News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 22nd November
Another busy week for everyone. Rehearsals for Christmas are now underway and the sound of children singing festive songs is now a regular feature throughout the school
Spots and stripes last Friday for Children in Need and £185 was raised for this tremendous cause. Thank you everyone.
Diary dates:
- For details of Bideford Parade on Sunday 1st December and the switching on of the lights please see here, here, here and 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 lovely weekend everybody
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have started to celebrate Diwali. We have read the story of Rama and Sita and acted it out. We have made diva pots using clay and paper plates. We have looked at pictures of people celebrating Diwali around the world and we saw that they celebrate Diwali with fireworks like we do when it is bonfire night. Diwali is celebrated in India so we have found out where India is in the world and we have compared our clothes and food to that in India.
This week in Year 1 we finished our book on ‘What to do with a tail like this?’ by creating our own versions of the text about hats and shoes. The children wrote some fantastic ideas and thought about the verbs they wanted to use in their sentences. In maths we have started to look at subtraction and what the symbol means. Thinking about using our number bond facts to help us find a part of a whole. In history we watched a video about the Great Fire of London and answered some questions about what had happened. They have also started a piece of artwork based on some of the paintings that were created after the events in 1666. To finish the week we had a super time in outdoor learning continuing our work on animals.
Year 2 have had another great week. They enjoyed a session in the Art Studio finishing their bee paintings which are now on display. In English, they have been writing a class story based on the book ‘Augustus and his smile’. Next week, they will be writing their own stories. They are learning the songs for the Christmas play and will start to act it out next week. In their History learning, they learned about the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes and found out about. some of the places he has travelled. On Friday, they are looking forward to a talk from the fire service.
In RE, year 3 researched some of the more popular expressions of Brahman and then chose one to represent. Year 4 compared an infant christening with a believers baptism. Year 5, listed all the Christmas traditions they could think of and then decided which of them was related to the true meaning of Christmas. Year 6 researches the Torah and explores why it is important to Jewish people. In music, rehearsals continued a pace and the Strictly theme could be heard blasting out from the hall and it is looking like it will be lots of fun on 20th December!
Year 3 have had a wonderful week! In Maths, we started a new topic on multiplication and division. We began to recapping equal groups and then used arrays to work out multiplication questions. In English, we wrote a conversation between Tranio and Livia as they escaped from the erupting Mount Vesuvius. We focused on using inverted commas to punctuate our speech and also challenged ourselves to use different verbs for said. In History, we continued our research on life in the Stone Age and finished our survival guides. In Guided Reading, we began reading Too Small Tola and we focused on using retrieval and inference skills to answer questions about the first chapter. In Values, we recognised the factors that make people similar to and different from one another and we then thought about what makes each of us unique. In Computing, we learnt how to identify the attributes that are needed to collect data about an object and then we used this to arrange objects into a tree structure.
In Year 4, the children have been writing about their walk around Appledore and they have practised including conjunctions, fronted adverbials and speech. Next week, we will move onto planning ‘A Walk around a Roman Villa’ which links nicely to their History unit. In Maths, we have been learning about what multiplication and division means within different times tables, such as arrays, repeated additions, sharing and groups of. In History, we learnt about Boudica and who she was. They used some primary sources of evidence to try and draw her! In Science, we have come to the end of states of matter and we will be learning about teeth and digestion. In Computing, we continued practising how to programme a screen turtle by giving it a set of instructions/codes.
It’s been another busy week for year 5 rehearsing for the Christmas play. Well done to all the class for learning your lines and song words. Our writing this week has continued with the ‘overcoming the monster’ story and we have been introduced to both the hero and the monster. They have met but no victory yet! In maths we have been looking at equivalent fractions and in history we have found out why Alfred the Great was the only king to have been given the title ‘the great’. We are looking forward to meeting with the fire safety team and discovering how we can help stay safe in our homes in the event of a fire.
Year 6 have completed their unit on the four operations and will be moving to fractions next in maths. In Literacy, they should complete Friend or Foe work next week and have a much better grasp of character voice now – it’s been interesting to see how it has developed as their confidence in writing has grown. In History, they found out about Hitler’s plan to invade Britain as well as finding out about Appledore in WW2 at the Maritime Museum. We’re pleased to say that they have been using their lockers well and keeping the classroom tidy!
