News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 18th October
A lovely week that included a magical crow and scarecrow celebration of harvest in St Mary’s church, a trip to the Eden Project and some top 3 finishes (in races with well over 150 runners) at a local cross country event. Next week entails more trips out and about, including year 5 on their residential trip and year 2 to Rosemoor. Please read the Around the Classes section later in this post to find out what has been happening this week.
Most importantly, according to our Year 6 House Captains, there is a cake sale next Friday after school on the bottom playground. Please click here to see the poster made by our (newly appointed) cake sales Director of Marketing and Coms. Cake donation to the school office on Friday 25th please. Thank you.
Dates for the diary:
- Turtles and Dolphins Harvest Festival, 2.45pm Tuesday 22nd October in the school hall
- Years 1&2 harvest festival, 2.30pm Friday 25th October, school hall
- Messy play for children (and siblings of) with SEND, 1.30-2.30pm 30th October, Bideford Family Centre, Victoria Park, Bideford
- Two Rivers Forest School Halloween stay and play in the woods 31st October – see here
- Stories and Fun, 10am-11am Saturday 1st November, Bideford Family Centre, Victoria Park, Bideford
- Sport, drama and music scholarship application for year 7 entry into West Buckland School deadline 6th November – see here
- Halloween Disco, Dolphins-Year 2 5-6pm, Year 3-6 6.30-7.30pm, Friday 8th November, school hall. Tickets on sale in the playground after school on Friday
- School photos 15th of November. If you want a photo to include siblings who don’t attend Appledore School these photos will be taken 8-9am.
- Year 3-6 Christmas Service, afternoon of Friday 20th December, St Mary’s Church (time to be confirmed)
- Christmas fair, after school, Friday 13th December in the car park
Have a lovely weekend everybody
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have continued to learn about Autumn. We read the story Pumpkin Soup and retold it in groups. We made a recipe book on how to make pumpkin soup and then we had a go at making pumpkin soup and bread. It was delicious! Today we went down to the woods to look for signs of Autumn. We found leaves, conkers and acorns. We have also been busy making pumpkins using salt dough.
We have enjoyed learning about the Arctic this week in Year 1. Comparing it to Antarctica and looking at how Polar Bears have adapted to live there. We were particularly fascinated by how tall these amazing animals are (2.4m on hind legs) and we enjoyed watching some videos of cubs learning how to hunt. In maths, we have been learning about the part-whole model and using the addition symbol. We had our first Art session in the studio which was a great success. The children really enjoyed using the space and demonstrated their fantastic art skills. This week was our final dance lesson for this term and we finished learning a harvest dance. It was lots of fun and we enjoyed performing it as a whole group.
Year 2 had a great time in the Art Studio this week experimenting with drawing different lines and designing their Christmas cards. In Maths, they have been looking at number bonds, adding 3 small numbers and adding to the next 10. I have put a link on Google Classroom to a game to practise number bonds to 10. In English, they have looked at writing questions and have helped to write new instructions based on the book ‘How to wash a woolly mammoth’. Everyone is looking forward to the trip to Rosemoor next week.
Thank you to everyone who came to our harvest celebration this week. The children performed brilliantly and filled St. Mary’s with song, dance and colour. I am so grateful for the effort that went into the costumes. It was so lovely to see farmers shooing away the crowns in the year 5 dance but then tangoing with them later in the year 4 dance. No sooner have we performed our harvest service than preparations for Christmas will begin. No spoiler alerts but it may well involve a glitter ball!
Year 3 have had a fantastic week! In Maths, we have been using number lines to add and subtract ones across ten, and tens across a hundred. In English, we have been planning our own interviews of a chosen animal. We used the computers to research facts about our animal, and then wrote our own interview questions. In Science, we recapped our previous learning on shadows and we explored how shadows change shape when the distance between the object and the light source changes. On Thursday, we had a wonderful trip to the Eden Project where we took part in a Rainforest Ranger workshop. We got to experience the rainforest biome and found lots of plants including banana trees, fig trees and we saw one of the most poisonous trees found in the Amazon rainforest, the Hura tree. In Values, we prepared our assembly by thinking about all of the ways that we show responsibility and we then acted out these responsibilities in small groups.
In Year 4 this week, the children have continued using the column method in Maths to add and subtract and applying this to reasoning and problem solving questions. In English, we are writing a story together to help us with writing a story about The Girl and the Fox next week independently. In Computing, the children have continued working on their Google Slides document explaining what the Internet is and what the world wide Web is. The children also performed in the Harvest festival this week where they performed a song and a dance in fabulous costumes and they were just wonderful! They have worked so hard on this with Miss Carr. In Science this week, we looked at how water can change state
This week year 5 have been busy preparing for our residential next week. Further information has been added to Google classroom and to the children. Let’s hope the weather is kind to us but we will have great fun despite what happens. Everyone is super excited. We have continued to write about female scientists and this week has included the astronomer Caroline Herschel. Everyone then researched their own scientist and wrote a biography about them. In maths we have been learning more about common factors and prime/composite numbers. We have been discovering more about fairtrade farmers and the trade of cocoa beans. The class did an amazing performance of their dance and singing at the KS2 harvest service and now thinking about what role they would like in the Christmas production!
Year 6 have published their stories in Literacy and have moved onto fictional writing about climate change. They are having to do quite a lot of research in order to find the facts required. In maths, they have been exploring the rules of divisibility and discovering how to apply their knowledge. Some children have been revising their timestables knowledge (please encourage them to learn the facts). In science, they have been experimenting: they have placed bread around the school to see how conditions affect the growth of mould and they had a yeast race to see whether sugar increased the speed of dough rising. They also designed some of their own microbes: some harmful,deadly and quite disgusting whilst others decided on helpful, curing alternatives. In Geography, they found out about the railway and sea wall in Starcross, and how changes in the climate are now putting residents at risk of flooding again. Definitely, another busy week!
