News
Newsletter for the week ending 15th November
Another busy week with so much going on around the school. Please read on to find out more…
AROUND AND ABOUT THE SCHOOL
Poppy Appeal
A really pleasing sum of nearly £200 was raised from poppy sales this year. Thank you everybody
Christmas Fair
Friday 13th December and nore details to follow.
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 we have been looking at a different festival that celebrates with fireworks – Diwali. We have read the story, had a go at acting it out and had great fun on Wednesday working with the company West End in Schools to dance and move to some Bhangra music. We have made our own diva lamps as people in the story lit divas to show Rama and Sita the way home back to their Palace. We have made rangoli patterns and designed our own mehndi patterns.
The highlight of our week was Divali Day on Wednesday. Ashley from West End in Schools came in and inspired every one with his entertaining assembly, we then had our workshop with him where we choreographed our own version of the Ramayana – the Divali story. In the afternoon we got together to see how the other classes had interpreted the story – it was a brilliant day. Also this week we have written our own stories to answer the question – What do you do with a hat like this? In Maths we have been learning about shape, we have made our own 3D shapes, played guess my shape and played shape games on Top Marks Maths. On Thursday we had a magic maths lesson, we made 2D shapes into 3D shapes by saying magic words and blowing the shape up. Our Philosophy session this week used the story of Odd Dog Out, we discussed why it is good that we are all different.
The highlight of the week for year 2 was working with Ashley from West End in schools. He first held an assembly to tell all classes about the Diwali story. He then worked with them to explore the story through drama and music, finishing with a performance with Dolphins and Year 1. He praised the way they worked together – well done! On Thursday, year 2 joined other ACCT schools to take part in a multiskills festival. There were lots of different sporting activities on offer and everyone had a go at everything. In the Art Studio, they have been using the printing press to print fantastic elephants to fit in with our India topic. In Maths, they have been adding two 2-digit numbers and in English, they have started a new story about a tiger: Augustus and his smile.
Seahunter have been working very hard as authors of some new Paddington stories this week. Their ideas have been amazing and there are some very funny stories ready for publishing. They should be complete and available to read at the Writer’s Wall from Monday. In P.E. they enjoyed their last handball session and demonstrated amazing team work, passing skills and the ability to read and predict what might happen in the game and react to it. In Maths, we have started to explore subtraction. It has been challenging but the children are using their super learner powers to stick at it and improve their understanding.
In Maths this week, Year 4 have carried out their assessment task to show what they have learnt about perimeter and have started our new unit ‘multiplication and division’. In English, HMS Echo have finished writing up their information books about their chosen animal. We have now started learning skills from our new text ‘A River’ which links to our Topic learning. During Topic, the class learnt about the journey of a river and the features on each stage. Our new focus in P.E is ‘gymnastics’ and this week we have looked at balances on the mats.
Y5 have recovered from their residential and have started to put their photographs into a powerpoint. Hopefully these will be ready for sharing with parents at the end of next week. In literacy they have been drafting their African animal stories, thinking about writing complex sentences and including dialogue. In maths there has been a focus on numbers which are prime, composite, square or cubed. In topic work we looked at Fair Trade chocolate and its journey from ‘bean to bar’. Our RE work looked at was The Holy Trinity means to Christians. Next week is bikeability, so remember your bikes and helmets.
Year 6 have been diary writing about being an evacuee this week, despite being able to enjoy chatting to each other, it has proved to be challenging to some to develop a more informal style of writing after such descriptive story writing. In maths, test your children on what factors, multiples and prime numbers are, as well as how to find prime factors – they need to be confident with the language and to keep revisiting it to remember it. In science we have begun ‘Evolution and Inheritance’ and in reading we are close to completing our class book – ‘Skellig’. If children are in the choir, can they please bring letters back as soon as possible so that Mrs Smale knows how many she will have for The Christian Aid Concert.
Have a wonderful weekend everybody.
From Jeremy Cooper and all the staff and children.
