News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 1st March
A good week, despite the weather doing its best to change that! Plenty going on in and outside of classes this week, so please read Around the Classes section further on in this post.
Diary Dates:
- World Book Day 7th March. Children in Dolphins, Yr1 & Yr2 can come to school dressed in pyjamas ready for a bedtime story. Children in Yrs 3-6 can choose whether they wear pyjamas or come dressed as a character from a book they have read. There will also be a book sale in the Bay on the day. Books will cost 20p and the money will go towards new books.
- Spring Disco, Friday 22nd March, after school and more details to follow
- Sports Day Tuesday 21st May – more details to follow
Have a good weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have travelled around the world to Africa. On Wednesday Kai’s Mummy came in and spoke to us about living in Africa. We used Google Earth to zoom in on Africa. We have discovered what the Savanna looks like and we made a list of the animals that live on it. We have also painted sunset pictures and cut out silhouettes of animals to stick on the top.
In Year 1 this week we have carried on looking at our What Happens When book for writing and have enjoyed thinking of different answers for some of the questions in the book. We have also had a go at writing some of our own questions in the style of the book and have enjoyed making these funny. In Maths we have been looking at partitioning numbers into tens and ones and grouping objects into tens to make them easier to count. In topic we carried on looking at maps and had a go at creating our own maps of a town. The children could include whatever they wanted in their towns but had to work as part of a team and try to draw the maps from a bird’s eye view. We ended up with some very creative and fun looking places!
Year 2 had a great time at outdoor learning creating a zip line for a teddy. They worked in pairs and showed great teamwork skills as they worked together to adapt their ideas. In their History work, they have continued to find out about Grace Darling and have started to think about what sort of person she was. In their Science work they have continued to learn about different materials and investigated all the different materials used to make a bicycle. In their Maths work, they have now completed their learning about times tables and division, but please keep using the Hit the Button game on the Google Classroom to practise the 2, 5 and 10x times tables so that they know all the number facts automatically. Next week they are looking forward to a multiskills PE morning at Atlantic Racquet Centre
Year 3 explored the importance of Rangoli in the Hindu faith and created some beautiful patterns of their own design to bring calmness and prosperity. They then were able further explore how Hindus worship when they continued with their unit on classical Indian dance using mudra ( hand gestures) to tell the story of Krishna and the mountain. Year 4 wrote diary entries as if they were Mary witnessing the events of Holy Week. They then picked up their whole class ensemble teaching from last year when they refined their skills on the recorder. Year 5 trialled their original design board games which are based on the Hindi belief in a cycle of birth death and rebirth and then achieving the final objective of being at one with God. The games are working very well and the children enjoyed playing them. Year 6 sequenced the events of Holy Week and then decided who they considered to be responsible for the death of Jesus. In French they wrote complete sentences to explain what they wear in different weather conditions.
Seahunter class (year 3) have had a brilliant week! In English, we read ‘Arthur and the Golden Rope’ and focused on using conjunctions and adverbs to describe Arthur and the things he gets up to on his many adventures. In Maths, we learned about unit and non-unit fractions and then challenged ourselves to compare and order unit fractions. In Geography, we began our new topic all about how our local areas has changed over time. We began by exploring some different places in the UK that have changed due to physical and human processes. We looked in detail at the Olympic Park area in London before and after the London 2012 Olympics. In Computing, we began our new topic on data and information by asking yes and no questions to help group objects according to different attributes. In PE, we focused on our coordination skills by practising passing a ball in different ways to a partner.
In HMS Echo (year 4), the children have been learning how to convert between mixed numbers and improper fractions in Maths, where they have drawn different diagrams to show this. In English, the children are designing their own machine/object to explain as part of an explanation text they’ll write, which has been inspired from our text ‘Until I Met Dudley’. I’m looking forward to seeing the children’s creativity! In Science, we looked at how to group living things with how they are similar, such as vertebrates and invertebrates. In History, we looked at the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand in 2011, and looked at pictures to see the different impacts the earthquake caused. In PE, we are working on different jumps in gymnastics and incorporating a ribbon to make a routine, which looks lovely!
Year 5 visited all the planets for our space log writing. It has been fun learning about the planets and writing about them as the spacecraft captain. In maths we have completed our unit on multiplication and division and started to know how to multiply fractions. Our geography work has been looking at how far the European capital cities are from Reykjovik and ordering them in distance. In outdoor learning we worked in the jungle; moving wood, planting trees and trimming back the plants. Well done to the group who have just completed their level 1 and 2 Bikeability this week.
Year 6 have completed maths work on decimals and have moved onto shape – particularly looking at area and perimeter of rectilinear shapes. In Literacy, they have been learning techniques used by the author Jackie Morris in ‘Ice Bear’. In PE, they showed great improvement from the beginning of the year in handball. It is great to see them thinking ahead about where the ball is moving as well as defending as a team. Despite the weather, we have enjoyed Outdoor Learning and some children have completed courses in Bikeability. For those who missed it, we hope to run another course in May.
