News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 10th January
Welcome back everyone and a happy New Year to you all. We hope you had a lovely break and it is great to have the children back in school and the vibrancy that brings.
Today we launched our collaboration project with scientists from throughout the South West who will be visiting school and working with each class from year 1 to year 6. For more information on what the children will be doing in Tomorrow’s Climate Scientists Project, please see here. A big than you to Lucy Willans and Mrs Wetz for organising this mammoth project. It’s year 4 this morning to start the project and that’s where I’m off to once this is written to find out what they are up to!
A busy week, so please do read the Around the Classes section to find out what has been happening in each class. To find out what your child will be learning this term see here. As you can see, the week is very busy in each class and so good attendance is vital to ensuring children reach their potential. For our December attendance newsletter, please see here.
Are you wanting to become more aware of online dangers, up to date apps, tips on how to parent a teenager, understanding their emotions & how their brain works? Although aimed at parents of children aged 11-18, DICE could be the perfect programme for you! Please see here for more information.
The children are looking smart in the uniforms, thank you, and for a few they are wearing trainers to school. Please ensure the children attend school in correct specified footwear, ie flat, black sensible school shoes or boots. Shoes are to be plain with no coloured logos and boots must not have excessive detailing, be Ugg style or made from soft fabric. Crocs or trainers are not acceptable. For more information on school uniform please see here and if please remember that we hold a range of good condition previously worn uniform.
Best wishes
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have been finding out about winter as a season. We have named the seasons and looked at where winter fits into the seasons. We talked about what happens specifically in winter. We have painted winter pictures and pictures of our Christmas presents. Today, we went down to the woods to look for signs of winter.
Year 1 have had a great first week back remembering our class rules and the routines, well done everyone! We started the term by thinking about our value for this term ‘Positivity’. We discussed what we would like to get better at this year. They came up with wonderful ideas wanting to get better at swimming, drawing, riding bikes, skateboarding and many more. We have started reading our new book all about the weather. We enjoyed a chilly walk around school to think about what the weather was like and how it made us feel. Over the weekend the children have been asked to think about what the weather is like and we will fill in our weather diary together on Monday. In maths we have started looking at recognising numbers up to 20 and how they are made up on tens and ones. Hope you have a lovely weekend!
Welcome back Year 2 and Happy New Year to you all! They have settled back in really well and were all excited to see each other after the break. This week, they have been looking at money in Maths by counting pence and pounds and selecting the correct money. Any chances you have to look at money at home would greatly support the work they have been doing in class. In English, they have been writing stories about a Baboon on the Moon and have tried really hard to add detail for their reader. In their History work they thought about who their heroes are in preparation for their learning about Grace Darling over the half term. In RE, they have been re-visiting their learning about Islam and we were amazed by how much they had remembered from the Autumn term – well done everyone!
All classes hit the ground running in music this week. After the superb effort with rehearsals and performance of Bethlehem Ballroom we were ready to get stuck in to some musical theory. Year 3 selected unpitched percussion instruments based on the quality of the sound they make to perform their graphic score. Year 4 composed different cyclic patterns which they will overlap to create more texture within their compositions. Year 5 sang and recognized melodies using the pentatonic scale. They will be playing them next week. Year 6 tried to identify the themes of different movements within a classical piece of music. Thank you to everyone who joined us at the church before Christmas. We are delighted that our performance was received so well. We do have a recording and will send out details of how it can be viewed.
Year 3 have had a great first week back! In Maths, we practised multiplying 2-digit numbers by 10 and we also learnt how to use related facts to help us answer multiplication and division questions. In English, we finished reading The First Drawing, and then we retold the story in the first person. After writing our stories, we edited them for corrections and challenged ourselves to also think about ways in which we could improve our writing. In History, we began our new topic on Marie Curie and discovered a variety of objects linked to her. We then wrote our own questions to find out more about her. On Wednesday, we had great fun at our first swimming lesson and in our other PE lesson we focused on our dynamic balance skills. In our Value’s lesson, we began by sharing some of our achievements and then we went on to discuss something that we would like to get better at.
In Year 4 this week, the children have had a great first week back starting lots of new topics. In Maths, we have started learning about factor pairs as part of multiplication and division and we will be moving onto multiplying and dividing whole numbers by 10 and 100. In English, we started reading the book ‘Jack and the Dreamsack’ and the children read the story and learnt and remembered a few pages. In Guided Reading, we started reading the book Once, where we discussed events during WWII and what to expect from the story with it being a book during the war. We have understood that the book is a fictional book based on true events and that this doesn’t happen anymore. It would be great if they have any questions at home to have an open discussion about it. In PE, we started gymnastics and we worked on some partner balances. In Science, we had a dentist nurse visit who taught the children how to properly brush their teeth!
Year 5 has returned, from the Christmas break, full of enthusiasm for our new learning. For our writing we have begun reading a story about the Great Plague, writing about the events from a child’s view. The work on fractions continues and we are now learning to add mixed numbers. It’s great to have a group staying after school to improve on their maths skills. We have begun finding out about the Shang Dynasty, starting with the discovery of ‘oracle bones’. We had a session of art in the art studio this week; we completed our mackerel fish pictures and started to design a wave in preparation for screen printing. Our science this half term will focus on earth and space. Well done to those who are already well into doing their space project for homework.
Happy New Year to you all! Year 6 have been learning about ratio in maths and linking it to their knowledge of fractions. In Literacy, they have begun Pig Heart Boy by Malorie Blackman and will be focussing on making a balanced argument. History is all about how life expectancy has increased, starting with what people had for the first time about 11,000 years ago. Team skills have been used in PE and they are starting Lino cutting in Art. It’s been great to see so many coming back ready to learn and do their best. Booster classes for Y6 start next week. Maths on Monday and Grammar and Spelling on Thursday (will normally be Tuesday). Please remember to let school know how your child is going home.
