News
Newsletter for the last Friday of the Autumn Term
FOAS would like to say a massive thank you for your support of the Christmas fair last week. They raised £973.35 and wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. The next FOAS meeting is 7th January 8pm at the Royal in Appledore for anyone wishing to help organise next year’s fundraisers.
Thank you to everyone who joined us at St. Mary’s Church today and very well done to all the children who sang, danced and acted their socks off. What a fun way to end the term and celebrate Christmas. Thank you for all the help with the learning of words and the supplying of lovely costumes. The children looked amazing.
As the curtain falls on the term and all of our wonderful various nativity celebrations, including a visit from Father Christmas himself, our planning for next term is already in full swing. Starting as soon as we get back after Christmas, the children will participate become involved in an exciting climate project that involves them working with respected local scientists and experts to understand how they can increase biodiversity in the village and the wider community. Please see here for an overview of the project.
Thank you for all your support this term and we wish you all a very happy Christmas and look forward to welcoming you back in the New Year on Monday 6th January.
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have continued to learn about Christmas. We have talked about how we are all celebrating Christmas. On Tuesday we read the story ‘A Christmas Wish’ and we decided to go down to the woods to decorate the trees for the woodland creatures. On Thursday Father Christmas came to see us and we had our party. We have finished off our Christmas cards and decorations and we made some Christmas biscuits.
At the beginning of the week year 1 shared in the whole school assembly our recipe for friendship from our work in values for this term. On Tuesday they enjoyed the visit from the Fire Service which linked really well to our History learning. We compared the equipment that was used to put out the Great Fire of London and the equipment the Fire Service uses today. They wrote their own new version of the 3 little pigs creating new characters for the story. In maths we have been looking at 2D and 3D shapes sorting and creating patterns using these. To finish off the week we have enjoyed a Christmas themed outdoor learning session. Have a wonderful Christmas and see you in the new year!
Year 2 have had a great last week of term. They enjoyed a visit from the fire service on Tuesday to tell them all about what the fire service does, when to call them and what to do in an emergency. They listened really well and asked some interesting questions. They have completed end of term assessments in Maths to show all the learning they have remembered this term. In English, they have made lovely books for their stories and we have been amazed at how much their handwriting has improved over the term. These are displayed on the board leading to the hall, so please come and take a look in the New Year. Well done everyone for all your hard work! Mrs Halloway, Steph, Jillian and I (Mrs Stanbury) would like to wish you all a lovely Christmas and thank you for all your support over the term. We look forward to seeing you again in the New Year.
Year 3 have had a brilliant last week of this half term. In Maths, we finished our topic on multiplication and division and applied all of our learning to some reasoning questions. In English, we rewrote a scene from the book, The First Drawing, and we challenged ourselves to use adverbial phrases to add even more description to our sentences. In History, we did our own research on Stonehenge and explored some of the reasons why people think it may have been built. We then read a book all about Stonehenge and learnt lots of interesting facts about it. In PE, we had our last football lesson so we recapped all of the skills that we have learnt over the last few weeks and then played some mini matches against each other.
In Year 4 this week, the children had an excellent trip to Bath to visit the Roman baths where they completed different Roman style activities such as making mosaics, dressing up in a toga and digging up some artefacts. They also had a tour around the Roman baths too – it was a lovely day! Aside from our school trip, we have been doing lots of revision in Maths and the children wrote some excellent poems in English which were brilliantly creative. Have a lovely Christmas and a well deserved break. I will see you refreshed in the new year!
The KS2 Christmas production has been a big focus for year 5 this week. All the class showed amazing acting and singing skills, and after a whole day of rehearing in the church, resilience. Despite all this they have been writing Kennings and Acrostic poems in the class and learning how to add and subtract fractions with the same denominator. We took part in a fire safety workshop and all listened with maturity, taking on board all the important messages. It has been a rewarding term for the class; a lot of very good progress has been made across the curriculum. We look forward to seeing the new challenges the spring term will bring. The staff in Y5 wish you all a lovely family Christmas and we look forward to hearing all your news in January.
Year 6 have had fun with a variety of Christmas poetry and riddles this week in Literacy: some of the riddles really made us think! In Maths, they have completed fraction work – just needing to remember all the skills. They also did some brain boggling alternative 12 days of Christmas calculating – it’ll be interesting to see if they can remember the different gift items. In reading, they have been using the BBC radio version of A Christmas Carol and watched part of a different version to compare the storyline and characters. PE saw some exhausting benchball – it was amazing to see how much improvement there was in team work since the start of the year. They have also compiled a resources folder for revision, which we will give out after the holidays. Have a lovely rest over the Christmas holiday: lots to do when we return. Our topics in Science will be ‘Evolution and Inheritance’ and in history, we will be looking at ‘How life expectancy has increased for the people in Appledore over the last 250 years’.
