News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 10th March
Another week draws to a close and my how time flies by!
For information on cricket coaching at Kingsley School, Bideford, over the Easter holidays please click here.
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have continued our learning about Africa. We have found out some facts about the River Nile and compared the Nile to the River Torridge. We also found out about the pyramids. On Thursday Kai and Lenny’s Mummy came in and spoke to us about living in Africa. Today we walked down to the Library to change our library books.
In Year 1 this week we have been learning about Samuel Pepys and how his diaries have helped us know what happened during the Great Fire of London. We have enjoyed thinking about what it means for something to be in the past and couldn’t quite believe that by the afternoon, lunchtime was in the past! In Maths we are learning about Place Value within 50 and have been looking at how we partition numbers into tens and ones. In writing we have finished our final piece on the ‘What happens when…’ book and included some amazing questions.
This week the other half of Year 2 have visited Northam Burrows as part of their outdoor learning, whilst the other group completed a science investigation in the classroom. In English, they are writing their biographies about Grace Darling using all the skills they have learnt when reading the Amelia Earhart biography. In Maths, they have been measuring using centimetres and metres, comparing lengths and finding items shorter and longer than a centimetre or metre. They have continued with their ‘explorers’ topic and found out about Sir Ranulph Fiennes. In their Science work, they played a game to match animals to their offspring.
Year 3 looked at how Hindus worship at the mandir and compared this to home worship. They then continued their classical Indian dance by devising their own mudra to shoe crops growing, cattle grazing and the mountain providing protection. They particularly enjoyed finding gestures for thunder and lightning as sent by an angry Indra! Year 4 wrote diary entries for Mary for particular events in Holy Week. They used the emotion graph and last weeks drama work to inform their writing. They then continued with their work on composition by assigning notes to the rhythms they had already created to make an ostinato which evoked a train journey. Year 5 played the good karma, bad karma games they created last week and wrote to explain how this links with samsara. They then labelled a drawing of themselves using French vocabulary for body parts. Year 6 wrote their responses to the great sacrifice that was made by Jesus. They then continued composing their refrain which evokes the sea and began to structure their composition by combining lines.
Seahunter class (year 3) have had a great week. We continued our learning on measuring in maths and learned all about perimeter. We had a go at drawing our own shapes with different perimeters and then also calculated the perimeter of different shapes. In English, we finished our quest stories and then worked really hard to edit them to make them even better. In history, following on from our learning all about the Stone Age, we explored some of the changes that took place during the Stone Age and learned that towards the end of this period, people started to live in settlements and began to farm the land. In PE, we have been working on our coordination skills and we have also been practising our sending and receiving skills.
In HMS Echo (year 4) this week, we have been learning more about the Victorians, particularly around the Industrial Revolution. They looked at different good and bad reasons for moving from rural areas to urban areas during this time, and were great at challenging each other and sharing their opinions. We also learnt how during this time, Britain was one of the wealthiest countries, and why this was. In English, we have been looking at our new explanation text Until I Met Dudley, and understanding what features are included, and we’ve had a practice at writing our own paragraphs using complex sentences and a variety of punctuation in the style of the book. In Maths, we are continuing with our work on Fractions, where we are now looking at adding and subtracting fractions, which involves solving a range of real life problems. Towards the end of the week, children will be taking part in some outdoor learning linking to our Science of classifying living things. In light of our school value “Being Healthy”, we will also be looking at how our emotions and feelings change as we get older.
Year 5 has just started to look at the features of poetry in English; writing winter poems. We have completed the maths unit on fractions, decimals and percentages and will start statistics next week. Our science has been looking at phases of the moon; this was consolidated in our outdoor learning session. We have been learning more about Florida and discovering why the Kennedy Space Center was built there
Year 6 have been using poetic devices in their own versions of Ice Bear which should be ready to publish next week. In maths, they have learnt more about percentages – especially relating them to fractions and decimals. They have also been building their maths resilience by finding missing angles in some quite complex shapes where they have to decipher the information and sometimes do three or four calculations before finding the result. In art, they have begun making bags in textiles – this has involved small groups and sewing machines – we can’t wait to see the results. In spelling and grammar, they are revising terminology and trying to spot rules and patterns they know in questions that test their skills. In reading, they have been answering inference, summarising or vocabulary questions and looking carefully in the text to support their answers.We had our eco representatives planting trees earlier in the week and our house captains have been busy with preparations for the next house competition. In PE, they played seated volleyball which was actually quite tricky and have worked on balances as well. Please encourage your children to go through their revision packs and to ask for help if needed.
