News
Newsletter for week ending 17th November
Please read on to find our what has been happening in and around the school this week…
AROUND THE SCHOOL
Christmas Fayre
Please note the new date for the Christmas Fayre is Thursday 7th December.
Pirate Ship
to clear up any confusion regarding the use of the pirate ship on our bottom playground, children are not permitted to use it before 9am and after 3.30pm or any other time unless they are supervised by a member of staff. Thank you for your support with ensuring the children remain safe.
AROUND THE CLASSES
FSU Nursery Rhyme this week has been Hickory Dickory Dock. We were very lucky on Tuesday that Jack (MTA) brought in some of his pet mice for us to have a look at and ask him questions. We have made clocks and had a go at telling the time. We have enjoyed using stopwatches to time each other in different situations – walking to the snack table, the fastest on the space hopper. We have made some observational drawings of mice and had a go at creating some using our handprints.
This week Year 1 have written the first draft of our own version of ‘What do you do with a tail like this?’. We are now in the process of editing, writing up in neat and illustrating our books before they will be displayed in the writing gallery. In Maths we have looked at Bar Models, we have physically made them with unifix, we have drawn our own and filled in missing numbers on bar models. In Science we have learnt about different ways of grouping animals and explained how we know which group the animals belong to. Our P4C session this week used the text ‘Frog is Frog’. The question we discussed was ‘Why did frog feel sorry for himself?’
In P4C this week, Lundy Puffins watched a clip called ‘Pingu gets left out’. The question they chose to discuss was: Do you think it was nice to say that Pingu couldn’t play badminton? There were lots of thoughtful ideas. In writing, they have written the class story of ‘How to wash a cheeky chimpanzee’ and are now writing their own versions, such as ‘How to wash a vicious velociraptor’ and ‘How to wash a terrifying Pterodactyl’. Look out for them on display over the next couple of weeks. In Maths, they have persevered with adding a one digit number to a two digit number by bridging through 10. Knowing number bonds to 10 by heart really does help with this, so please keep practising. They have drawn and researched lots of different dinosuars for their topic work.
Seahunter have worked hard on their data handling skills this week, learning how to create tally charts, bar charts, interpret and compare data. They have learnt lots of new vocabulary and been able to explain their understanding well. In English they have written their final dragon reports, which are looking amazing. They will soon be in the writers wall area for everyone to enjoy reading in our class ‘Dragon Seekers Guide to North Devon Species’. In our philosophy session this week we discussed ‘Why didn’t a friend help?’ when a character was laughed at and left out. The discussion raised some interesting ideas around peer pressure and fear of being laughed at yourself. The children discussed how they might overcome that fear to enable them to be inclusive of others. They also talked about asking for adult help if it was too difficult or worrying to try and solve on their own. Several children have been spotted being inclusive, which has been lovely to see.
Our Nursery Rhyme this week has been Hickory Dickory Dock. We were very lucky on Tuesday that Jack (MTA) brought in some of his pet mice for us to have a look at and ask him questions. We have made clocks and had a go at telling the time. We have enjoyed using stopwatches to time each other in different situations – walking to the snack table, the fastest on the space hopper. We have made some observational drawings of mice and had a go at creating some using our handprints.
For Science this week, HMS Echo worked in groups to make a tooth showing the different layers. The children enjoyed learning about this through the ‘cloakroom activity’, where one child would go out into the cloakroom for a minute at a time. They then had to come back and recreate the image, correctly labelling it from memory. In P4C this week the children watched a clip about Pingu called ‘Pingu feels left out’. The class came up with the question ‘what mixture of emotions was Pingu feeling throughout the clip?’ From this the class discussed how the other animals were not including Pingu and linked it to how they have felt or acted themselves in different situations. HMS Echo have continued to work on their multiplication and division skills this week in Maths. The children struggled and first but are now able to divide by 10 and 100 involving decimals. We have come to the end of our non-fiction unit in English this week and the children have planned and written ideas for their own non-fiction book, linking to their chosen topic. On Monday, the children will publish these in the form of a book. These should be on display in the corridor by the end of next week!
Year 5 have been finishing off their dairy writing and now starting their historical story writing unit. This is based on the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf. In numeracy we have been looking at using a formal written method of multiplication and division. Long division has been a challenge but we will continue with this next week. Its really important that everyone knows their times tables. We have started to look at who the Anglo-Saxons were in our topic work and have completed our residential power-points. Thank you to all the parents who have managed to come into class and see these. Letters have been sent home this week about a theatre trip to Kingsley School and for the choir.
A busy week for Year 6 with their performance at Rosemoor – they did brilliantly. It was an amazing experience and they should be proud of their achievements. They have also been growing mould in science, working with multiples, factors and prime numbers in maths, whilst further exploring Viking Sagas in literacy. They have posters with the tenses that they need to be secure in to keep at home – please place them so that they can be used to glance at and recap from time to time. We have seen improvements in timestables scores over the last few weeks, so keep up the good work! Bikeability letters have been sent home for those involved in the sessions next week.
Best wishes from
Jeremy Cooper and all the staff and children
