News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 16th June
A super week full of activities the children have embraced with their typically exuberance, even in this heat! Please read this posting in full to find out what has been happening in and around all the classes, including: looking after a dragon egg; drawing pictograms; composing music using the pentatonic scale; tag rugby; Northam Burrows visit; a walk to The Lookout to support writing; play rehearsals and much, much more…
This week we returned to our pre Covid restrictions drop off and pick up routines and thank you for supporting us with this.
Dates for the diary:
- We have booked a live online safety parent workshop on Monday 3rd July at 5pm delivered by Devon County Council Safeguarding Team. You can log in from your own device by clicking here or joining us in our school hall on a big screen. It will last for approximately one and a half hours and we have deliberately scheduled it just before the summer holidays when children typically spend more time online.
Please click here for dates of free family fun activities with the Northam Burrows rangers on and around the beach and burrows over the summer holiday
Have a great weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all of the children and staffAROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have been talking about what we have for breakfast. We made some porridge but it was too hot to eat straight away so we decided to go down to The Jungle and play whilst it was cooling. When we came back the classrooms were a mess! We decided that Goldilocks and the Three Bears had come into the classroom to eat the porridge. We made some more and kept guard whilst it was cooling. We also made some signs to stop Goldilocks eating it. We wrote a letter to Goldilocks explaining how we thought she had behaved. We have painted pictures, made collages and draw pictures of the bears using pastels.
In Sea Lions (year 1) this week we have carried on looking after our dragon egg and by Wednesday it had grown! It was very exciting and we can’t wait to see if it continues growing! In Writing we have been thinking of adjectives to describe different dragons and then put these into sentences in our books. We wrote amazing sentences with lots of interesting adjectives. In Maths we have carried on looking at fractions and have now learnt how to find both a half and a quarter of a shape and quantity. In topic we have carried on learning about Castles and this week we learnt about the Battle of Hastings. We were so interested by the story that we had a long discussion about it and then wrote down what we remembered in our books.
Year 2 have started their new topic this week which is all about seaside holidays in the past. They started by thinking about what activities they like to do at the seaside and will begin to think about what it might have been like to visit the seaside 100 years ago. In English, they have been reading a poetry book called ‘First Book of the Sea’ which includes lots of seaside related poems. In Maths, they have been looking at pictograms and have been drawing their own. In Science, they have started a topic all about plants, which will include some outdoor learning sessions, so look out for the dates for these. As part of their Science work, they will be visiting Rosemoor on 27th June to take part in a plants workshop. Please speak to your class teacher if you haven’t received a letter about this.
In RE, year 3 thought about what sort of world they want. They had lots of mature and thoughtful ideas. In music they looked at a musical score that had more different notes. They coped well with the fingering for these notes on the recorder. In French, they wrote out their recipe for a smoothie using their knowledge on colours, numbers and fruits in French. Year 4 thought about how some people do not need the Holy Spirit in their lives to help them lead a good life. Year 5 sequenced their photographs of the parable of The Centurion’s Servant drama work for the floor book. In music, they began composing a piece for the recorder using the pentatonic scale. Year 6 looked at the benefits of expressing gratitude more regularly and designed a poster to inform people of these. In French, Years 4,5 and 6 are now bringing together all their work on intensifiers and conjunctions to write a detailed description of their monster.
Year 3 have had a wonderful week. In science, we learnt that a force is a push or a pull and then we acted out some actions that involved different forces. We also took part in some exciting outdoor learning to compare how things move differently on different surfaces. In PE, we started learning how to play tag rugby and we began by learning how to pass the ball. In Maths, we have continued our learning on money and we have learnt how to find change. In English, we finished our stories based on ‘Cinderella of the Nile’ and then challenged ourselves to edit our stories to see if we could make them even better. We began our new topic on ancient Egypt and we created our own timelines to show when the ancient Egyptian civilization was in history and compared this to some historical events that we have learnt about before.
In HMS Echo (year 4) this week, we had a lovely day at Northam Burrows, where we explored freshwater insects, rockpool scrambling, looked at minibeasts in the sand dunes and looked for birds on our walk back. It was a very hot today and the children coped incredibly well! Apart from the trip, in the classroom, the children have begun learning about shape in Maths. In English, I have tested their memories to see how much they remember about the History of Appledore. We’ll also be recapping how to use speech, fronted adverbials and conjunctions to improve our writing, ready to apply this for our very own information text. In Geography, we learnt about the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand – maybe you can test their memories to see how much they remember!
It’s been a very hot week but that has not stopped the hard work from continuing in year 5. We walked up to the ‘Lookout’ as part of our writing (based on the text Where my wellies take me). We focused on the wild flowers that we could see and the view of the water, creating poems and information facts in our books. In maths we have continued with work on decimals (addition and subtraction) and fractions. Despite the heat everyone is showing improved skills in their cricket and tennis this week. Well done to the team who took part in the swimming gala this week.
Year 6 have been busy with the play this week – now we have the stage, it is starting to take shape. They have also been making packaging for cakes in maths and learning skills in literacy before planning their own work. A highlight of the week was the Bioblitz trip – a very warm day out on the Burrows taking part in activities to help to see what animals are in this amazing area. Please make sure you are aware of the change of time for meeting on Bideford quay for our trip to Lundy on Thursday 22nd – meet time is not 7:30am. Thank you for all the photos of the children in their earlier years that I’ve had so far – keep them coming in!
