News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 30th January
Dates for the diary:
- Free Safari Storytime and Play, ages 4-11, 10am-12.30pm, Tuesday 17th February, St Mary’s Hall, Appledore see here
Sports Day Wednesday 20th May all day for Years 1-6 and the afternoon for Reception/Dolphins. Tuesday 16th June is back-up day should the weather be bad in May. More details to follow nearer the time.
Have a good weekend everybody.
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have travelled around the world a little more to the Rainforest. We talked about what we already know about the Rainforest and the animals that live there. We have painted pictures of the animals and talked about the weather in the Rainforest and what we might need to wear.
In Year 1 this week we have carried on checking the bread for our experiment and it was very exciting when we found the piece of bread that was touched by dirty hands has started to go mouldy! We’ve discussed why we think this has happened and we have made posters to encourage people to wash their hands properly. In Writing we have started a new book- No-bot the Robot with No Bottom. We have enjoyed thinking of animals that might have found the robot’s bottom and wrote great sentences thinking about what they might have used it for. In Maths we have started Addition and Subtraction within 20 and have been looking at the similarities between our number bonds to 10 and number bonds to 20.
We had a very productive time in music this week. An empty classroom became a recording studio and the year 4 children were able to take their group in there and record their live instrumentation of cyclic pattern directly into Yu Studio. They created a pulse digitally so they could match the tempo with their live performance. The children were clearly delighted with the results and will now be able to mix the different tracks and manipulate them digitally which will be tremendous fun. Year 3 have also been shown how to log in to Yu Studio and they will be working in a similar way when they record their graphic score as part of their Spooky story unit of work. All key stage 2 children have log ins to Yu Studio which they can access at home and I know many are keen to do so if they have the opportunity. I am then able to listen to the results!
Year 3 have had a challenging week in their maths learning with division. We have learnt how to partition numbers before dividing and then using our multiplication and addition skills to find our answers. Please keep learning the 3, 4 and 8 times tables at home as this will certainly speed our calculations up in the classroom. In English we have been writing our own poems about the world and looking at how the form of poetry looks compared with our story writing. Our history work looked at the legacy of Marie Curie and what her charity means to us today. We explored how muscles work in our bodies and compared our biceps from when they were relaxed to when they are tensed. We went down to the art studio to do our printing and finished the week with outdoor learning; we looked at animal x-rays and owl pellets.
In Year 4 this week, the children have been busy writing their own fantasy stories which have been such a joy to read! They will be published and presented in the corridor for you all to enjoy very soon. The children will be moving onto a short poetry sequence after where they’ll write their own poem. In Maths, we have been looking at division methods by using the part-whole model as well as looking at division calculations that leave a remainder. In Science, we looked at the digestive system where the children learnt about the jobs of the different parts of the body involved in digestion. In History/Computing, the children planned a podcast where they are interviewing different children from 1918, 1958 and today and asked about their diets and what they eat to consolidate their learning on “How has our diet changed since 1918?” They will record and edit these sound clips in the style of a podcast.
This week in Year 5 has been a busy and exciting one! In literacy, we have continued our diary writing focus, spending time finishing and carefully editing our work so that it is ready to be published next week. In maths, we have been learning how to order, add and subtract fractions, showing great perseverance with some tricky concepts. We also enjoyed a wonderful visit to We The Curious in Bristol, which linked perfectly to our science learning. The children explored the planetarium and took part in a hands-on science workshop all about forces, which they thoroughly enjoyed. In history, we learned about the social hierarchy of the Shang Dynasty and discussed why there is much more evidence about how royals and nobles lived compared to slaves and farmers. A fantastic week of learning all round!
Year 6, in Literacy, they have been reading some scientific evidence about heart transplants and in particular issues associated with having a pig’s heart transplanted into a human. Please encourage your child to complete their maths homework each week as it builds on what we are doing in class. In history, they were finding out about Edward Jenner and how he made a significant discovery in the world of medicine and how this impacted life expectancy. We had a great trip to Bristol and enjoyed racing ‘Brushbots’ made with a simple circuit.
