Expo and being stunned by both the knowledge and passion of young children in this area for caring for their environment. Secondly, taking children to a VERY wet and cold cross country event today and not one moan.
All in all a great way to end a half term!
AROUND AND ABOUT THE SCHOOL
Ear Rings
Please note that staff are no longer permitted to tape over a pupil’s ear rings during PE or other activities, so if a child attends school wearing ear rings that are not possible to remove any related injury is the responsibility of the parents / carers.
Communication
Please ensure that we always have your current contact details, including address, email and all telephione numbers. Thank you.
AROUND AND ABOUT THE CLASSES
This week in FSU we have moved away from our main topic and focused on what Harvest means to prepare the children for our Harvest Festival. We talked about what a combine harvester does and changed our role plays to a combine harvester and a tractor, we have drawn pictures of them and created collages. We talked about what harvest means to people and how they celebrate the festival in church. On Wednesday we made pumpkin soup and bread for our Harvest Festival – didn’t the children do well? Thank you all for coming, we really enjoyed sharing our work with you all.
We have had a fantastic half term learning all about bees. This week we have been learning which flowers are bee friendly and finding out all about the Waggle Dance. We have assembled all of our work about bees into a bee book. In Maths we have been comparing number sentences and adding by adding numbers together and by counting on. We have also been solving missing number problems. On Wednesday we had a really fun afternoon making Bee Bombs. Our Philosophy session used the book the Honeybee and the Robber and we discussed why the bear should have said please instead of trying to steal the honey. We hope you all have a restful and relaxing half term break.
Well done Lundy Puffins for all your hard work this half term. They have put together their work on bees into a fantastic book to share. Their bee pom poms were finished this week and they look great. A highlight this week was making the bee bombs with wild flower seed. They enjoyed rolling the seeds in clay and writing about how they were made. They have enjoyed learning songs for the Harvest festival and are looking forward to performing them to you. Philosophy this week used the story: The Prodigal Son and they discussed why the older brother wasn’t respectful of his father’s decision. There was lots of thoughtful discussion. Thank you for your support this half term and we wish you a relaxing half term break.
Seahunter have had a great week learning more about deforestation of the rainforests and how that can affect us even though we are thousands of miles away. They investigated palm oil production and sorted some packaging to find out how much palm oil we use every day. They then wrote letters to the treemouse from the story that we read, ‘The Great Green Forest’, to explain to him why his home was destroyed and what we will do to try and change the future for animals like him. In philosophy, we looked at an image of a child sitting out of the side of a playground and discussed the question, ‘Is everyone responsible?’ After a very mature and thoughtful discussion, most children agreed that it is everyone’s responsibility to take care of each other, respect when someone wants to be alone and to tell someone we trust when there is a problem.3
This week HMS Echo have been continuing to work on adding and subtracting using the column method in Maths and have answered worded problems using these methods. We have carried out our final km run in P.E. For Topic, we have finished creating PowerPoints about ‘Plastic Pollution’, checked on our mini-landfill to see if our predictions were correct, and created information booklets using what we have learnt about our topic and from our trip. On Wednesday, we had our trip and the class were really engaged in all of the activities, worked well in teams, were respectful to the staff that led the day and asked sensible questions. They did Appledore School proud, well done Year 4!
After a fantastic sleepover last week Y5 have been very busy finishing off this half terms work. They have now published their animal information leaflet completed all their topic work on plastic pollution. In RE they looked at the beliefs of ‘humanists’ and compared them to Christians. In maths they have been solving multi-step work problems using the RUCSAC method and applying their column addition/subtraction skills. Some amazing poems have been written for a competition, many of which are being read aloud at the harvest festival. Please check you have seen the residential kit list. Have a restful half term break.
This week Year 6 did their class assembly – linking work on residential and P4C as well as our Eco topic. They have also begun planning a story based on The Princess’ Blankets and have been working with multiplication and division in maths. Science has left an experiment on the go, to explore when we return. We have enjoyed sharing posters about climate change that have been completed for homework – there were some amazing results. I think they are more than ready for a break after such hard work this half term.
Have a wonderful half term everybody.
From Jeremy Cooper and all the staff and children.
