News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 15th November
We now have a pedestrian road crossing! Please encourage your children to use it and please be aware that with it come parking restrictions that will become clearer as the painting of road markings and signage is complete.
Our Halloween discos last Friday were a big success and thank you to Friends of Appledore School for organising and attending and to school staff who volunteered to attend to ensure the safety of the event. Thank you also to Blak Estate Agents from Bideford for donating the fireworks for our Foundation Stage fireworks night and for a few photos taken on the night please see here.
Please see here for our monthly attendance newsletter which this month includes helpful information regarding how long a child should be off school for specific illnesses.
Assembly this week included remembrance and safeguarding monitoring focused on consent. For both children demonstrated impressive awareness and understanding. Staff received anti-racism training this week.
The PTA would welcome donations of chocolate items for the Chocolate Tombola at our forthcoming Christmas Fair. Please could parents bring in donations to the school office before Friday 6th December. Anything chocolate based would be welcome – small bars of chocolate would be great as well as slightly bigger chocolate products. Please avoid items that obviously contain nuts (I.e. snickers bars) although we realise most chocolate products seem to contain a nut warning.
Diary dates:
- Online workshop on how to support your child reading at home 2-3pm, 19th November – see here
- Turtles and Dolphins Christmas play, 2pm, Tuesday 10th December, school hall
- Year 1&2 Christmas performance, 2.30pm Monday 9th December and 9.30am Tuesday 10th December, school hall
- Year 3-6 Christmas Service, 2pm, Friday 20th December, St Mary’s Church
- Christmas fair, after school, Friday 13th December in the car park
Have a lovely weekend everybody
Have a good weekend everybody
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have been commemorating Remembrance Day. We have found out why we commemorate it, how we commemorate it and the significance of the poppy. We have painted and printed pictures of poppies and we have loose objects from around the classroom to make a poppy.
At the beginning of the week in Year 1 we talked about ‘Remembrance’ and what it means. The children shared what they already knew and then we took part in the national silence. We placed the date of the First world war on our class timeline of events. We then started our new history topic the Great Fire of London by reading a story together and discussing what happened. In English we have been focussing on verbs and exploring how we can use these in sentences. We played a game of charades and the children were fantastic at acting out the different words. During our values lesson we looked at the difference between being unkind, teasing and bullying. We had a very thoughtful discussion and this also linked to our e-safety lesson looking at relationships online and how it is important to be considerate/kind both online and offline.
Year 2 have had a great week. They have looked at subtraction in Maths and have subtracted two-digit numbers and have begun to solve word problems involving addition and subtraction. In their English, they have looked at some of the verbs used in the book ‘Augustus and his smile and were able to use some of these in their own writing. For their History work, they worked together in groups to look at photographs and paintings of explorers. They made a timeline of explorers and then matched them up to their expeditions. There was lots of really great discussion and reasoning with each other about creating the timeline. They enjoyed dressing up in spots and stripes for Children in Need and are looking forward to an outdoor learning session hunting for minibeasts on Friday.
Year 3, illustrated the different sides to their personalities in order to understand that although Hindus believe in one god, there are many different expressions of him. Year 4 compared different works of art depicting the baptism of Christ. They spotted imagery relating to the Holy Trinity. Year 5 created a wanted poster for the savour using information from Isaiah and Micah. Year 6 researched the tefillin and mezuzah and found out how they help Jewish people pray. In music, we have had great fun rehearsing the songs for our Christmas presentation with the help from some famous judges!
Seahunter (year 3) class have had a great week! In Maths, we learnt how to estimate answers and then used this knowledge to estimate the answers to a variety of addition and subtraction calculations. We also explored how we can use the inverse to check the answer to a calculation. In English, we learnt all about subordinate clauses and used this knowledge to write some advice for Tranio and Livia to help them escape from Mount Vesuvius. In Science, we recapped the properties of different rocks and then we used the MOH’s scale to investigate the hardness of different rocks. We tested the hardness of 8 rocks and found that granite was the hardest and chalk was the softest. In History, we explored what life was like in the Stone Age and then created our own Stone Age survival guides. In Computing, we explored questions with yes/no answers, and thought about how these can be used to identify and compare objects.
It has been a busy week in Year 4 this week. The children have been continuing reading A Walk in London, where they have learnt and remembered some pages to help them when it comes to writing their own information text. In Maths, we have started multiplication and division, where we have looked at multiples of 3, 6 and 9 and the relationship between them. In Computing, we looked at what makes us feel safe and unsafe online, and what to do when we do feel unsafe online. In PE, we looked at the three different types of passes in netball: chest pass, bounce pass and shoulder pass. We also worked on the footwork rule.
The arrival of Year 5 class lockers has been of great excitement this week. All are being encouraged to bring in a smaller bag each day due to the size of the locker. Lunch boxes will be put onto trolley and taken over to the hall each morning whilst coats and PE bags will be placed inside the locker. Another exciting event which took place this week was the BAE electricity road show. We found out alot about electricity in a fun and interactive way (amazing science learning). In our writing we have been writing a shared story about a pollution monster and in maths we have completed our multiplication and division assessments and finding out what we already know about fractions. Our history learning has been finding out when the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings arrived in Britain and what their houses were like. The week has ended with outdoor learning; linked with the Anglo-Saxons.
Year 6 have been finding out about the function of blood in Science and how serious the risk of attack from Nazi Germany was in June 1940, for History. Maths has been refining skills on division, including long division and in Literacy, it has been all about developing character voice and emotion when writing diary entries. Some children will benefit from keeping their maths skills going so feel free to give them the odd question at home (3 or 4 digits divided by 1 or 2 digits eg: 365 divided by 8, or 3987 divided by 26). They enjoyed a Science workshop on Tuesday where they found out about electricity. Children now have a locker in class to keep their PE kit, bag and coat in. (They were very excited about this.) Lockers will be emptied every Friday and no food or drink is to be placed in them – packed lunches will be placed on the trolley outside the classroom in the morning and placed back on the trolley after lunch (and collected from outside class at the end of the day) any fruit snacks for break need to be placed in their trays in the classroom in the morning, and water bottles must be placed in the water bottle containers in the classroom too.
