News
Newsletter for the week ending 20th April
Welcome back everybody and please read on to find out about year 1-3 singing to you, Ofsted, P4C and everything else that has been going on in and around the classes…
AROUND THE SCHOOL
Welcome back everybody and we hope you had an enjoyable Easter and of course the weather is now so much better now the holiday is over! We have certainly been taking advantage of the weather and there has been much noise from the jungle from classes using it, the field has been used at lunchtimes and lunch has been taken outside and there has been the drumming of feet around the school as children endeavour to beat their 1km run time.
Come and hear years 1-3 Sing
You are all invited to hear years 1-3 (Sea Lions, Lundy Puffins and Seahunter)sing songs they have been learning in their music lessons with Mrs Smale at 9.20am next Friday (27th April). We hope to see as many as possible there.
Ofsted
We were inspected on Wednesday and it was a positive experience. The children and staff were amazing and thank you to all of you who shared your views via Parent view or in person with the inspector. Due to every report needing to be quality assured by Ofsted HQ we will not be able to officially share the outcome for a few weeks yet and will do so as soon as we can.
AROUND AND ABOUT TORRIDGE
After School Surf Club
The North Devon Surf School are now offering your child the opportunity to learn to surf with professional instructors at their award winning Centre of Excellence in Westward Ho!
Lessons will run on Fridays 3.45pm – 5.45pm from the Surf School in Pebbleridge Road, dates are:
Friday 20th April, Friday 4th May, Friday 18th May, Friday 8th June, Friday 15th June, Friday 22nd June, Friday 29th June and Friday 6th July
This is priced at £96 per child for the eight week surfing programme and includes wetsuit, boots, surfboards and tuition with fully qualified coaches. Children must be 7 years old and above and have a good swimming ability to join.Spaces are limited so please call Emma at The North Devon Surf School on 01237 474663 to reserve your child a place by 30th March 2018. Lesson payments to be made by cash or debit/credit card to the Surf School direct.
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in FSU we have been looking for signs of Spring. We spent a couple of mornings in The Jungle using our senses to look for Spring signs, we used the natural materials to make Spring pictures and we built some nests for the birds. Back in The Unit we have painted pictures of Spring, made collages and planted seeds in our garden.
We have had a great first week back in Year 1. Everyone has come back working hard and ready to learn. In Writing we are looking at the book ‘Tell Me a Dragon’. We have described a dragon and our friends have tried to guess which dragon we described. In Maths we have continued our work on measuring, we have used scales to compare and weigh objects. Next we will explore the capacity of containers. Mrs Halloway looked after our bean plants in the Easter holidays. They have grown quite tall and we have now completed our last entry in our bean diaries. Our P4C session will take place on Friday and will use the text ‘Meerkat Mail’.
Lundy Puffins have had a good first week back. They have begun their new topic ‘London’s Burning’ which is all about the Great Fire of London. They learned all about how the fire started and have begun to learn about why it spread. In English, they have also begun a new sequence of work based on a book called ‘The Great Outdoors’. The book includes lots of different activities that you can do outside, so they are looking forward to reading some more of the book. In Maths, the focus has been on position and direction so they are learning to use the words ‘clockwise’, ‘anti-clockwise’, ‘left’ and ‘right’ to describe how something has moved. On Thursday, another 1km run was completed – the times for this are improving, so well done everyone!
Seahunter have enjoyed a busy first week back after the Easter holiday. They worled hard on Momday to complete some more filming for the arts trail project. There are definitely some budding actors in the making! In English, we have started work on a new unit that will culminate in a report about Howard Carter and the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. To find out how to write a report about a person, the children are using the book ‘Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World’. They have enjoyed finding out some fascinating facts this week such as Coco Chanel introducing the idea that women could wear pyjamas! In Maths, we have explored fractions of shapes and numbers. It has been tricky but the children have stuck at it and made good progress. Our philosophy session this week was based on ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ and we discussed the question ‘why didn;t the lady appreciate the house she had?’ The discussion concluded with some statments that the children created about being grateful for what we have. This links to our school value this half term, which is appreciative.
HMS Echo have had a busy week back at school and the children have come back keen to learn! In Maths, the children have started learning about decimals. For English, we have started a new text ‘King of the Birds’ by Helen Ward. The children have heard the book, looked at some of the language and structural features and discussed their likes and dislikes of the story. The class did an elicitation task in Science to show what they know about states of matter to start their learning next week. In P.E this week we focused on running where we have started a new unit ‘athletics’. Our new value this half term is ‘appreciative’ so the children have created mind maps about people, places, objects and experiences that they appreciate. Following this we had a philosophy session where we read the book ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’. Our big question the children voted to discuss was ‘would you still appreciate what you had even if it wasn’t much and why?’
Beechcroft have returned to school, after the Easter break, very keen to work and move forward with their learning. We have started a new unit it literacy using the book ‘The Tear Thief’. We are writing our own stories, about emotion thieves, using a new style of planning. This week we had a focus on using adverbial phrases to improve out sentences. In numeracy we have been challenged by changing fractions into decimals and percentages, but we know more now than at the beginning of the week. The new topic of Africa has been started and we have been looking at the counties within the continent of Africa and which one we would like to do as an independent project. P4C this week has involved us talking about ‘appreciation’ through the story ‘Aaaarrgghh, Spider’. We talked about the role spiders play in our environment and why we should appreciate them. The question we discussed was ‘Is it possible to avoid pre-judging?’.
In year 6 we have quickly returned into the swing of things, completing biographies of people of interest in literacy and ratio and proportion and fractions. In preparation for our cricket coaching that starts next week we dusted off our cricket eqipment and played on the field.
We wish you all a super weekend,
Jeremy Cooper and all the staff and children
