News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 4th April
Sadly, Sally, who works in AOOSC, leaves us this week and we wish her well with her new adventure…involving ducks and chickens! Thank you Sally for your hard work looking after our children. After Easter, Mrs Wilkins returns from maternity leave to year 1 and will be job sharing with Mrs Malyn. Also returning from maternity leave after Easter is Mrs Stephens, who will resume her job share in year 2 with Mrs Stanbury.
For the FOAS (Friends of Appledore School (ie the parents who put on fund raising events for the school)) newsletter please see here. A big thank you to all they do in support of the school!
We have started a BSL (British Sign Language) club in school. The club involves ambassadors across the school who attend cascade their learning to their class (and at home too!). A Crowdfunding page has been organised to raise funds to resource the club, so far halfway towards target, so any donation, no matter the size, would be greatly received. See here for the link
During each school holiday the rangers at Northam Burrows Country Park provide free events on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons as well as self-guided trails and other activities. Please see here for more information and the visitor centre will be open daily from this Saturday 5th April until the end of October half term.
Dates for the diary:
- Free Spike Lego Workshop at Appledore Library 10am-12pm Saturday 5th April see here
- Dinosaur Egg Hunt in Appledore Library see here
- Family Bingo 12th April in Appledore Community Hall hosted by Appledore Pirates . For more information see here
- Sports Day Tuesday 17th June and reserve date is Tuesday 24th June
We wish you all a happy Easter
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
In Turtles and Dolphins this week we have been learning about Easter. We have read the Easter story and talked about how people celebrate Easter. We have made Easter baskets and we loved making the Easter biscuits to put into our baskets. Today, The Easter bunny left us a note and we went on an Easter egg hunt.
Year 1 has had a lovely end of term, we have fitted so much in! Mrs Wilkins has been in and spent time with us which has been lovely. She is really looking forward to being back after Easter. She helped us make fluffy slime at the beginning of the week and then we wrote instructions for our own slime page. In the assembly on Monday, we shared some of our values work from this term on ‘Being Healthy’. The children wrote an acrostic poem to represent what they have learnt about health and looking after their bodies. On Tuesday afternoon we went for a wonderful walk around Appledore looking out for seaside features. The children spotted lots and then enjoyed a well deserved ice cream and play at the park. We went down to the art studio and finished our fish sculptures by adding paint details. We can’t wait to see how they turn out after they’ve been glazed. There are some photos on google classroom from this week. Hope you have a super Easter holiday!
Year 2 have had a great week. They enjoyed their outdoor learning session last Friday when they were able to make a healthy soup and taste it. This Friday, they are going to take part in an outdoor learning session to set up a freshwater tank as part of the Royal Society Project the whole school is completing. In Maths, they have been learning about fractions and have been finding halves and quarters of different numbers. In their English work, they have been writing with beautiful illustrations for their Creature Features books. These will be on display very soon, so please look out for them. This week we welcomed Mrs Stephens back to the classroom after her maternity leave. She will be teaching on Thursdays and Fridays and they are all very excited about this. The Year Two team would like to wish you all a relaxing Easter break and thank you for your support for another great term.
Years 3 and 4 had great fun laying down their vocal tracks into Yu studio. They went off to our recording studio (the field) and performed their spooky stories and their train word rhythms. They then reversed them, edited them, added reverb and generally had a great time putting them into the mix. You may find the children continue to produce their track over the Easter holidays! In RE the classes brought their current unit to a close by designing Easter displays, making Easter cards and singing an Easter hymn.
Seahunter class (year 3) have had a great last week of this term! In Maths, we finished our topic on volume and capacity by finding equivalent volumes and then adding and subtracting different volumes. In English, we finished our quest stories and then published them. On Wednesday, we had our last swimming lesson and the children got to play on the large floats. All of the children have made amazing progress with their swimming, and they should be really proud of their achievements. In Values, we finished our topic on being healthy by thinking about all of the ways that we can keep our minds and bodies healthy. In PE, we continued practising our counter balances, and then in pairs the children put together their own counter balance sequences.
In year 4 this week, the children have learnt what tenths and hundredths are as decimals and they have also learnt how to divide a 1 and 2 digit number by 10 and 100 where they were able to articulate what happens to the digits. In English, the children drew a magical place and had to write a description about it ready to start our new text after Easter called “Leon and the Place Between”. In Geography, the children drew the Pacific Ring of Fire and they learnt why earthquakes happen at the same place as volcanoes. In PE, we were able to set up the gymnastic frames in the hall where the children practised their strength and balance skills whilst navigating around an obstacle course which they thoroughly enjoyed! In Science, the children in pairs took part in an assessment where they had to use their understanding of what they have learnt as part of their topic ‘Living things and their habitats’ and had to create their own classification keys to identify animals.
Have a lovely Easter break everyone!
Year 5 have been very busy completing all their units of work this week. They have been writing limericks about spring for their writing and multiplying fractions by an integer. In science we have completed the unit on animals, including humans; we looked at the human life cycle and found out more about older age! and then to finish off we looked at a flowering plant life cycle. We compared Appledore to Heimaey for our final geography session and looked at the bird wildlife on the island (comparing this with the birds found on Lundy). It’s been a very busy and productive term and all the class deserve a well earned rest. Happy Easter.
Reminder: The arts award club will start on Tuesday 22nd April for those who have signed up to have their work moderated
Year 6 have been busy revising in maths and publishing work this week in Literacy as well as looking at figurative language. In Science, they were finding out about electricity and putting to use some of the skills they learnt on the trip to Bristol. It’s been a busy term and they have all worked really hard. They have revision packs (at home already) which are a point of reference for securing knowledge and building confidence as well as booster material on Google Classroom – we have spoken to children about short sessions to keep skills ticking over. There is homework on Google classroom for over the holiday which is due on Weds when we return. Some children need to work on telling the time: digital and analogue clocks, using 12 and 24 hour clocks – please check that they can do this. There was a maths.co.uk time activity to complete which will help to show what sort of questions about time are asked. We have 3 weeks at school before SATs when we return, and we have lots of other exciting things to look forward to in the summer term. Some dates for your diary: Leavers’ Play Thursday 10th July 2pm and Leavers’ Assembly Friday 18th July 2pm – hope you can make it.
