News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 6th October
Whole school attendance is above our 96% aspiration and thank you for ensuring your child is in good attendance habits. Please click here for the latest school attendance letter for more detail.
Please click here to find out about events at Instow Village Hall including a Bake Off competition, Adult Halloween Disco and an Instow Memories Evening.
Our visiting music tuition teacher has availability for keyboard, guitar, clarinet, ukulele or recorder lessons. Lessons are 20 minutes and cost £45 per half term. Please contact Jane on 07938840193 if interested.
Diary Dates
- Dolphins and Turtles Harvest Festival, 2.30pm, Tuesday 17th October, our school hall. Relatives welcome.
- Year 1&2 Harvest Festival, 2.30pm, Friday 20th October, our school hall. Relatives welcome.
- Year 3-6 Harvest Festival, 2pm, Tuesday 10th October, St Mary’s Church. Relatives of year 3-6 children welcome
- FOAS AGM 7pm, Wednesday 11th October, school art studio
- Halloween disco 5-6pm reception and years 1&2, 6.30-7.30pm years 3-6 Friday 13th October. Tickets £3 on sale in the playground next week.
- Christmas fair 3.30-5pm, Friday 8th December, bottom playground
AROUND THE CLASSES
Wishing you all an enjoyable and unusually warm weekend!
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have continued thinking about ourselves. On Monday we had a visit from Lorna who is a Dentist at Queen Anne’s Dentist. We learnt so much about how we clean our teeth and the foods that are good and not so good for our teeth. We have also talked about our bedtime routines and what we like to do to make sure that we sleep well. We have also made a bed from boxes and designed a new pair of pyjamas.
In year 1 this week we have started a new story in our Writing lessons called My Day at the Zoo. We thought about how this book was different from the Naughty Bus and made a story map for the book. Then we put some actions to the story and made a video of the class doing the actions. In Maths we have been finishing off Place Value within 10 and we are starting Addition and Subtraction within 10. We have begun looking at the part whole model and had a go at using it practically with counters. In topic we recapped where Antarctica is and what animals live there, then learnt more about the Arctic and how polar bears are able to survive there. We even thought about whether polar bears could travel to Antarctica and live there but we decided that it would be too cold and too far for them to travel!
Year 2 have worked hard this week to write their own stories based on Traction Man using their own toys. There were some really entertaining adventures – well done everyone! In Maths, they have been comparing and ordering 2-digit numbers using the language ‘greater than / less than / equal to’. In our Geography work we used Google Earth again to investigate our local area. We continued using maps in Science, where we had to search for animals and plants around the school and draw what we found on a map of the school. We’re looking forward to spending more time outside on Friday when we have another outdoor learning session.
In HMS Echo (year 4) this week, the children have started a brand new sequence in English, where we are beginning to look at the book ‘Little Evie in the Wild Wood’, which will inspire us with our writing, particularly writing a story that creates tension. We will eventually be writing a story based on the video ‘The Girl and the Fox’. As part of our Geography learning, we visited Morrisons last Friday, where we noticed lots of things Morrisons do to encourage sustainability, particularly where they’re trying to reduce the amount of plastic they use. The children this week then made a booklet about this explaining all the things they do. In Science, we conducted an experiment to see how solids can change state when heated, and then what happens to them as they cool down. The children made predictions and then wrote down their results from their observations. In PE, we continued practising our one leg balancing, and made this harder by trying to balance a bean bag on their head at the same time!
This week year 5 have completed the publishing of their new stories. These are now on display in the main building. We have started looking at non-fiction texts and the biographies of famous women in science; so far we know about Ada Lovelace, Mary Secole and Mary Anning. Our maths work has focused on using our addition and subtraction skills to solve word problems. In geography we looked at banana farmers; those who produced bananas on a small plantation and those on a large plantation. We compared the two farms and how they were treated by the larger supermarket buyers. We had a very successful sleepover last week in school but I still have a boys polo shirt and shorts (age 11, TU clothing) still not claimed in the classroom. Final details about the Y5 residential will be sent home at the start of next week.
Year 6 have been working hard to write accurately this week, as they have produced the majority of their own stories. In maths, they have moved onto work with addition and subtraction including common factors. In Science, they have learnt about micro-organisms and how they can be helpful and harmful. Outdoor Learning was linked to climate change with some experiments to show the effects of changing temperatures. In PE, I was impressed by the teamwork and fast breaks created in handball. Harvest rehearsals have been in full swing and in Art, they have been using drawing skills to create arctic pictures.
