News
Newsletter for the week ending Friday 8th March
Thank you for making World Book Day such fun and supporting the children with their outfits. Staff had fun too reading stories to different classes.
This week we resumed our weekly visits to care homes following a Covid enforced break. A huge thank you to Charlie, Alice, Tejah, Peyton, Leon and Dasha for being so kind during the visit and making the residents feel so valued and special.
Diary Dates:
- Class photos Tuesday 12th March
- Spring Disco, Friday 22nd March, after school and more details to follow
- Sports Day Tuesday 21st May – more details to follow
Have a good weekend
From Jeremy Cooper and all the children and staff
AROUND THE CLASSES
This week in Turtles and Dolphins we have been talking about the meaning of ‘special’. We have talked about who is special, what is special and where is special to us. We also talked about why Mummy is special. On Thursday the children in Turtles visited the library to change their library books. We have also been busy making our Mothers Day cards and presents.
In Year 1 this week we have been finishing off our ‘What Happens When’ book by making our own booklets. We made it about magical questions and had lots of fun thinking of answers to our questions. In Maths we have been finishing off learning our numbers to 50 and will be starting length and height next week. Please continue to practise numbers to 50 at home to help the children recognise and order them. In topic we have been learning about the UK and which countries are in the UK as well as learning their capital cities!
Year 2 had a great time at the Atlantic Racquet Centre on Tuesday. They were able to take part in lots of different activities using their throwing, running, jumping and tennis skills. Everyone worked really hard and staff at the centre commented on their brilliant behaviour. They are looking forward to Lottie visiting in the Summer Term for tennis sessions in school. In Maths, they have been comparing different lengths and heights using centimetres and metres. In English, they have been finding out about the life of the author, Julia Donaldson and using the information they found out to write a biography. In their History work, they thought about the reasons Grace Darling might have carried out her rescue. We will be visiting the Lifeboat station as part of our learning about Grace Darling, so please look out for information about this.
Year 3 continued to explore how Hindus celebrate Diwali by creating some intricate mehndi patterns. In music, they compared pop music to classical Indian music and creates rhythms using their feet in the style of a Kathak dancer. In French they learnt how to say when their birthday is. Year 4 continued to look at how the cha gong mood throughout Holy Week can be seen in the alter cloths and designed their own. In music, they continued with some whole class ensemble teaching on the recorder and in French they learnt how to describe their family. Year 5 finished and played their wonderful Hindu board games and thoroughly enjoyed their creations. In French they write sentences to explain what clothes they wear in different weather conditions. Year 6, considered what a Christian might say in response to the sacrifice made by Jesus after considering the reason for this sacrifice. In French, they further developed their knowledge of French vocabulary for items of clothing and revised the colours in French.
Year 3 have had a great week! In Maths, we have been comparing and ordering non-unit fractions and placing fractions on scales and number lines. In English, we recapped the punctuation needed for direct speech and then rewrote the dialogue between Thor and Arthur from the story ‘Arthur and the Golden Rope’. In Guided Reading, we have also been reading this book and we have been thinking about the meanings of different words and have also been discussing why the author has chosen to use certain words in the book. In Science, we designed our own healthy meal and thought carefully about including foods that contained different nutrients to ensure that our meal was balanced. In Computing, we continued using yes/no questions to help us group objects and we then learned how to arrange objects into a tree structure.
In HMS Echo (Year 4), the children have written about their own machine/object to explain which has been really lovely to read – they have been so creative. We are going to move on to explaining how earthquakes happen in the same style, which links with our Geography unit. In Maths, we have been adding fractions, and will be moving onto adding and subtracting mixed numbers. In Geography, we have been looking at the history of earthquakes in New Zealand, and mapping out where they have been occurring. In Science, the children took part in some outdoor learning, where they grouped different living things. Because of World Book Day this week, the children tested their book knowledge with a quiz and designed their own book cover.
It has been another busy week in Year 5. We have started a new story writing sequence using the Ted Hughes story ‘How the Whale Became’. In maths we have continued to multiply mixed numbers and finding a fraction of an amount. We used our graph skills to look at how baby boys and baby girls compare in height and weight in the first 12 months of their lives. We really enjoyed dressing up for World Book day and listening to the author John Patrick Green and learning about his Investigators stories. A group went to Bluebell House and enjoyed playing games and talking with the residents. We had a visit from the RNLI to tell us how to stay safe around water.
Year 6 enjoyed wearing pyjamas or fantastic costumes for World Book Day; they played a few quizzes and enjoyed their story from Mrs Bannister – thank you! They are still writing their version of Ice Bear in Literacy and in Maths have been finding the area of triangles and parallelograms, as well as finding the volume of cuboids. It has been impressive to see children using skills across different areas of maths and trying to link their knowledge together – some afternoons we have been completing geometry activities, involving drawing accurately which has definitely improved. In PE, we revised dribbling and ‘the fast break’ – this was used well in the short games we played; they have also completed various balances in gymnastics. This week, we rewarded children who showed high standards of behaviour, with an extra session outside: well done to all those children who achieved this! Our next Outdoor Learning session is Thursday 14th March.
