News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 7th February
A fun week that included Year 5 sharing their space models and continuing writing their space logs! Please read the Around the Classes section to find out more…
We are working closely with Martha Boalch, Appledore Community Animator for the North Devon Biosphere’s new Community Project, is very much involved with our Royal Society ‘Tomorrow’s Climate Scientists’ project where we are encouraging the children to also get involved in community environmental projects. In addition to assisting the school in many of our year group science investigations, Martha is also inviting families to complete the Biosphere Online Survey, which will help the Biosphere to understand any barriers to engaging with the environment, and the issues that matter to communities.
Next half term our value is Healthy and children will continue to learn about how they can keep themselves safe and healthy. Included within this is the statutory curriculum for relationship, sex and health education. Information has been sent to parents via email and to see the content of the email and for the links to understand what is being taught please see here.
Torridge Family Hub, Victoria Park, Bideford is holding a free drop-in for parents to chat to Speech and Language therapists and Special Educational Needs Advisors if you worried about your child’s developing language skills, want to know how you can help at with language development in the home, what ‘behaviour is communication’ really means and how talking with your child can support their reading and writing. See here for more information.
Diary dates:
- After school on Friday 14th February, the last day before half term, there will be a cake sale run by FOAS and our year 6 children. Cake donations please and if you want to donate themed cakes it is Valentines Day after all!
- Saturday 22nd February, 10am-12pm, free Bird Box Workshop in Appledore Library
- World Book Day 2025 is Thursday 6th March. Turtles, Dolphins, Years 1 and 2 can come to school dressed in pyjamas for a bedtime story. Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 can dress in pyjamas or as a character from a book they have read
Wishing you all a good weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have continued to celebrate Chinese New Year. We cooked a Chinese banquet on Tuesday and we tried dumplings, noodles, prawn crackers and fortune cookies. On Thursday Lyra’s Mummy came to talk to us about life in Hong Kong and how she celebrates Chinese New Year. Today we have found out where in the world China is and some of the sights that me might see if we were to visit China.
In Year 1 this week as a class we have created a story plan for a new No-bot the robot story. We then used this to support our writing of the story to help sequence it and remember the important parts to include. We have continued to look at numbers up to 20 by doubling and subtracting using our number bond knowledge. There are some links on google classroom for some games you can play at home to help support the learning we have been doing in class. During History this week we finished our bread experiment looking at the importance of washing our hands before eating food. The results were very clear: washing hands before eating food is really important to remove germs. We thought about how Florence Nightingale must have saved so many lives by changing the cleanliness of hospitals in the past.
Year 2 enjoyed their outdoor learning session last Friday. They were looking at handwashing and why it is important for keeping us healthy. This links to our Science work in class where we talked about how we can keep healthy by eating foods from different food groups. In Maths, they have begun to look at division and how we can make equal groups by grouping or sharing. In English, they have been writing a biography about the author, Julia Donaldson. They are trying hard with handwriting and working in a group. In their History learning, they looked at how lifeboats have changed since Grace Darling’s day. They were very excited about music when they were able to test out the mouth pieces on their p-bones (plastic trombone) for the first time.
Year 3 thought about what things that would make sure went in the ark today, even though they know God promised never to send a flood again. Smart phones did not make it on board! Year 4, considered how Muslims celebrate Eid and designed dishes and clothes fit for the occasion. Year 5 continue to think about what it means for a Christian to believe in a god who is holy and loving and year 6 researched scientists who have kept their religious faith and explored how they explain their position. In music, all children in key stage 2 have been shown Yu Studio are now able to log in to the site. They will be able to do so at home. Whilst no formal assignments have been set, they are welcome to continue with the work we have been doing in our music lessons. They have also been shown the winning entry from last year’s song contest and encouraged to come up with their own entry for this year’s competition. Particularly now we know what the judges are looking for!
Year 3 have had a fantastic week! In English, we began to plan our own poems based on the book If All the World Were, and we wrote are own noun phrases to go in our poems. In Maths, we added and subtracted measurements to work out the answers to some word problems and we learnt the meaning of perimeter and had a go at calculating the perimeter of different shapes. In History, we explored Marie Curie’s legacy by researching the Marie Curie charity. In Science, we recapped the role of human and animal skeletons, and then we explored how muscles work with our bones to help us move. We took part in some exciting outdoor learning where we dissected owl pellets and tried to work out what the owls had eaten from the bones we found.
In Year 4 this week, the children have started learning about length and perimeter in Maths which means they have come to the end of learning about multiplication and division. We will keep practising the four operations (add, subtract, multiply and divide) to ensure the children are quick and fluent with using methods and it would be great if they could practise this at home too. In English, the children have written some excellent fantasy stories which will be displayed proudly in the corridor next week for everyone to read. We will be moving onto a short poetry sequence to end this half term. In Computing, the children recorded an audiobook version of their story. In Values, the children thought about ‘what makes me, me?’ and the children wrote lots of positive things around a picture of themselves. In Science, the children learnt about food chains. The children also had the opportunity to do some art in the art studio and they took part in some outdoor learning relating to the bird survey they are conducting.
After last week’s fantastic visit to We the Curious , Year 5 have been looking at the photographs and writing a recount of the day using Google slides. Our writing this week has focused on a space log, using short animated clips about imaginary planets. All are very excited about the four planets we have visited so far and the new ones yet to explore. We are learning a secure method to complete long multiplication questions. This has involved multiplying a 2-digit and 3-digit number by a 2-digit number. All would benefit by making sure they can recall their multiplication facts quickly and accurately. We had a wonderful afternoon looking at all the space projects which have been produced for homework this half term. Well done to everyone (including parents) who have worked on these; there has been so much learnt, and knowledge shared, from this work.
Year 6 have been writing a commentary to their unborn sibling this week, including an element of poetry for some. In maths, they have been mastering some of the basics of algebra: both writing and solving equations. In science, they analysed results from their outdoor learning experiments. They had a very competitive session of benchball in PE: great teamwork and tactics were shown and it was lovely to see everyone being involved to make their teams successful. We had a great time at Bristol last Friday and we’ll be using the work from the electricity workshop, later in the year.
