News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 2nd February
A busy week inside and outside classrooms. Please read on to find out much of what has been happening…
Children from Year 3 and 4 competed in a tennis tournament at ARC. Everyone showed great sportsmanship, had lots of fun and huge congratulations to the Year 3 team who won the tournament!
Please keep you eyes open for communication from us into your inbox about parent evenings coming up.
Diary Dates:
- Tuesday 27th February is Kingsley School Senior School open morning. A number of scholarship opportunities are available and for more information please click here
- Sports Day Tuesday 21st May – more details to follow
Wishing you all a happy weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have found out a little more about the Rainforest. We have named the layers of the Rainforest and worked out which layer the animals live in. We made some books to represent this. We have also painted some pictures of these animals. Today we compared the Rainforest to the Arctic.
In Year 1 this week we have carried on learning about significant nurses in history and learnt who Mary Seacole was. We then compared hospitals in the past to hospitals now and wrote a letter to Florence Nightingale telling her how much better they are now. In Writing we have carried on with the book No-bot the Robot and have really been focusing on using punctuation and reading through our work to check it makes sense. We have also been working super hard on our handwriting and have seen huge improvements already! In Maths we have been doubling, we really enjoyed playing a game with a partner where we roll a dice, double the number it lands on and then colour in that number. Whoever coloured the most numbers won!
This week Year 2 have been learning about division in Maths and are beginning to make a link between multiplication and division. In English, they are trying hard to use the style of the dinosaur book we have been looking at to write about sea creatures. Everyone is trying really hard to write in sentences and include lots of information, whilst still working hard on handwriting! In their topic work, they have been finding out what school might be like in a village in India and comparing this to our school day. In their Science work, they are learning about different food groups and were keen to find out more when they made soup for their outdoor learning.
Year 3 have had a fantastic week. In Maths, we have been learning all about mm, cm and m. We have been finding equivalent lengths and have also been comparing lengths. In English, we wrote our own biographies on a famous person and focused on using conjunctions in our writing to extend our ideas and interesting sentence starters. In PE, we have been working on our coordination and balancing skills and this week we focused on our ball skills. In History, we compared Marie Curie to another famous scientist, Albert Einstein. We used a Venn diagram to show how the two scientists were similar and different and then discussed why Marie Curie may have had to have shown more resilience because she was a female scientist and she was unable to go to University in Poland because she was a woman. In Values, we read ‘All the Ways to be Smart’ and discussed how we should be celebrating everyone’s unique qualities and skills.
In HMS Echo (year 4), the children have written an instructional/explanation text about how the digestive system works which links to their Science topic – try and quiz your child at home and see whether they can explain it to you! They did really well at using the scientific vocabulary. In Maths, we have moved on from multiplication and division to length and perimeter, where we have looked at kilometres and metres and finding the perimeter of rectangles. In History, we learnt about how our diets have changed over the years and we mapped this on a timeline. We discussed rationing, convenience food and the introduction of fast food. In Computing, we looked at ‘making a podcast’, where the children tried their brand new headphones and practised recording their voices and trimming their recordings so there were no ‘gaps’ between speaking.
Year 5 have enjoyed being inventors this week. In English we have been looking at ‘Cracking Contraptions’ and exploring some of the machines invented by Wallace and Grommit. We designed a bedroom tidier machine and then wrote an explanation on how it would work; we also wrote about a cat feed machine. To improve our writing we have included time conjunctions (before, after etc) and causal conjunctions (because, so, this causes, therefore etc). In maths we have been looking at multiplying 2-digit numbers by another 2-digit number using the grid method; we realise why knowing our times tables knowledge is now important for speed in completing calculations. In science we have looked at day and night and how this impacts on the seasons. Our outdoor learning session will focus on mapping skills and use of directions. In history we looked at the first and last Shang Dynasty kings (King ChengTang and King Di XIn). We compared them as rulers and explored which was the better leader.
This week, year 6 have been mastering working out the formula for linear number sequences, forming expressions and equations, and solving equations involving algebra. In Literacy, they have explored the text ‘The Nameless Holiday’ by Shaun Tan, and revised using the passive voice and building noun phrases ready to write their own text next week. In Science, they looked back at their Outdoor Learning session from last week, relating Darwin’s discovery of finches to his theory about evolution. In history, they have been finding more reasons for why life expectancy has increased in the last 250 years – not all were pleased about discovering that life expectancy is not the same for males and females! Well done to all those children who have been checking out the booster resources and asking for help when they need it!
