News
Newsletter for the week ending 14th May
Despite the weather this wek has involved lots of outdoor learning and it has been a pleasure to hear the children thoroughly enjoying themselves. Please read on to find ou what has been going on in each class.
Wishing you all a super weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSSES
When we came into school on Tuesday we found sticks and straws everywhere, we decided that the pigs had come to build the house safely from the wolf. So we decided to learn about the three little pigs. We have read different versions of the story and compared them. We have acted the story out and talked about what happens at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the story. We have drawn and painted pictures of the pigs and make pig models from tubes. We have had a building site in our role play area and made houses from bricks and blown them down to see how strong they were.
We are rapidly progressing through the first half of this summer term and have definitely felt the downturn in weather this week. Despite the challenging amount of rain, we have still enjoyed an action-packed week. The children were very excited on Tuesday to see if their magic beans had grown. We have a wide variety of early starters to late developers throughout our magic bean community. The children have decided to whisper ‘grow beans grow’ every morning to their bean to encourage them to grow quicker! In our topic learning, we have focussed on pollution in the oceans. We had a very mature discussion about the problems presented by rubbish in the oceans and the children are determined to help in any way they can. In our writing this week, the children have written their own versions of Jack and Beanstalk. We have some really interesting villains including a two-headed monster!
This week Lundy Puffins have been working with Miss Turnbull to write their stories based on the book ‘Somebody Swallowed Stanley’. It is a book about plastics in the ocean and how it can affect marine life. In Maths, they have been continuing to work on fractions and have learned that 1/2 is the same as 2/4. They have also been finding 3/4 of different amounts. They have continued with their topic work and have been learning about the different sea creatures that live in the different layers of the ocean. Miss Turnbull helped them to make their own plasticine animals and backgrounds and they had a go at underwater photography which was great fun! This week they have taken part in their first outdoor learning session where they took part in planting activities in the polytunnel.
This week, Seahunter have been learning about the problems caused by plastic pollution entering our rivers and oceans. After reading ‘A planet full of plastic’ the class became determined to try and make a difference and wrote amazing letters persuading people to stop using so much plastic in order to protect the oceans. They also created their own beeswax wraps as an alternative for plastic sandwich bags. Finally, they developed their teamwork skills, designing a way to prevent plastic in rivers reaching the sea. They then presented their ideas in a Dragon’s Den style set up and answered questions skillfully. They are definitely ready to change the world!
HMS Echo have had an exciting week filled with different events. On Tuesday, we had Petty Officer Dudman come into school to talk to the children about what the marines do and to say thank you for the Christmas cards that the children sent. The children enjoyed seeing some pictures of the ships and asked sensible questions.On Wednesday, we went on a walk around Appledore learning about some of the buildings and history to support the children to write their own version of ‘A Walk in London’, to become ‘A Walk in Appledore’. The children did Appledore School proud as they were so well behaved and inquisitive! On Thursday, Western Power Distribution carried out an online show for us, teaching the children about electrical safety. It was both funny and educational. Alongside all of this, the children have been learning how to add and subtract money in Maths, learnt about renewable and non-renewable resources in Science, have been wet felting in the Art Studio and started to think about how much water we use in Topic.
Year 5 have been calculating with decimals this week in maths – making sure they look carefully at the value of the digits and line the decimal points up when using a formal method. In literacy, it’s been all about explaining their cracking contraptions which they are hopefully just about ready to publish. In art, they carried on with sunflowers and in science forces (using Newton Meters to measure weight). Topic has involved looking at the Spanish Empire when Queen Elizabeth I became queen and thinking about why the spanish were so powerful compared to England. Despite the wet weather, they enjoyed tennis this week and wrote about sports in french too. In computing, they will hopefully complete their quizzes and have time to test and evaluate them.
This week in English we have been doing persuasive writing on different topics such as whether children need to wear school uniforms or not. In maths we have been learning about pie charts and how to find the mean. We have been learning about the life cycle of birds and why they need to lay eggs. We also took part in a safety electricity workshop being run by Western Power. We know to call 105 if we see any problems with electric sources in our community and are more aware of the dangers around electricity. In Topic we have been learning about the Australian gold rush and mapping the world’s seas and oceans. In RE we found out more about Ramadan (which ended this week) and the celebration of Eid Al-Fitr. For art we have been sewing and using fabric to make a pattern and we have been working on an art project for the Appledore book festival. On Tuesday we had a visitor (Petty Officer) from the Royal Navy. He told us about the work that he does (which was so amazing) and thanked us for sending his ship cards at Christmas. We were very pleased to be presented with medals. Reporters: Sophia and Felix
