News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 19th January
Well that was a cold week! Thank you for making every effort to get your children to school this week. Despite the challenging circumstances due to the weather attendance was good and learning continued as usual. Please read the section Around the Classes to find our what has been happening in your child’s class this week.
Despite the weather outdoor learning has continued, thank you Sarah, and we now have some spaces in Eco Rangers on a Tuesday. If you are interested, please contact admin@appledoreprimary.co.uk
High wind is forecast for Monday morning, so as a precaution we will not open the Pitt Lane entrance at drop off time in the morning.
Diary Date:
- Bideford Library is celebrating National Storytelling Week with a day of stories on Thursday 1st Feb, including a professional storyteller at the library for all ages over 5 years for free.
We wish you all a very happy weekend
Have a good weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have continued learning about the Arctic. We have looked more at the landscape and we located the Arctic on Google maps. We have found out about the clothes that people wear when living in the Arctic. Today we found out how to build an igloo.
In Year 1 this week we have been finishing off our Weather book by writing our own pages for hail and then for snow which tied in well with the weather we have had this week! We enjoyed finding out facts about snow and writing about things we can do when it snows and what we should wear. In Maths we have been finishing off Place Value to 20 by comparing numbers and ordering numbers from smallest to greatest and then greatest to smallest. In PE this half term we are doing Gymnastics and this week we were able to get the big wall equipment out which was very exciting! We got to explore for a while and then practise the shapes we have been learning on the equipment.
Year 2 have had another good week. They have started reading a new book about Dinosaurs called ‘Creature Features’ and enjoyed finding out different facts about dinosaurs. In Maths, they have finished their work learning about money and will now move on to learning times tables. Well done everyone who has completed their Maths homework so far! In their Geography work, they remembered the names of the seven continents of the world and located India and the UK on a world map. They are looking forward to another outdoor learning session on Friday.
Year 3 reflected on promises they had made and the importance of keeping those promises. They then matched different professions and roles to the promises they have to make. In miso , they rehearsed their graphic score using unpatched instruments. Year 4, looked at the Quran and the five pillars of Islam influence the way a Muslim leads their life. In Music, they rehearsed their cyclic patterns using unhitched instruments with some very good results. In French they have begun looking at the French for zoo animals and appropriate adjectives to describe them. Year 5 looked at 3 bible texts to find references to God being holy and loving which they then compared to the list of qualities they had thought of last week for a divine being. Year 6 recorded their understanding of the scientific explanation of creation and compared this to what the Bible says. In French they looked at the correct French verb to go with the French sports they had learned.
Year 3 have had a wonderful week! In History, we learned all about Marie Curie’s achievements and why they are significant. In Science, we explored the role of the skeleton and learned that it helps to support us and protect our organs. We also made our own bionic hands to show how the skeleton works with muscles to help us move. We took part in some exciting outdoor learning where we looked at x-rays of different animals and then dissected owl pellets and discovered bones of the animals that they had eaten. In Maths, we learned how to divide a 2-digit number by a 1 digit number and answered some word problems involving scaling. In English, we started reading a new book ‘Fantastically Great Women who Changed the World’ and used noun phrases to describe the swimmer, Gertrude Ederle. In Computing, we learned about desktop publishing and had a go at creating our own invitations and learned how to change the size, colour and font of the text.
In HMS Echo, the children have been learning column multiplication when multiplying a two digit and three digit number by a one digit number, as well as learning short division. In English, the children have been busy writing their own fantasy story – I’m looking forward to reading them! They have tried really hard at using some sophisticated vocabulary and expanded noun phrases. In PE, we have been practising our gymnastics balances as well as improving our core strength by practising the plank position! We have also practised our balancing on a line skills whilst balancing a cone on top of our heads. For our Values work, we looked at different emotions and feelings and where in our body we would feel these emotions. In History, the children learnt about people’s jobs during WW1 and how they are different to the jobs we have today.
Year 5 have enjoyed listening to the plague story and writing Daniel’s diary entries. They have discovered that he survived the great plague and goes on to find his mother, who also managed to recover. In maths we have continued to work on fractions, learning how to add and subtract fractions with different denominators. Our science work has been looking at the different phases of the moon. We had an outdoor learning session which looked at some of the remedies used during the plague; we made pomanders using ginger, rosemary. mint, garlic, fennel and other smelling plants. We are going to take these home and hope we can avoid any illnesses going around at the moment.
Luckily, year 6 have been keeping warm in the classroom this week and mastering skills with ratio in Maths and writing a balanced argument in Literacy. Science has included work on how animals and plants have adapted to environments and thinking about how long this takes to happen and why it is essential. History has examined why life expectancy has improved for people over the last 250 years and what the impact of this has been. In PSHE, they have been thinking about aspects of mental health. It was great to see so many children attend Booster classes this week – there are some resources added to Google classroom each week that reinforce this work (I do apologise for some of the songs – but we do all learn in different ways). Although we have some children who have responded very positively to our request to adjust behaviour this term, we still have some children who need to try harder – please reinforce the message with your child.
