News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 13th September
The end of the first full week back and the children look like they are ready for the weekend – hopefully you will all get a lie in as a result!
Success at the Appledore Carnival with 1st place for the Junior Float. Thank you and well done everybody involved.
Please click here to view the notification letter regarding the pedestrian crossing that is being installed on Richmond Road. Work is planned to begin on 9th October with a planned duration of four weeks.
Starting at the end of September, and once a month, the North Devon Cross Country league holds a race for both children and adults at a beautiful locations . The children’s races are for u9 and u11 and prove very popular and for more information see here .If your child does participate and wants to do so wearing a school running vest, please let us know and they can borrow one for the season.
For parents and carers of children with additional needs, drop-in mornings are scheduled to meet and socialise with others in similar situations once a month on a Friday morning. For more information, please see here.
Dates for the diary:
- Years 3-6 Harvest Festival, 2.15pm, Wednesday 16th October at St Mary’s Church
- Book Festival Free Family Fun Day, Saturday 14th September, 10.30am-3pm see here for more information
Have a super weekend and see you all on Monday.
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have started our topic, ‘All about me’. We have talked about what our houses look like and who lives in our house. We have painted pictures of our houses and made clay faces. Today, we invented a new house.
A fantastic first full week in Year 1. We got a special delivery of a book called Naughty Bus and a toy bus. We loved reading about all the cheeky things the bus got up to in the story. The children were worried that the bus might escape its box and cause havoc around the class! Thankfully that hasn’t happened yet… We had our first Dance lesson and the children loved playing musical statues as a warm up. They created a solo dance to music and performed it in front of an audience. We have started our Geography topic on Antarctica and Penguins. The children really enjoyed hearing a story about Pip the penguin and drew some fantastic pictures of her. Enjoy your weekend!
Year 2 have had a great week and we have been impressed with how well they have settled into their new classroom. In English, they have been reading the book ‘Traction Man’ and have been writing descriptions of the main character and designing new outfits for Traction Man. In Maths, they have looked at two digit numbers and made them with lots of different equipment. They have looked at lots of different maps and had a go at drawing their own map of a place they know well. They have worked on balance and coordination in PE and learnt about different habitats in Science. A busy and enjoyable week!
Year 3 have had a brilliant week! In Maths, we continued our learning on place value by partitioning 2-digit numbers in different ways and placing numbers to 100 on number lines. In English, we learnt all about prepositions and then used prepositional phrases to write some descriptive sentences about where you would find some of the animals from the book ‘Lord of the Forest’. In Science, we began our new topic on light and dark. We began by exploring what a light source is and learnt that a light source is something that makes its own light and then we sorted different objects according to whether or not they were light sources. In Geography, we recapped the climate zones around the world and then looked at a variety of climate graphs. In Computing, we had our first internet safety lesson and we learnt that we should only share information with people that we choose to and can trust.
We achieved a fabulous result with our original song. Out of hundreds of entries and a very high standard we were placed in the top 50. The competition will run again this year and I have said to the children that if they would like to compose a song over the year, they can show it to me and we can consider submitting it. During the course of the year, all year groups will be introduced to yu studio which will give them the tools for creating their track. Anyone connected to our school can be involved with the composition, so if there are any songwriters out there do feel free to get involved. In the meantime, we are cracking on with preparations for our harvest celebration. The children have written the readings and are learning the songs and dances so that we can present to you, “A Crow’s View of Harvest”
In HMS Echo (year 4) this week, we have been learning about thousands and four digit numbers in Maths, where we have been partitioning numbers and understanding the value of each digit. In English, we have been reading Meerkat Mail and learning and remembering a few pages to help us with our writing. In Geography, we looked at the meanings of sustainable, renewable and non-renewable. In Science, we defined solids, liquids and gases. We also were lucky enough to have a morning of Art where we started drawing and painting. We look forward to our trip next week to the Energy from Waste plant in Exeter on Wednesday! It is an early start where children need to arrive at school for 8am. Children will need a packed lunch unless your child is eligible for free school meals.
It has been a very busy week for year 5. We have started to read the Tear Thief and identify adverbial phrases within the text. In maths we have been using our knowledge to complete addition and subtraction problems. We have found out about why the Silk Road was so important 2000 year ago and are more knowledgeable about ‘caravans’. For science we have started to look at the properties of materials and will explore this further in our outdoor learning session. We went down to the art studio to begin our Christmas card designs, using chalk pastels and brusho paint. Swimming has started for those still gaining confidence in the water and PE has focused on team games. Information about the forthcoming residential is being sent home so please check bags if you have not yet seen this.
Year 6 have had a fantastic week on residential this week at Simonsbath. Despite the mixed weather, they have completed all activities and had a lot of fun. They will hopefully be able to share some photos with their families soon. The staff at the centre have commented on how well they have behaved and how much effort they have put into activities even when they were challenging at times. We’ve seen some great team work, kindness towards each other and resilience. We hope they sleep well this weekend!
