News
Newsletter for the week ending 14th January 2022
Thank you for completing the survey emailed to you on Tuesday. We are collecting information regarding your employment to establish if your child would be eligible to attend school due to ‘critical worker’ eligibility should we be required to close the school. Please don’t be alarmed, we are just preparing ourselves for a possible scenario that we hope will not occur. Please complete the survey even if you believe you are not a critical worker. If you missed the survey, it can be accessed on this link https://forms.gle/LVSkmSRtfQ2xf2f6A
For an update on everything to do with Covid testing, please follow this link from Devon County Council for a comprehensive explanation of everything you might need to know https://www.appledore-primary.devon.sch.uk/wp-admin/post.php?post=1973&action=edit
Wishing you all a lovely weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have continued learning about winter. We recapped the things that happen in Autumn and talk about the things that happen in winter. We have had great fun playing with ice and trying to rescue the animals. We have found out what snow is made up of how it falls. We also talked about why snow doesn’t fall very often in Appledore. We have painted pictures of snowmen and animals that live in the Arctic. Today we went down to The Jungle to look for signs of winter
In Year 1 this week we have been learning the story No-bot, The robot with no bottom! The children have enjoyed reading this story together and have put actions to it to help us remember it. In their writing they have been changing a part of the story and thinking of different animals that could have used No-bot’s bottom and were very imaginative. We started our new topic this week and were thinking about significant people in our lives. In Maths we have been recapping our 3D shapes and then using them to build models. We have also been investigating which shapes roll, slide and stack
Lundy Puffins have written some amazing stories based on the ‘Baboon on the Moon’ video clip. Everyone has tried hard with making their stories really interesting and worked really hard with their handwriting. In Maths, they have been learning and practising the 2, 5 and 10 times tables. If you would like to do further work at home you could visit the following website and choose 2, 5 and 10 times tables to practise: https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button. They have started their new topic ‘Has the world always had superheroes?’ and started by thinking about who their heroes are and why. Later on in the topic we will be learning all about Grace Darling and lifeboats.
Year 3 have enjoyed researching several inspirational women who achieved greatness despite the inequality that existed at the time. They chose a different historical figure each and then sat on the hot seat to answer questions from the rest of the class. In maths, the children have been developing their understanding of grouping and sharing. They have learnt strategies to halve numbers and explored the effect of dividing by ten. In music, we have revisited work on graphic scores and have begun working on a class composition using symbols to represent different sounds at a train station.
HMS Echo have been amazing scientists, authors, sports people and mathematicians this week! In Maths, they have done some fantastic work about what happens to the digits when we multiply or divide by multiples of ten. In English, we have been reading Winter’s Child by Grahame Baker-Smith. In the story there are two main characters with parallel stories. The children have done an amazing job of retelling their stories and comparing them. In P.E. they have worked hard on passing and dribbling skills for football and completed a whole class dribbling challenge, all crossing over with each other across the hall. It was really tricky but their teamwork and observation skills meant they completed it on the first go! Finally, in science, they have worked in small teams, using their working scientifically skills to plan an investigation about melting ice. They worked hard to decide what to keep and what to change to make it a fair test.
Beechcroft has been really keen to find out more about the Great Plague of the mid seventeenth century. They now know more about the plague doctors and what the symptoms are of the bubonic plague. We looked at pandemics that have changed history, including those in recent years. We are writing our own story about a character living through the plague and including our historical knowledge into this. We had great fun in our topic work when we exploded doughnuts to see what buboes would have been like to a person suffering from the plague (the best part of eating them after!) We also know the rhyme ‘ring-a-ring-a-roses’ is about the plague and what it means.
In numeracy we have been comparing and ordering fractions, understanding what an improper fraction is and how to convert this to a mixed number. Our French learning has looked at reading and saying food words and creating a menu.
Year 6 have read more of ‘Pig Heart Boy’ by Malorie Blackman this week and looked at the news in relation to this: the first pig’s heart being used for a transplant operation. In Maths, they are moving onto decimals and need to keep going over fraction, decimal and percentage equivalents. Science has been all about fossils and how they have helped us learn about evolution. They have enjoyed french cafe conversations and have been updating reading journals with all their recent reads. Another busy week.
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