News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 7th October
Our harvest festivals have begun and a super start from KS2 at Skilfully directed by Miss Carr. Scarecrow stole the show! Please read on for harvest celebration with other classes. Other highlights this week include visits from recognised children’s authors entertaining the children.
Parent Evenings are being scheduled for children in years 1-6 over various days before half term. Please keep an eye out for communication from us with information on when and how to book.
Safeguarding – please be aware of a seemingly child friendly online game called Huggy Wuggy that involves a seemingly friendly hairy blue character. Please be aware that this game can quickly take a sinister turn and frighten children and creep into playground games, particularly children aged 4-7 years. For more information please click here and continue to discuss with your children what they are accessing online.
We wish you all wonderful weekend and please do click ‘more’ for much more information relevant to you.
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND AND ABOUT THE SCHOOL
Harvest Festival dates are as follows:
- Years 1&2 Friday 14th October, 2.30pm in school hall and back to classrooms to see their workbooks.
- Turtles & Dolphins Tuesday 18th October, 2.30pm in school hall and back to the foundation stage unit to share learning journeys.
- For all of the above parents can take their children after and also their siblings.
- Sports Day for Dolphins and years 1-6 is scheduled for Tuesday 23rd May. Save the date and fingers crossed for the weather! More details to follow much nearer the time.
AROUND AND ABOUT THE VILLAGE
Devon Air Ambulance shops are in need of volunteers. For more information please click here
AROUND AND ABOUT THE CLASSES
This week in Turtle and Dolphins we have continued to read the story Zog. In groups we acted out the story and performed it to each other. We thought about who helps us and what we would like to be when we grow up. We have drawn pictures of dragons and made shields. On Wednesday we had great fun cutting up pictures of Zog and putting him back together again with plasters.
In Sea Lions (year 1) this week we have started a new story in Literacy called My Day at the Zoo. We’ve really liked reading this and thinking about our own trip to the zoo! In Maths we have been recapping greater than, less than and equal to, as well as finding one more and one less than a number. In our topic work we have been classifying animals and putting animals into the correct animal groups, e.g. mammal, reptile, fish. Year 1 are still looking for puzzle donations so if you have any that aren’t being used and are happy to donate these to school, Year 1 would be very grateful.
This week year 2 enjoyed a visit from the author Philip Ardagh. He was very entertaining and answered lots of the children’s questions about writing books. In English this week they have made their own Traction Man style adventure using their toys from home and have written the final piece. They tried hard with handwriting and spelling and we can see that they are improving – well done. In Maths, they have been ordering and comparing numbers using the language ‘greater than’, ‘less than’, ‘equal to’. They have also been counting in 2s, 5s, 10s and 3s. As part of their topic work they thought about why bees are important to us. Harvest Festival practice is continuing and they are looking forward to sharing their songs with you.
Thank you to all the people who managed to join us at the church this week. It was so lovely to be able to gather together to celebrate this special time of the year with you all and years 3,4,5 & 6. Despite having not had the opportunity to perform for a live audience for a couple of years, the children did brilliantly and it showed how hard they have been working in their music lessons to ensure the smooth running of the service. We will now have a few weeks of normality before we start our preparations for our Christmas celebration.
This week Seahunters have been very busy and we have been lucky enough to have both an author and an illustrator visit. Joseph Witchall, an illustrator, joined us on Thursday morning and we enjoyed learning all about what an illustrator does and then we had a go at coming up with our own illustrations. Year 3 have also become authors this week, as they wrote their own stories based on the book ‘The Journey Home’. They really challenged themselves to use powerful adjectives, verbs and adverbs to make their stories really exciting and they should be really proud of the work they have produced. We then edited our stories for both corrections and improvements and we are now publishing them. In geography, we have been learning all about the different layers of a rainforest. We used drama to act out the different layers and then did some research on the computers to find out different facts about each layer and the types of animals that you might find there.
It’s been a busy week in HMS Echo (year 4) ! The children have been tirelessly rehearsing for the Harvest Festival with Miss Carr and what a performance it was! The children should be so proud of what they have achieved this week. When the children were not rehearsing, they’ve been busy publishing their postcard writing beautifully as they have now completed their first draft and edited. In Maths, we have been consolidating our learning of 4 digit numbers ready to begin rounding numbers next week. In Geography, they have used the Chromebooks to research plastic waste and it was fascinating researching how they are recycled!
Year 5 have worked hard to publish their new Tear Thief stories. These will now be put on display on the writing wall, in the main building. We have been using checking strategies in our maths work; rounding numbers and using the inverse. It was lovely to be able to get back down to the church for the harvest festival. We performed a dance with the Y4 class and sang Bumblebee. We have been very lucky to have had two author visits from the Appledore Book Festival; Tanya Landman and Tasmin Cooke; both authors were amazing and inspirational. Everyone is getting very excited about the residential and we look forward to sharing this news with you next week.
Another busy week in year 6 – we are almost completing our place value work in maths with rounding and negative numbers. In literacy, we have been publishing our work on Climate Change, which we will share shortly, and in Science we have created classification keys to sort animals. We enjoyed the harvest performance and a visit from the Author Tamin Cooke which has added to another busy week. In PE we have been putting skills into small sided games with a tennis theme using co-operation and agility. Our skills in grammar, with word class and basic skills in the four operations are improving from work with Mrs Evans on Tuesdays. Please encourage your child to make sure that they hand homework in on Google classroom each week.
