News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 16th May
Year 6 SATs week always seems to bring the best weather and this year as no exception! Well done to all our year 6 pupils who approached it with such maturity and thank you to all the staff and external volunteers who helped this week to ensure it all ran so smoothly.
Inclusive is our value for this half term and last week the theme of assemblies was deaf awareness. One of our parents has made a fantastic animated film (see here) on deaf awareness and keep an eye out for information about a community sign language club. Each week children attend a signing club in school.
It is great to see so many children cycling to school. Please be aware that some of the older children are not wearing a helmet and for the children to leave their bikes on school premises we require the children to wear a helmet.
Dates for the Diary
- Saturday 17th May, 10am-4pm, family friendly Festival of Nature, St Mary’s Hall, Appledore see here
- For free after school school summer girls’ rugby taster sessions in June with Bideford Rugby Club girls in years 3-6 please see here
- Sports Day Tuesday 17th June and reserve date is Tuesday 24th June
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 been learning about the Fairy Tale ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ We have read the story and acted it out. We then changed our role play area into a forest so that we could act the story out again. We had a go at basket weaving and then we made some flowers from tissue paper to put into the basket. We painted pictures of our houses using powder paint.
In year 1 this week we have been working really hard on making sure we include capital letters, finger spaces and full stops in our writing. We have really enjoyed starting our new book Stuck and created brilliant story maps retelling the story. In Maths we have started looking at fractions and have been amazing at splitting both objects and numbers in half. In PE we have been working with partners to practice our ball skills. We started off with the large foam balls and were rolling and then throwing to each other, then we moved onto the smaller balls and some children even took on the challenge of catching with one hand!
Year 2 have been learning to tell the time this week in Maths. They have looked at o’clock, half past, quarter to / past times and are now moving on to 5 past / to, 10 past / to, 20 past/ to and 25 past / to. Some children have been finding this quite tricky, so any support you could give them with this at home would be much appreciated. In English, they have been writing their amazing stories based on ‘The Dragon Machine’. There are Goblin Machines, Pixie Machines, Fairy Machines – brilliant ideas everyone! In their Geography work they have been learning about hot and cold places in the world. On Friday, they are looking forward to finishing their teddy zip wires in outdoor learning.
In Miss Carr’s lessons, Year 3 looked at how St. Mary’s Church Bideford reaches out to different groups in the community in the way that Jesus taught. We agreed that they really do love their neighbours. Year 4 wrote original similes for the Holy Spirit and then drew examples to show why it may look like if someone was behaving according to the fruits of The Holy Spirit. Year 5 looked at the imagery in the Sermon on the Mount and then found examples of prayers which addresses these themes. In music, the classes continued with whole class ensemble teaching on the recorder. I googled to see if we could break the world record for most people playing a recognizable tune on the recorder but we are a bit short on numbers – 6000 short! In preparation for report writing I have been through the children’s Yu Studio compositions. It was great to see how many children have been creating music at home. I particularly enjoyed the example which said, “Dad’s one!” which I assessed as being “working towards”! I will teach the children how to record themselves playing the recorder into Yu Studio as they can then manipulate it to make it sound better!
Seahunter (year 3) class have had a brilliant week. In Maths, we learnt to tell the time to the minute and then learnt how to tell the time on a digital clock. We also learnt the difference between am and pm and used this knowledge to answer some reasoning questions. We began reading a new book in English called Cinderella of the Nile. We read the first few pages from the book and made some inferences about the main character. We then used noun phrases to describe her. In Guided Reading, we read the poem Red Fox from The Lost Spells, and used our retrieval skills to answer some comprehension questions. In Science, we planted some bean seeds to investigate what plants need to grow and stay healthy. We also researched water lilies, cacti and snow drops to look at different plant requirements and adaptations.
In year 4 this week, in English, we wrote a story together called The Boy and the Box of Wonders where the children practised applying speech, expanded noun phrases, fronted adverbials and a rich and varied vocabulary which were very impressive! They are moving onto writing their very own stories now where a character has to go to a magical place. In Maths, we have started learning about money, where the children have been ordering and comparing amounts of money and estimating the cost of items on a receipt. After money, we will be moving onto time – it is important your child knows how to tell the time on an analogue and digital clock before we start so extra practise of this at home would be great! In Geography, the children practised their map skills where they located places on an OS map using grid references. The children were also visited by South West Water, where they discussed how much water the average person uses a day and how to conserve water for the future. In Science, the children added switches to their electrical circuits and they drew these circuits using symbols.
Year 5 are getting to the end of the Shackleton story and learning how the crew despite all the challenges they faced. We now know what it means to show strength of character and resilience (but I’m not sure how many want to become polar explorers now!). Great pieces of writing are being produced to show the journey the crew went on over the two years. Our maths unit, on shape, has been completed this week. All now have a good understanding on how to measure angles accurately with a protractor, know what a regular and irregular polygon is and name 3-D shapes (giving number of faces, edges and vertices). Our geography session looked at the microplastics found on our beaches in preparation for our trip to Northam Burrows next week. The cricket and tennis sessions are looked forward to each week and so many have improved their skills.
Well done year 6 on such great concentration this week! They arrived on time for breakfast, were very sociable with each other, and without any complaints then settled well to put everything into doing their best! Alongside this, they have enjoyed sewing in Art, playing rounders, cricket and tennis and reading through the end of year play – hopefully parts will be allocated before half-term. We still have quite a lot to get through before the end of the year, and we have spoken to the children about the need to keep working hard in the lessons. We have a few trips to look forward to – the first one next week to Northam Burrows (on Thursday) and from the talk on Friday afternoon, this week, children should understand what they will be doing. Thank you for all the pictures, for the final assembly, received so far!
