News
Newsletter for the week ending 10th January
Welcome back everybody and a belated HAPPY NEW YEAR! We’re straight back into it, so please read on to find out what has been going on in and around the classes.
AROUND AND ABOUT THE VILLAGE
Free Parent Workshops
free workshops for parents with children with speech, language and communication needs are being held across Devon in March. For more information, please click here
Bingo Night For CRY (Cardiac Risk for the Young) at the Pollyfield Centre
Jenny’s Beating January’s Blues Bingo for CRY Friday 31st of January.Jenny is running the London Marathon again for CRY and to help her reach her fundraising target she is hosting a charity bingo night. Please come along to beat the January blues. Great prizes and raffle. Doors open at 6:30 with eyes down at 7:15. For more info contact Jenny by phone: 07817961518 or email: jenebarnett198@msn.com
AROUND AND ABOUT THE SCHOOL
Uniform
I reminder to please check your children are wearing the school uniform. Trainers tend to appear instead of school shoes and headbands and bows become increasingly colourful and large! I have spoken to the whole school about it and individuals if required and the repsonse from the children has been excellent. If you are unsure please click here to see what is acceptable uniform and if you are still unsure please do call us before buying new.
Communication
Please ensure that we always have your current contact details, including address, email and all telephione numbers. Thank you.
AROUND AND ABOUT THE CLASSES
Happy new year everyone! This week we have been settling back into school, talking to each other about our Christmas and welcoming our new children in Turtles. As part of Maths Week we looked at the story Jasper’s Beanstalk. We have used ourselves to measure against objects to find out if they are taller or shorter than ourselves, we made a beanstalk and measure it using a length of a ruler. We have painted and made pictures of beanstalks and today we went down to The Jungle to make our own beanstalks.
Yaer 1have had a great start back to the year. We have welcomed Mrs Eversley into our class, she is training to be a teacher and has spent the week getting to know the children. It has also been Maths through Stories week. All of our Maths has been based around the book One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab. We have made our own Pairs games using pictures from the book. We have made number lines and we have counted the legs on photocopied pages from the book, some people even attempting the challenge to count 100 snails! In Writing we have been looking at the book Oi Frog. We have guessed what the characters might say, we have written questions for the characters and then pretended to be the cat and the frog to answer the questions. Our Philosophy question this week came from a discussion we had about Oi Frog. We discussed the question ‘Are rules important?’. Most of the class thought they were not important but by the end of the discussion had changed their mind to decide that rules were important if they were sensible rules.
Welcome back Lundy Puffins! We’d like to thank you for your Christmas cards and gifts. This week has been Maths week and they have focused on the book The Great Pet Sale. They completed lots of activities around money including identifying coins, finding different amounts and choosing different coins to pay. In English, they have watched a clip called Baboon on the Moon and will be writing the story of this. The new topic this term is ‘Have there always been heroes?’ which is part of a whole school Health topic. They began by finding out about a lady called Grace Darling.
Seahunter have had a busy first week back at school, exploring Pythagoras as part of Maths Week. We have read ‘What’s Your Angle, Pythagoras’, a story that explains the discovery he made about right angle triangles. The children have learnt how to identify right angles, use them to create straight buildings, looked at why a ladder has to be longer than the height of wall to reach the top, found out about and searched for obtuse, right and obtuse angles around school and made the discovery that Pythagoras did, noticing that the squares on two sides of a right angle triangle add up to the square on the side opposite the right angle. It has been a challenging week, but they have worked with enthusiasm and determination to take on board and apply a lot of new skills and knowledge. They are looking forward to sharing their work with family members who visit on Friday afternoon.
For Maths week, HMS Echo have been learning about time, linked to our book ‘The Bad-tempered Ladybird’. The class have learnt how to convert units of time between minutes and hours and minutes and seconds, learnt how to read analogue and both 12-hour and 24-hour digital clocks, and how to answer worded problems involving measurements of time. We have linked our English to the text and learnt skills for punctuating direct speech. The children have then each written their own page to create a class book. For Topic, we have started out new unit ‘Health’ and have carried out an elicitation task to find out what the children think about what was eaten 100 years ago and why this has changed. We have then looked at WW1 and why food was rationed during this time. In Computing, this class researched this further. The class have enjoyed Maths week and sharing their learning with adults!
Welcome back Y5. After everyone talking about their exciting Christmas break the class have quickly settled back into a routine. This week has been Maths Week and we have based our numeracy work on The Lions Share picture book. We have looked at halving fractions, exploring how this work look when cutting up different shapes and how to correctly write using symbols. We have also linked this to ‘doubles’ and thinking about doubling fractions. In literacy we have started to read the story ‘Plague- outbreak in London, 1665-1666’. This is also linking to our topic work where we have started to look at the causes of the Great Plague. In RE we have started to explore the Hindu religion, Science has started to look at animals (including humans) and our P4C question this week was ‘Would the world be a better place if everyone always told the truth?’
Year 6 have had a busy week number crunching this week. We have been using ‘If The World Were A Village’ as our inspiration. The book has enabled us to look at statistics – mainly based in 2008 – and to see what life was like then around the world. We also looked at how the population has changed over time and then created our own set of data about our class. Within this, we have created graphs, used Excel, learnt about ratios , drawn pie charts ourselves, created art work and discussed many of the interesting facts we’ve found out and what that might mean -some of the statistics were quite shocking. Well done to all those who have managed their 500 word writing pieces so far – when filling in the form, just do the top section and sign – we can sort the part about the rotary. The class wishes everyone a great 2020!
Have a wonderful weekend everybody and we look forward to seeing you next week.
From Jeremy Cooper and all the staff and children.
