News
Newsletter for the first week of a new year
A very warm welcome to our new families and welcome back everybody who already knows us. Term has started very well and the children are settling very quickly into their routines, although I imagine some could be a little tired after their first full week. Please read on to find out what has been happening in and round the classes during another busy week ‘down on the farm’…
AROUND THE CLASSES
Welcome back everyone! All of our new children have settled very quickly into life at Appledore FSU. This week we have been mainly getting to know each other, learning our routines and creating our own Golden Rules. We have also talked about our summer holidays, along with painting pictures of them.
What a great start to Year 1 we have had! Everyone was happy and confident coming into class on Tuesday morning and this has continued all week. A big thank you to you all for your wonderful summer holiday bags. It looks like you all had action packed summers and we really appreciate the hard work that was put into the bags so that we could all share in your holidays. We used the holiday bags to help us write sentences about our summer. In Maths we have sorted numbers from 0-20 into the correct order and counted as high as we can. To start our topic work we partnered up with the children in Year 2 to make homes for animals in the Jungle.
The new Lundy Puffins have settled in well to their new classroom. The topic for this term is: Paws, Claws and Whiskers. They made a start on this by going into the jungle with the children from Year 1 to build a habitat for a toy animal. Thank you for collecting all the leaflets and photographs over the holidays to go in the paper bags; we really enjoyed hearing about what they had got up to. They have written their class rules and have found out a little bit about life in Year 2. The first book we will be looking at in English is ‘Traction Man is Here’ by Minnie Grey. In Maths, they will focus on Place Value for the first few weeks. They will look at numbers to 100 so if you could practise counting forwards (and backwards!) to 100 over the next few weeks, that would be great.
The children have had an amazing start to Year 3. They have come back from the holiday full of enthusiasm and determination and already look like very grown up Year 3s! This week we have enjoyed getting to know more about each other and our classroom. We have had a classroom scavenger hunt, produced art all about ourselves and developed our teamwork skills. Our main focus has been on how we learn and become better learners. We have learnt all about our brilliant brains; how they work and how we can make them stronger. It has been great to see the children taking this on board and talking about how they are being determined when its difficult, learning from mistakes and doing their best. Finally, we have created some beautiful paintings of our class ship, Seahunter, which will be displayed in the classroom. Well done Seahunter for a fantastic start!
Year 4 have settled back into school and their new class really well! For PSHE, the children came up with rules for our class contract of how they would like their class to be. We have thought about our new value respect and how we respect ourselves through using positive language over negative language when we are stuck. The children reflected on what it takes to be a ‘super learner’ and what they could do to become one. The class have also carried out their reading and Maths tests for the start of the term and their elicitation tasks for Maths and Topic. In Art, the children have sketched self-portraits which will be on display in the cloakroom next week!
Beechcroft have all been working hard since returning to school, have settled well and welcome Josh and Mia into the class. In English, we have made holiday books and written a story about a hero defeating a monster. In Maths , we have begun work on place value, including working with numbers as large as one million. Our science topic is all about materials and we will be experimenting soon. We have also been finding out about Autumn and trying to complete a chain of facts as well as starting our topic on the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Don’t forget we have our residential to look forward to at the the beginning of November and choir starts next week. Thank you to those people who have returned their local SOE3 and data sheets handed out this term. Those of you who had swimming letters (children who are not confident swimming 50m) please return them as soon as possible, as swimming starts on Monday next week.
Now Year 6 class (Golden Hinde) have come back to school everyone has settled down very quickly and are enjoying their new jobs and responsibilities that come with being in Year 6. We have started our new topic on the Tudors this week and our science topic on the heart and circulatory system. We are pleased there is a new boy in our class who has settled in as quickly as everyone else and seems to be enjoying his time here at Appledore School. In maths, this week, we have been focusing on place value and writing numbers up to ten million in words and started to read Shakespeare plays in English.
Have a lovely weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the staff and children
