News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 18th September
What a week and it ended with cricket on the field and year 6 returning from their week long residential trip
Harvest festival for Years 3-6 will be on Thursday 8th October at 2.00 pm. We hope you can join us at St. Mary’s church for what is a shaping up to be a beautiful celebration. The children have been hard at work rehearsing the songs and dances and writing the readings. Details for harvest festivals for our younger children will publicised soon.
Devon Highways have notified us they will be carrying out Route Based Treatment works on Churchill Way under Temporary Traffic Lights between Monday 21st September – Friday 23rd October, 09.30 – 15.30. These improvements to the highway will include patching works in the carriageway (estimated to take 10 working shifts), cleaning of signs, clearing vegetation off footpaths etc. Our operatives will be working towards Appledore, working under one set of Temporary Traffic Lights at a time. This disrupt journey times and impact on parking. Please do allow a little extra time for your journeys to mitigate against your children don’t miss valuable learning and please be extra respectful to residents when you search for a parking space
Dates for the diary:
- For information on DadFest 18th, 19th & 20th September please see here
- 6th October Atlantic Academy open evening for pupils in years 4, 5 & 6 see here and here for details of their Christmas Fayre
- 8th October, 2pm, Key Stage 2 (years 3-6) Harvest Festival at St Mary’s Church, Appledore – we hope to see you there!
- For details of open mornings and evenings at Great Torrington school for current year 6 pupils see here
- For information on Kingsley School open days for entry into year 7 see here
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 find out about ourselves. We have talked about what we look like and we have drawn our self-portraits. We have named the five senses and used them to explore the school environment. Today, we also went to Anchor Park to explore the park with our senses.
Year 1 has had so much fun learning all about sea lions this week! We have really enjoyed finding out about these fascinating creatures and learning how their bodies are adapted to life in the ocean. We were amazed to discover that sea lions have a super power and can slow down their heartbeats! We have also been busy making our own sea lion fact books for our classroom library area and we are very excited to share them with our friends. In maths, we have been exploring numbers to 6 and finding different ways to make them. We have been practising our subitising skills too and have enjoyed spotting number patterns without needing to count.
Year 2 have had a great week. They are looking at a book in English called ‘Traction Man’. It’s all about a toy going on lots of adventures. They had fun looking at the book and putting pictures from the story in the right order. In Maths, they have been learning about numbers to 100 and making them with different equipment. Their Geography learning this half term is all about their local area. They looked at lots of different leaflets to find maps and then had a go at drawing their own maps. For their Science work, they found out about different habitats. They are looking forward to a cricket session on Friday.
Key stage 2 Harvest festival will be on Thursday 8th October at 2.00 pm. We hope you can join us at St. Mary’s church for what is a shaping up to be a beautiful celebration. The children have been hard at work rehearsing the songs and dances and writing the readings. Year 3 children simply require a hat- the floppier the better, year 4 need to be in any shed of green or yellow and year 5 have been told specifically what colour they need to be in as it varies from one child to another. The plainer the better. Thank you for your support with this as it will add to the overall effect.
Year 3 has continued to write about the animals from the text ‘Lord of the Forest’. This week they have used present tense verbs to describe the animal movements and sounds and noun phrases to describe the tiger. The unit of addition and subtraction has started this week in maths. They completed an elicitation task and then looked at adding single digits to a given number. For science we completed an investigation about how light reflects from different materials and continued with map work in geography, looking at different climates and rainfall around the world. The class really enjoyed their first session of cricket this week
It’s been another busy week in Year 4! We have used our English text, Meerkat Mail, to support learning around grammar and planned for our class story writing next week. We have introduced thousands into place value and learnt to partition, add 10, 100 and 1000 to four digit numbers and identified numbers on a numberline. In computing, we looked at E-safety and our online identity. Geography included using Atlases to identify parts of the UK and to determine the best places for renewable energy sources. We thoroughly enjoyed our Art lessons returning and focusing on drawing including light and shade. In our values lessons, we looked at the fable ‘The Frog and the Scorpion and debated the responsibility of both characters and in Science, we investigated freezing and melting through flow charts. We have been focussed on learning our times tables and reading The Witches in Guided Reading.
In literacy, Year 5 have continued our work on The Tear Thief. The children created their own story maps and illustrated them beautifully, helping them to understand and organise the different parts of the story. We also created our very own emotion thief characters, ready to develop our own imaginative stories. In geography, the children discovered what the Silk Road was used for around 2,000 years ago. We learned how this vast network of trade routes connected different countries and allowed people to exchange goods, ideas and cultures. The children then used atlases to locate some of the countries along the Silk Road and developed their map-reading skills. In maths, we have been recapping place value. In science, we have been learning about the properties of magnetic materials, and in PE we have focused on agility and practised our skills through a range of cone drills. Well done, Year 5, for another brilliant week of learning!
This week most of Year 6 have had a very busy week on Residential in Simonsbath. They have had amazing resilience and have worked hard to overcome personal challenges as well as working well in team challenges. They really enjoyed their walk to Lynmouth, especially being able to go the shops! The river study and stream scramble were very popular as not much stayed dry, so they will be bringing home some very dirty and soggy clothes! They should all be really proud of their achievements and will hopefully have a few stories to share with you. Those who didn’t go have been very helpful this week in school.
