News
Newsletter for the week ending 21st January
Good afternoon everybody and we hope you have had a good week. Once again, so much has been going on in each class and please do access the sections of this post that describes much of what has been happening.
Thank you for both your patience and support in the continuing challenging circumstances. Despite the need for children to test and being unwell, attendance on the whole is better than last term. Periodically, school monitors attendance and informs parents of children who’s attendance is low and offer support – often parents aren’t aware of low attendance and it is easily explained and solved. We have had to manage staff absence too and staff in school have worked to continue provision when covering their absence. To support teachers with a healthy work-life balance please email admin@appledoreprimary.co.uk if you have questions for your child’s teacher and not their individual email address.
Although it is sometime in the future, class photographs are back and will be taken on Tuesday 5th April. We will provide information on how to order them nearer the time.
Last call for those of you who haven’t yet completed the survey to identify children with have critical worker parents. Please follow the link to complete the short survey even if you believe you are not a critical worker https://forms.gle/e344svNE4h3CBiPg6
Wishing you all a lovely weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have started our topic. We are learning about Appledore. On Tuesday we went for a treasure hunt around the village. We had five destinations we had to find. We had to work out the order that we were going to visit them and we worked out the directions to get us there. We came back to school and drew a map of the places that we visited. We have drawn pictures of the anchor in Anchor Park. We have also made puzzles based on the places that we visited.
This week Year 1 have carried on their writing using the story No-bot, The robot with no bottom, and have answered questions pretending to be No-bot. We know the story really well now and have changed parts of it ready to invent our own story. In our topic lessons we are learning about nurses who changed history. This week we looked at Florence Nightingale and the children have impressed me with the facts they remembered! In Maths we have been partitioning numbers into tens and ones and comparing groups of objects using the language greater than, less than and equal too
Lundy Puffins have had a great week. In English, they have started to look at a new book which they will be using for their writing. It is a non-fiction book about Chinese New Year, which they were really excited to read and find out all about. In Maths, they have been looking at odd and even numbers as well as making equal groups as a first step to learning about division. In their topic work, they have been learning about Grace Darling and why she was famous, whilst in Science they carried out an investigation about handspans to answer different questions such as: Does the oldest child have the biggest handspan? Can the child with the biggest handspan pick up the most cubes? In the Art Studio, they have begun to learn about different printing techniques and in computing they have learnt about branching databases. A busy week!
Year 3 have been developing the structure of their sentences by writing original expanded noun phrases and adverbials. They will use these in their biographies about the famous woman they have chosen to research. In maths, we have been looking at factors and multiples with particular focus on prime numbers and square numbers. In RE, the children have continued the exploration of the story of Noah by looking at how God is holy and loving. A busy but rewarding week.
This week, HMS Echo had their first school swimming experience. They were amazing at following instructions, having a go even if they felt nervous and supporting each other. It was a pleasure to take them and we are looking forward to the next ten weeks. They have also been incredible scientists. They created posters responding to questions about states of matter (solids, liquids and gases) to see how much they had learned and remembered. We were so impressed by their knowledge and their ability to write like scientists. Finally, in English they have continued to develop their vocabulary choices, using an online thesaurus to develop it further. We’re really looking forward to their final pieces of writing; sequels to WInter’s Child.
Welcome to Nancy who has joined us in Year 5 this week. The class have now completed drafting their stories based on the great plague. These are currently being edited in preparation for publishing them next week. In maths we have been learning how to add and subtract fractions and how to change a mixed number to an improper fraction (and vice versa). In science half the class have looked at how to measure force using a Newton meter whilst the other half spent an afternoon down in the art studio, preparing work for this half term unit on printing. The groups will swap over next week. We have continued finding out more about the plague and used our evaluator skills in thinking about how different groups of people (doctors, children, rich and poor families) felt at the time.
Year 6 have been finding out about the controversial nature of transplant operations and are writing a persuasive piece about whether the main character, Cameron, should have the operation. In maths, they have been applying their number skills to decimals and in science looking at human evolution and selective breeding. They have started some revision in grammar sessions and really need to make sure they know the word classes – look out for a SPAG mat that will be sent home shortly. You should now have information about the science trip in February.
