News
Newsletter for Friday 26th January 2024
Our wonderfully creative House Captains have come up with a new house competition: pancake poem writing! All poems to the office by Thursday 8th February. For more information, please click here.
Well done to our pupils who danced at the Queen’s Theatre as part of Sarah Anne Westcott Dance Studio! And well done also to our Year 5 girls football team who competed so well and had such fun in a recent tournament. The match stats they would like to share is that for every game they scored in they didn’t lose!
Do you want to know more about autism, including coping strategies and tip on how to support? If so, please click here for information regarding free webinars.
Wishing you all a super weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have moved around the world slightly to find out about the Rainforest. On Monday Exmoor Zoo came to visit us. They showed us lots of different animals that live in the Rainforest. We have talked about the climate in the Rainforest. Lots of us thought it would be cold because it rains. We have painted pictures of the animals that live in the rainforest. We have also made some paper chain snakes for our Rainforest role plays. Today we walked down to the Library to change our books.
In Year 1 this week we have been learning about another significant nurse in our topic work; Edith Cavell. We learnt why she was significant and acted out scenarios with a partner where one of us pretended to be Edith. Then we had a go at hot seating where someone was in the hot seat pretending to be Edith Cavell and the rest of us asked them questions. Everyone got into character amazingly! In Writing we have started a new book: No-bot the Robot with no bottom. We love this story and had lots of fun thinking of different animals that could have used Bernard’s bottom and what they might have used it for. In Music we have been using the glockenspiels and discovering different genres of music.
Year 2 have worked really hard again this week. They have started to learn about multiplication in Maths and have been writing multiplication number sentences to match different images. In English they have been writing questions and commands about dinosaurs using our Creature Features book. Everyone has been working so hard to improve their handwriting – well done! In their Geography work they compared their houses to houses in a village in India and talked about the similarities and differences. In Computing, they have been learning about programming and have enjoyed using the Beebots.
Year 3 consolidated their understanding of the details of the story of Noah and the ark. They designed front covers for a book retelling the story and drew some of the animals that went in the ark. In French, they revised their knowledge of numbers and months of the year and were able to recall the vocabulary very successfully. Year 4 looked at how there is a strong overlap between Islamic prophets and Christian prophets. Then managed to work out that Miss is Moses using their knowledge of Christianity. Year 5 looked for examples of Christian songs that reference God being holy and or loving. In French they learnt the verbs for do and play and used them for describing what sports they enjoy. Year 6 listened to the planet suite by Holst while writing a deeply personal poem about their thoughts on creation. They drew upon their knowledge of Genesis and the Big Bang theory and watched images of starry skies for inspiration.
Year 3 have had a wonderful week. In Maths, we started learning all about measurement. We recapped our knowledge on centimetres and metres and thought about which unit of measurement we would use to measure different things. We then learned all about millimetres and learned that there are 10 mm in 1 cm. In English, we began doing our own research for our biographies on a famous person. After our research, we then planned our biography and thought about the use of subheadings to organise our writing. In History, we discussed Marie Curie’s legacy and explored the purpose of the Marie Curie Charity. In Science, we recapped the role of the skeleton and then we explored how muscles contract and relax to move parts of the body and undertook an investigation. In Computing, we learned how to copy and paste information from one document to another and had a go at creating our own magazines using a template.
In HMS Echo (Year4), the children have been busy writing their fantasy story and they have been such a joy to read – they have all tried really hard at using sophisticated vocabulary, fronted adverbials and expanded noun phrases. I was very impressed! In Maths, we have been practising different methods for multiplication and division within word problems, and deciding which operation to use. In History, we looked at when convenience food was introduced and why, and how this changed the way families cooked. In Science, we are beginning to write an explanation text about how the digestive system works. In PE, we looked at ball skills, such as moving a ball around your body, and in gymnastics, we have been using the partner balances to make a short sequence to music. In our Values session, we have been looking at ‘what makes me ME’, and how we are all unique.
It has been another busy week for Year 5. We have now written our own plague stories from the perspective of being a plague doctor or watchman. We first drafted the story, went through the editing process and then published (including illustrations). These are now on display on the writing wall in the main building. We joined in a live lesson with the author Beth Lincoln to hear about her process in writing a story. The class are looking to improve their handwriting so we have just introduced the new ‘letter-joins’ handwriting scheme sessions. In maths we have just completed our unit on fractions and now moving onto further work in multiplication and division. Well done to the girls football team who played in a tournament at Kingsley School this week; you showed excellent team work.
Year 6 have been mastering algebra this week – both using and creating formulae. In Literacy, having completed their balanced argument, many of the class have had fun writing a commentary as Cameron, to their unborn sibling. In science, they not only looked at how fossils can help us to understand evolution, but did an experiment in Outdoor Learning about birds and their beaks. The idea was to try and think about how the beak is related to diet and survival ‘Battle of the Beaks’ by linking this to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. In history, they have continued to think about the reasons behind why life expectancy has improved over the last 250 years
