News
Newsletter for the week ending 18th February
A short week due to storm Eunice brings to a close this half term a day early. Batten down the hatches for a while and we hope you all safe and well after half term.
In our first week back after half term World Book Day is Thursday 3rd March. Children can come to school dressed ready for a bedtime story in pyjamas that day and bring their favourite book to share.
For a useful internet safety update, please click here.
Have a good week everybody and we look forward to welcoming you all back on Monday 28th February.
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
In Turtles and Dolphins this week we have continued to celebrate Chinese New Year. On Tuesday we made Chinese dumplings and had a small banquet of dumplings, prawn crackers and noodles. We have looked at where China is on a map and compared China to Appledore. This year is the year of the Tiger so we have found out about tigers, painted pictures of them and made Tiger masks. We have also painted pictures of dragons.
Year 1 have had another great week! In their Literacy lessons they have been making a new page for our Weather book. First they wrote about hail and learnt the layout of our non-fiction book and then they created their own double page spread about snow. They made sure to include interesting facts, a title and pictures. In Maths they have been finishing their subtraction work and have had a go at both missing number subtraction sentences as well as word problems. To finish off our topic about the history of nursing we had a nurse come into school to visit the children! The class thought of any questions they wanted to ask her first and prepared some of their work to show her. We even got to complete a Science experiment which showed how quickly germs can spread if we don’t wash our hands. We are also preparing a short performance of our Music learning this term which will be on Google Classroom soon for you to watch!
This week in Lundy Puffins we have looked at a wordless picture book called ‘Journey’ and written descriptions of settings. The children thought of some imaginative vocabulary and wrote great descriptions. In Maths we have completed our Statistics work by drawing and answering questions about block diagrams. Next we will be looking at Fractions. We finished off our Grace Darling topic by looking at the modern Lifeboat Service. In Science we learnt about a balanced diet and the different food groups needed for this. In RE we have completed our work on ‘Who is Muslim and how do they live?’ Next we will be learning why Easter is important to Christians. Thank you for all your hard work this half term, we hope you have a lovely half term break.
Year 6 had tremendous fun reworking the words to a selection of pop songs to include all their revision facts for SATs. We then had our own Eurorevision song contest to see which song had the most potential to be totally reworked and then learnt and performed by the children as part of their SATs revision. No spoiler alerts but there was a clear winner. Year 5 enjoyed looking at images of famous cathedral in Europe and considering the role of the architecture in faith and belief. Year 4 began their choral work with Andrew Downton from Exeter Cathedral which is very exciting and year 3 recorded their Train Journey composition and began working on another on the theme of their choice.
This week Seahunter have been learning how to divide a 2-digit number by a 1-digit number using part-whole models and place values charts. In English, we have learnt how to write noun phrases and fronted adverbials. In P.E, we have been continuing learning new gymnastics skills focusing on different ways of travelling. For Philosophy, we read the story ‘The Huge Bag of Worries’ and discussed our big question: ‘What do you do if telling someone your worry doesn’t work?’
HMS Echo have been great scientists this week; sharing their knowledge of teeth and how they work. In class, they have created fact pages to name the types of human teeth and describe their functions as well as how and why animals have different teeth. In outdoor learning they explored this further, using bricks to represent the molars of herbivores and nails to represent the canines of carnivores. They ground and ripped the food so that it could travel down the oesophagus (pipe) to the stomach (bucket) using saliva (water). They were able to explain what was happening really well using scientific vocabulary. In philosophy, they listened to half of ‘The Colour Thief’ a story about a boy whose dad has depression. They then discussed the question, ‘Why were Dad’s feelings hurt?’ The children were very good at listening to each other’s suggestions and connected their ideas. Their final thought was that it is important to speak to someone if you are feeling sad or anxious.
Year 5 enjoyed being inventors this week. All have designed a new machine and written an explanation text written to go with it. These will be shared in a class book. In numeracy we have completed our unit on decimals and percentages and look forward to returning to fractions after half term! We have now completed our work on ‘The Plague’ and have been sharing our homework books with each other. Well done to you all for doing this and producing some amazing work. We continue with our work on forces in science and in art we have now printed our designs. You all have worked extremely hard this half term and deserve a restful break next week with your families.
Year 6 have been refining skills in Literacy this week with ‘The Nameless Holiday’ by Shaun Tan. They have looked at expanded noun phrases and the passive voice. They hope to do their own version of his text after the holiday. In Maths, they have moved on to algebra and are learning all about equations. Breakthroughs in medical science have been the focus of topic work as well as discovering that women generally live longer than men. Thank you to everyone who has responded about hoodies – I’m hoping to have samples for sizes after the holiday. I will be running some booster classes after the holiday until 4:15 on a Monday and Tuesday. Children will need to bring a snack to eat beforehand. Maths on Monday and Spelling/Grammar on Tuesday. I will send out further details – starting 28th Feb and 1st March but not on (7th/8th March due to parents evening or 14th March). Please can children keep using TTRS and spellingframe for short periods over the week to keep skills ticking over.
