News
Newsletter for the week ending 12th February
It’s now halfway through the academic year and how time has flown! Don’t forget next week is half term and school starts again, here or online, on Monday 22nd February.
Please click here for a letter sent out to parents and guardians today with information on expected guidance on the future of schools from 8th March onwards, SATs and other tests and the need for us to continue track and trace this weekend.
If anyone has any experience or expertise in online crowd funding, please could you contact me on jeremy.cooper@appledoreprimary.co.uk so I can pick your brains? With COVID putting a stop to our usual fund raising (eg Summer and Christmas fairs) for the ‘extras’ a new approach is required.
Please read on to find out what has been happening in and around the classes, here and online.
Have a lovely half term
Best wishes from
Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have been celebrating Chinese New Year. We read the story and had a go at acting it out. We have made dragons and lanterns. We have found out how people celebrate CHinese New Year and we had a go at using chopsticks. On Thursday we made dumplings and had a little picnic of dumplings, noodles and prawn crackers.
We have reached the end of this half term and have spent this week finishing off our learning sequences. In our writing, we have been writing letters pretending to be nursery rhyme characters. Those letters have gone to Mother Goose who has responded, helping the characters with their problems. In maths, we have been learning about the size of numbers. We have built different numbers using a range of resources to help us. On Wednesday, the children went to the art studio to create Hungry Caterpillar inspired collage work. This will look impressive on our new art display.
Finally, I would like to thank all of the parents who have been supporting their children’s learning at home throughout this half term. I have really enjoyed seeing videos of the children really engaged with their learning. The children have worked extremely hard and have earned a break next week. I hope that you enjoy your week and I look forward to seeing you all when we return to school.
Well done Lundy Puffins for all your hard work this half term. In English, everyone has tried out their descriptive skills to write a diary entry for an explorer. They used lots of interesting vocabulary and used lots of imagination to invent new places. In Maths, they have continued with multiplication and have been using arrays and equal groups. After the half term break, children in school will be learning the 2, 5 and 10x tables by heart, so please practise these at home if you have time. The children in school made some great wind chimes during their outdoor learning session which they were able to take home and hang up in their gardens. If the children at home would like to make one, please look on the Google classroom outdoor learning session. Next half term, we plan to make bird feeders from recycled materials during the outdoor session, so please remember wellington boots on Monday. We wish you all a relaxing, well deserved half term break.
Seahunter children at home and in school have worked incredibly hard this past six weeks and definitely deserve a lovely break next week. The children at home have impressed us with their resilience and determination and the children in school have become very independent, working in their own spaces, managing their space and time really well. This week, we have started a new English sequence of work, working from the poem ‘How to be a Pirate’ by David Harmer. In the poem, it describes how to be a pirate and how you could make a costume yourself if you don’t have real pirate items. The children have done a great job mapping the text with images and learning to recite parts of it with actions, all gathering together as pirates in our online class meeting to recite it together. They have also been working hard to collect a bank of amazing adjectives, using an online thesaurus, to use in their own writing. After the break, they will be learning the pattern of the poem, practising it then planning their own How to be a……poems. In maths, they have all done a great job this week learning more about telling the time. This is such an important life skill and everyone has worked hard to improve. Well done Year 3, we are really proud of you all. Have a fabulous holiday!
Well done Year 4 on a successful half term of both remote and in-school learning. You have all shown excellent resilience and motivation. Myself and Mrs Evans are extremely proud of you all. This week in English we have written up our sound collector poems in best and learnt how to punctuate direct speech. In Maths, we have been focusing on representing fractions. The children in school have taken part in a gardening session this week, helping to plant trees in the school! I hope you all have a relaxing break and keep safe.
Year 5 have been finding out about The Solar System, solar and lunar eclipses and how the Sun, Moon and Earth move in Science. In Maths, we have been ordering and comparing fractions as well as starting to add and subtract them. In Literacy, we have ventured to more planets and written our space logs. In reading we have started looking at poetry and in computing we have completed more skills in vector drawing. In art, we have completed our sunflower pictures inspired by Vincent Van Gogh – working on layering in collage. Thank you for all the responses to the residential so far. Please can you return your residential forms. if you haven’t done so already.
Y6 have had a busy week, both in school and at home. This week we have covered a lot of work. In maths we have been learning algebra; we have explored out to have an input, output and finding a rule. Then we were looking at forming expressions. In English we have completed our diary writing on Ernest Shackleton and then creating a slideshow about another famous explorer. We could pick any explorer so examples have been Robert Scott, Neil Armstrong, Christopher Columbus and Amelia Earhart. In science we have been finding out about the history of science. We have discovered how DNA changed science and how our ideas about the universe have changed over time. In art we worked in the art studio to complete our collages. Those at home have continued working in the style of Matisse and created winter collages. We have just started learning Spanish and this week we have learnt to count up to 12 and say our age: Tengo once anos or Tengo diez anos. We say goodbye to Mya and hope she enjoys her new school. We are looking forward to the half term break. Reporter: Ellie-May
