News
Newsletter for the week ending 18th January 2019
Please read on to find out about future PTA events and what has been happening in and around the classes…
Dates for the Diary – PTA run events
Friday 8th March, Quiz and bingo night for adults (parents, relatives, friends…). Time tbc. Details to foloww.
Friday 29th March, children’s Easter bingo. 3.30-4.30pm. Details to follow.
Friday 21st June, summer fair. Details to follow.
AROUND and ABOUT THE VILLAGE
Kingsley School Scholarship & Entrance Days & Maths Enrichment Day
These are being held on 17th and 18th January 2019 for a year 7 entry in September 2019.
Kingsley are holding a maths enrichment day for ‘very able’ Year 5 students on Saturday 9th MArch at a cost of £10. Please contact them if you are interested.
AROUND THE SCHOOL
Maths Week
A big thank you to all of you popped in to school last week as part of our maths through stories week.
Personal Best
Each half term as part of their PE children focus on a particular skill and try their hardedst to achieve a ‘personal best’. Last term it was shuttle running and well done to everybody and particularly those celebrated in assembly today.
House Cup
The winning House this term was Arctic (blue). Well done all in Arctic.
Thrift Club
First Thrift Club this year will be Monday 28th January.
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in FSU we have started our new topic, ‘People who help us’ and when we came into school on Tuesday we found a big mess! There were lots of clues around The Unit both indoors and outdoors and we thought the Grinch had come to visit! On Wednesday we found an outline of a person which we had to investigate and we still thought that the Grinch had been. We have painted pictures of police cars and Police Officers, written wanted posters for the Grinch and completed some obstacle courses, driving the bikes and scooters in and around cones etc.
Has anyone got any spare rolls of wallpaper at home that they don’t want? We would love to have them!
This week in Year 1 we have continued our work on Oi Frog, we sorted sentences into questions and commands and then wrote our own sentences. We also thought of rhyming pairs and put them into sentences. We put our rhyming pairs into the story and next we will write the new adapted story. In Maths we have used dice to add by counting on, we have remembered our number bonds to 10 and used them to work out number bonds to 20. We have started a weather diary, and will record the weather and temperature each week. Our Philosophy session used Louis Braille as an example of someone who shows determination. We discussed the question ‘Would you be determined enough to learn to read and write if you were blind?’
This week in Maths, Lundy Puffins have begun to look at multiplication in Maths. They have made equal groups and counted them and are beginning to learn their 2, 5 and 10 times tables. Any help you can give them at home with learning these tables will really help them. In English, they have been adding adjectives to their writing to make it more interesting for the reader. They looked at other words for sad, happy and lonely. This will help them to write their Baboon on the Moon stories. In their topic work, they found out a little more about India. They found out more about the Taj Mahal and why it was built and then made some beautiful pencil sketches, thinking about symmetry. In Philosopy this week, they learned about Louis Braille and how he was determined to make life better for blind people. The question they chose to discuss was: Why didn’t Louis listen to his father?
Seahunter have had a great week, particularly in English, learning about independent and subordinate clauses. They acted out whether each clause could stand on its own to decide which was which then worked hard to use them in their writing. We were very impressed with their understanding and determination. In P.E. we started work on gymnastics and the children showed great control and tension in their movements. Finally, in our English work, we have been reading Gregory Cool, a story set on the island of Tobago in the Caribbean. The children highlighted key information about life on Tobago, which they used to create mind maps. These have then provided them with a plan to make booklets about life on Tobago. Some of these will be on the writers wall and in the classroom to read soon!
This week in English, Year 4 have started to learn our new class text ‘Until I met Dudley’ where we are learning how to write explanations. The class have been looking at what makes the authors writing successful, and have been learning how to write complex sentences using a range of subordinating conjunctions. For Maths, we have began learning further multiplication and division skills, and have been focusing on our times table facts. In Science, we have looked at tooth decay and set up an experiment that we will observe next week. The children enjoyed their first week of swimming and have also been continuing to learn gymnastic skills at school.
This week, Year 5 we have been learning about space and the order of the planets in Science, Topic and French. In maths, we have been working on how to convert remainders into decimals and fractions as well as thinking about how we use remainders in different contexts. In English we have started a new unit using Wallace and Gromit ‘Cracking Contraptions’ – we have been discovering many new words and we hope to be able to use some of these in our own writing when we eventually come up with our own inventions. Thank you to all parents who came in to share our maths work last week for maths week.
Y6 have continued learning about the exploration of Ernest Shackleton and writing diary entries as if we were a crew member. We have also been researching another polar explorer and creating a timeline in preparation of writing a journal about them. In maths we have started to do a 10 minutes daily maths test in preparation for SATs and began work on decimals. This week we have been using numbers with 3 decimal places and what happens when you multiply them by 10, 100 and 1000. In our topic work we have created a timeline about the main events of WW2 and started looking at posters from the time through our art work. Jules, from the Marine Conservation Society came into the class yesterday for the day to complete our work for the ‘seaweed project’. We were given the results from our survey of seaweed at Westward Ho! and learned more interesting information about the algae.
Have a lovely weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the staff and children
