Dear Parents & Carers,

Prayer Space at Christ Church

With the help of three wonderful volunteers, Pastor Ruthy spent three days this week leading the children through an opportunity to spend some calm and reflective time together in our pop-up prayer space. Despite the mix of sunshine and downpours, it has been wonderful to see the children outside in the fresh air with a chance to be still, to wonder, question and reflect on life. In an increasingly busy world, we believe that it is important for all children to learn how to press the ‘pause’ button on life occasionally and to look around them, reflect on what they see and sense, and to take what they have learned with them. We are extremely grateful to Pastor Ruthy and her team.

Collective Worship – Aspiration

In our Collective Worship this week we talked about the value of Aspiration, one of our school’s core values. The children impressed us with their thoughtful answers to questions about their ambitions and goals, and we learned how our brains continually grow and develop, shaped by our experiences in life. Using the analogy of the ‘fleas in a jar’ experiment, our key message helped the children to understand that we must never put a limit on what we aspire to achieve.

Year 6 Beggar Bush

It was the turn of our adventurous year 6 children to visit Beggar Bush on Monday, providing an active and fun start to the week, full of learning beyond the classroom. As with all of the opportunities that together as a school community we provide, these essential experiences help children to develop in so many ways such as self-confidence, self-esteem, physical and emotional growth and much more.

Emerging Writers and Real Authors

As adults we understand how a love of books enriches our lives in so many ways. To encourage the children to learn more about how ideas come to life on a page, year 3 and 4 were invited by Clifton College to meet a renowned author and illustrator, Called Laura Ellen Anderson. We hope to see their enthusiasm and creativity build further in their own writing in the coming weeks.

Biscuit Bakers

With the welcome help of one of our kind and generous parents, year 5 spent an afternoon learning how to make delicious Eid biscuits together. Following the celebrations for our Muslim families at Christ Church School last Friday, all of the children were able to develop some cooking skills and really enjoyed sampling their own home baked biscuits.

Phonics Check

I am both pleased and proud to tell you that our fantastic year 1 children have all successfully completed the national phonics check this week. The check enables schools to assess carefully the children’s progress and attainment in early reading. As we know, synthetic phonics underpins our learning by combing the letter sounds (phonemes), with their corresponding written form (graphemes). As children learn to blend the sounds together orally. The results indicate very positive outcomes and we will report these formally in the coming weeks.

We are equally proud of our year 2 children who have continued to work so hard this year as they build upon their progress to reach the learning goals they deserve. A huge well done to the children.

Notices

We are, as always extremely grateful to our parents and carers for your support and generosity in raising much needed funds from the weekly cake sales and this makes a huge difference to the wider curriculum that enriches our school so much. These sales are hugely popular and most weeks we see the cake sell out fast. To ensure that every child has a chance to buy a cake, we ask that children only buy one cake each please.

Coffee Morning - don't forget, everyone is welcome to join Miss Holland, the School Nursing Team and Bristol Parent Carers for coffee, biscuits and a chat on Tuesday 17th June at 9am.

Weather – with the changeable weather lately, it has been tricky to predict if the children need sun-screen or wellies! It does look like some warmer days are ahead and therefore please ensure that your children come to school with plenty of water, sun hats, sun-screen and as always, my weekly plea for all uniform and belongings to be clearly named.

With the weekend just around the corner, thank you for all of your support this week and I wish you a restful two days ahead.

Warmest wishes

Mark Oldfield

Headteacher

Inset and Academy days for the rest of the year (training for school staff - children are not in school on these days):

• Monday 21st July - Inset day
• Tuesday 22nd July - Inset day

INSET AND ACADEMY DAYS FOR NEXT ACADEMIC YEAR

• Tuesday 2nd September - Inset day 
• Wednesday 3rd September - Inset day

On Tuesday we learnt all about ladybirds including their life cycle and made comparisons to life cycles we have looked at before. We enthusiastically created some super ladybird crafts too.

On Wednesday there was great excitement as both classes were thrilled to meet some Giant African land snails, kindly brought in by Hector’s mummy! We found out lots of different facts such as they live for 10 years and can have up to 25,000 teeth to be able to eat the fruit and vegetables that they love. We all got to touch the shell and have a good look at the different parts of a snail.  Many thanks for this experience during our mini-beast topic!

In maths we have been focusing on telling ‘first, then and now’ stories for both addition and subtraction. This has involved singing ‘Ten Green bottles’ and ‘Ten currant buns’ to show the taking away each time. We also put marbles in a jar then added some more to find a total altogether. How many did I add to the first number to get that total?

With great enthusiasm we continued to practice different skills in our house teams ahead of sports day in a few weeks! Throwing, balancing, cooperation, teamwork and following instructions. We are so excited to be part of this whole school event, representing our houses and making our families proud.

The children are loving their letters through the post, finding out the answers to their questions about the past. These will be given to the children at the end of term – as we know how special they are!

Another ‘funtastic’ and busy and soggy week in Reception!

Mrs Petters and Miss Biancardi

This term, Year 1 are learning all about how we can look after our planet. We began the week by thinking about the things we love most about our world, before reading the book 10 Things I Can Do to Help My World. Inspired by the story, we created our own lists of ways we can care for the environment both at home and at school.

We also explored Benjamin Zephaniah’s beautiful poem and storybook "Leave the Trees, Please". The story follows a young boy’s friendship with a tree and his journey to protect it. It inspired us to think and write about why trees are important and all the amazing things they give us.

Year 1 came up with lots of brilliant ideas, including that trees provide homes for millions of animals and give us the oxygen we need to breathe.

Well done Year 1!

Although we’re only in the second week of this term, Year 2 have already thrown themselves into their learning with great excitement and enthusiasm.

In Science, we have begun exploring lifecycles, and the children have been especially captivated by the arrival of our class caterpillars. Each day, we’ve been observing them closely and noticing the small changes as they grow. The children are full of questions and predictions, and there’s a real buzz of excitement as we wait to see them begin their transformation into butterflies. It’s a lovely way to bring our learning to life and help the children understand the natural world around them.

Alongside this, we’ve been truly amazed by the creative talents in our class. Over the past week, many children have been busy at home making all sorts of wonderful things—from detailed drawings and colourful paintings to beautifully sewn crafts and imaginative models. They’ve brought their creations into school to share with the class, and it’s been such a joy to see how proud they are of their work. Their classmates have been equally enthusiastic, offering compliments, asking questions, and being inspired to create their own projects too.

Year 3 have been exploring in Science this week and have enjoyed learning about and labelling the parts of plants.

They have shown that they are green-fingered and lots of them brought a lot of knowledge from home and their adventures gardening with their families.

They have set up an experiment with tomato plants to see what is essential for their survival and rounded off the week by creating Mr Grass Heads.

In Literacy they have been researching and planning a biography about the wonderful Sir David Attenborough.

We will see the results of those in next week’s newsletter.

This week in Year 4, our Literacy lessons have taken a poetic turn as we explored the features of tanka poems. These traditional Japanese poems, known for their structure and seasonal themes, inspired us to get creative with our writing. The children have worked hard to craft their own tanka poems, focusing on capturing the beauty of the seasons through vivid imagery and emotion. It’s been wonderful to see their thoughtful use of language and poetic expression shine through.

In Maths, we wrapped up our unit on shape and began an exciting new topic: statistics. We launched into the world of data collection by conducting a class survey on favourite fruits. The children enjoyed gathering information, discussing results, and learning how to represent their findings using bar charts and pictograms. This hands-on activity has sparked some great discussions and has helped everyone see the practical side of maths in everyday life.

Our Geography lessons have taken us across the Atlantic to the United States of America! We’ve started exploring the physical and human geographical features that make the USA such a fascinating country—from vast mountain ranges to bustling cities.

However, the highlight of our week was undoubtedly the author visit on Wednesday. We had the chance to meet Laura Ellen Anderson, the brilliant mind behind the Amelia Fang books. She captivated us with stories of how she became a children’s author, led us in some wonderful drawing activities, and even shared some fascinating facts about moths! The children left feeling inspired and full of ideas.

This week, Year 5 had a special visit from Norah, who spoke to the children about the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha. The children learned about the significance of the celebration and how families mark the occasion around the world. Following the talk, everyone had the opportunity to either make or decorate delicious (tiny!) biscuits—just like those often shared with friends and families during Eid. It was a fun and educational session that helped bring this important festival to life. Thank you Norah for giving up your time to come and work with us.

Meanwhile in Literacy, the children have been learning how to use speech punctuation accurately and then using in their writing for different purposes. They have watched the short film called Broken: Rock, Paper, Scissors and used speech to convey character traits; to build tension and to interweave it with narrative to advance the action. It’s complex stuff with a lot to remember but they have produced writing to be proud of. We definitely have some budding authors of the future!

On Monday, lucky Year 6 enjoyed a fantastic day of new challenges in the sunshine! The children took part in exciting activities including tomahawk throwing, axe throwing and combat archery, all under clear blue skies. A real highlight of the day was the bouldering session, which took place in the impressive new climbing facility at Clifton College.

Another highlight was our Prayer Space session. Zaiyaan said about it:

“…The hammock was cosy. In the sand box you write a worry and then you can rub it out. On the labels that we tied to the empty chair we could write about a person or pet who we are missing. My favourite place was the calm tent, I loved the finger maze in the tent because it helped me feel calm and sleepy.”

Thank you to Pastor Ruthy and her team for giving the children an opportunity to spend some calm and reflective time together in our pop-up prayer space. We hope you enjoy the photographs shared below.

We would love to receive feedback from parents / carers regarding reading at home and phonics learning at home. If you are able to complete and submit the Google Form for your child's year group that would really help us to support you more with both reading and phonics. Thank you 

Reception & KS1 - Engaging with Reading & Phonics at home

KS2 - Engaging with Reading at home

This year we are going to be holding a house talent show. All four houses will be competing against each other to find the winning house! Points will be awarded for each house for both the auditions and the talent show itself.

We are in the early stages of planning and more details will follow next week once the house captains and the staff team at Christ Church have met.

If you think you have a talent you would like to share, this could be dancing, singing, playing an instrument, a magic trick, a sport skill, a recital or even a stand-up comedy sketch! You could enter as a solo artist or as a duet or group. Have a think if you would like to participate and next week we will give details of how to enter and when auditions will take place.

We can’t wait to see what talents we have at Christ Church!

CAMPFEST 2025 - 11-13 July @ Cotham Rugby Club

11th-13th July @ Cotham Park Rugby Club - more info & tickets coming soon!

*New to school?* Watch the teaser: https://youtu.be/hiPMHFj_lnY?feature=shared