News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 14th November
The school Christmas raffle is gaining momentum and the current total (and rising) is over £800 worth of vouchers and prizes from local businesses! See here for more information and your child should have brought home some raffle tickets earlier this week. If they didn’t, or you want more tickets, please contact us.
Please remember Kingsley Avenue is a private road and there is no permission to park on it. Please contact us if you would like a parking permit for Oden Road car park.
If money is especially tight and you are worried about buying presents for your children this Christmas, please contact elizabeth.phillips@appledoreprimary.co.uk (our learning mentor) regarding requesting support from a local charity that can provide wrapped presents and a hamper of Christmas treats. Please be reassured of our confidentiality over this.
Dates for the diary
- Individual school photos and sphotos with siblings at school will be on Thursday 20th November. Siblings who are not at the school can come in from 8-9am to have sibling photos taken.
- Xmas disco Friday 28th November Reception 7 Years 1&2 @5-6pm and Years 3-6 @6.30-7.30pm
- Years 1& 2 nativity performances are 2pm Wednesday 10th December and 9.30am Thursday 11th December
- Xmas fair Friday 12th December 3-5pm
- Years 3-6 Christmas celebration at St Mary’s church, Appledore, 2pm Friday 19th December
- Wishing you all a lovely weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have been learning about Remembrance Day. We have looked at some old photos and talked about how they are the same and different to photos today. We have looked at photos of poppies and wreaths and where they are laid and why. On Thursday we walked to the church to look for poppies and then we paid our respects at the Anchor. We have made medals and poppies using split pins and we painted pictures of poppies and wreaths.
In Year 1 this week we have carried on our learning with the book Could a penguin ride a bike? and have been learning about questions and statements. We sorted sentences in the book into questions and statements and then had a go at writing some of our own. In Maths we have been looking at 2D shapes. We have loved playing shape games, sorting 2D shapes and colouring shapes. We even spotted lots of shapes in the classroom when we did a 2D shape hunt! In Topic we have been learning more about the Great Fire of London. We are remembering the facts brilliantly and have been able to answer lots of questions about the fire.
This week, Year 2 have been looking at the verbs and adjectives in the book: Augustus and his smile and trying to create sentences with their own. In Maths, they have been adding and subtracting tens. There is a game on Google Classroom to support this learning. In their History learning, they are looking at ‘Explorers’ and finding out what it takes to be a great explorer. In their Science learning, they were finding out about food chains and making them. They have started to learn some of the songs for their Christmas play.
Year 3 listed the different sides of their personalities whilst acknowledging that here is only one of them. This was to help them understand the Hindu belief in one God who has many different expressions. Year 4 looked at two works of art depicting the baptism of Christ and looked for evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit within them. Year 5 looked at what the prophets prophesied about the coming of the Saviour and listed the qualities they would want in a saviour. In Music, rehearsals continued apace for our Christmas celebration.
It has been another productive week for Year 3. Our writing has involved writing a letter to the senator of Pompeii to give advice about the dangers of Mount Vesuvius based on our knowledge of volcanoes. We have already created emotion graphs for the characters in the story who survived the eruption. We have continued to read the class book based on trees and learning more about their magic. In maths we have been working on our 3 times tables and started work on division. In science this week we look at the Moh scale to work out the hardness of minerals. Thank you to everyone who shared their mineral collections with the class. It was great to see so many examples and use our knowledge to name them. In history we created an information leaflet on how you would survive in the Stone Age. We now know we would need to have been a good hunter gather! In PE we have been improving our jumping skills and having control of a ball. We discussed what Children In Need is all about and enjoyed being able to dress up for the day. We are looking forward to our trip to RHS Rosemoor next week where we will continue to learn about rocks and soils. I look forward to meeting many of you next week for progress updates on your child at parents evening
In Year 4 this week, the children have been learning how to use the column method for subtraction using 4 digit numbers which they have applied to a range of problems. In English, we learnt about the history of Appledore on our tour led by a tour guide which will help us when we write our own text, A Walk in Appledore! In Computing, we began our unit on programming, where we learnt how to programme a screen turtle by writing different codes. In History, we looked at why Emperor Claudius wanted to invade Britain. In Netball, we learnt how shoulder and bounce pass. In Guided Reading, we learnt about what it was like to live in a Roman fort. In Science, we looked at the results from our evaporation experiment where we had four different beakers in different rooms in the school and we looked to see which place had the best rate of evaporation and why.
Year 5 have been thoroughly enjoying their Beowulf topic in literacy. The children have learned the story off by heart, created fantastic comic strips, and typed up their own versions of the story using Chromebooks. They also wrote some incredible descriptions of Grendel the monster, using powerful descriptive language to create a sense of fear for the reader. Afterwards, they peer-edited each other’s work and offered thoughtful feedback. In maths, the class has been recapping how to multiply and divide by 10, 100 and 1000. On Tuesday, they took part in a multi-sports festival at ARC, where they enjoyed team games such as volleyball and hockey. We were also very lucky to take part in an AI workshop on Wednesday afternoon, where the children met an AI robot called Lexi and learned how to create a song and music video using AI programming! In history, Year 5 have been learning about the Anglo-Saxons and took part in a drama activity to re-enact their settlement in Britain. In spelling, the children have been fascinated by word origins and have started spotting examples of etymology in their reading across subjects. As part of Anti-Bullying Week, the class also took part in a values lesson and whole-class discussion about how to recognise bullying, including the differences and similarities between bullying and cyberbullying.
Year 6 In History we have been finding out how serious the risk of attack from Nazi Germany was in 1939. We visited the Maritime Museum to find out about Appledore’s role during the Second World War including Frogmen and Tin Town. In Literacy, we are developing character voice and emotion when writing diary entries. We have been refining division skills, including long division and solving word problems in Maths. Some children will benefit from keeping their maths skills going so feel free to give them the odd question at home (3 or 4 digits divided by 1 or 2 digits eg: 365 divided by 8, or 3987 divided by 26). They enjoyed a STEM workshop on Wednesday where they found out about AI and some careers in which it is used. The highlight was Lexi, the ‘cobot dog’!
