News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 4th November
A super first week back and the children have thrown themselves into everything on offer with gusto. Please click on more to find out all that has been happening in and around the classes.
Well done to Year 5 for raising £70 from their bake sale on Friday and thank you Evie-Rose and Elise for organising this. Thank you also to all those who baked cakes to raise money for the North Devon Animal Ambulance.
A few diary dates for you:
- Wear odd socks to school to stand-up to bullying is on Monday 14th November. As bright and odd as they like (just for the one day!)
- Years 3-6 Christmas Service Friday 16th December at St Mary’s Church in the afternoon. Time tbc
- Sports Day for Dolphins and years 1-6 is scheduled for Tuesday 23rd May
- A visiting theatre group will be performing to all the children on 2nd February. Thank you to the Friends of Appledore School for funding this event.
This week staff safeguarding training has focused on honour based abuse, forced marriage and FGM. For information on this please click here.
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have been learning about Bonfire Night. We found out the reason why we celebrate Bonfire Night. On Tuesday we went down to The Jungle to have a campfire and toast some marshmallows. We have described the sounds that fireworks make and painted pictures of them. We talked about the things that we need to do to keep ourselves safe and enjoy ourselves at firework parties this weekend. Today, we also visited The Library to change our books.Year 1 have had a great week back after half term. We have started a new book in writing called ‘What do you do with a tail like this?’ and we have had a go at writing some of our own questions in the style of the book. We have also been looking at verbs and matching verbs to pictures. In Maths we are carrying on with addition within 10 and have been learning our number bonds to 10. In RE we have started a new topic all about what it means to belong to a faith community and in Music we have been learning about rhythm.
It has been a great start to the new half term for Year 2. They have written their own instructions based on the book ‘How to Wash a woolly mammoth’ and have tried really hard to include everything they have been learning. In Maths, they have been looking at addition and subtraction. They had to use their number bond knowledge for this so please keep using the games on Google Classroom at home to reinforce their number bond recall in school. The bee topic has almost finished and they have created posters this week to show people what to do to help bees. The final session will be an outdoor learning session to make seed bombs using the seeds they collected at Quince Honey Farm. They completed their last Tag Rugby session and played a game to show their skills of moving with the ball. A few children don’t have a PE kit in school, please could you check at home and send it in.
Year 3 created a giant story map so they can retell the story of The Fall as it is told n the bible. Year 5 began considering why Christians believed Jesus was the Messiah and what qualities they would want in a saviour. Year 6 considered how they could incorporate a moment of reflection in their week – what they would do, where they would do it and what they would reflect on. Year 4 looked at the properties and symbolism of water and why it is used in baptism.
Seahunter class/year 3 have had a brilliant first week back. We finished off our learning on light and shadows by exploring how shadows change when the distance between the light source and the object changes. We discovered that the closer an object is to the light source, the more light it blocks and therefore it creates a bigger shadow. We used this knowledge to create our own shadow light shows and we performed these to the whole class. In English, we have learned how to punctuate speech and we then created our own conversations between two of the characters from our book, Lord of the Forest. In maths, we applied our knowledge of adding and subtracting ones, tens and hundreds to lots of different word problems and even had a go at creating our own!
This week in HMS Echo/year 4, we have been looking at the worst plastic polluted countries in the world for 2022, and why these countries have such big plastic problems. We looked at some photos too which was incredibly eye-opening! In PE, we are beginning some Netball skill practise (if the weather is kind to us!) where the children will practise different passes, practise marking other players and improve their shooting skills. In Maths, we are coming to the end of addition and subtraction, where the children have learnt about the column method of 4 digit numbers, and learnt to choose the most efficient method when solving problems. In English, we are looking at our text Little Evie in the Wild Wood, where we are using this as inspiration for our own story, where we want to create quite a scary and tense atmosphere!
Year 5 has worked very hard this week. They have been finding out about women scientists, including Ruth Benerito and Mary Anning, and thinking about how to put this information into a biography. In maths we have been looking at multiples and finding the lowest common multiple. We have now completed our science unit on materials and finished with an investigation using separation methods. In our history lesson we have been finding out where the Anglo-Saxons came from and how the country was divided into kingdoms. A great start back to what is going to be a busy half term.
Year 6 have been busy using factors for division and learning about long division in maths. In Literacy, they have been securing skills in punctuation, planned their own version of a story and are now ready to write next week. In science, they have learnt a few facts about micro-organisms and an experiment is underway to see where mould grows the most. Art and computing have been combined to create vector drawings and this will be linked to a famous artist shortly. Don’t forget outdoor learning is next week on Tuesday (8th November) – have your waterproofs ready!
