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- Message from Mrs Jones
- Reading Newsletter February 2023
- News from the PTA
- Reception - Gruffalo fun
- Year 1 - Dancing in the Jungle and The Big Birdwatch
- Year 2 - Weaving and RE
- Year 3 - Fruits from Tropical, Mediterranean, Dry, Temperate and Polar climates
- Year 4 - Journeys
- Year 5 - Forces
- Year 6 - Superior Orders and the Beat Goes On
- Attendance Athletes 23rd Jan 2023
Looking ahead to next week, we are planning to participate in activities linked to children’s mental health awareness week, ‘Let’s connect,’ and Safer Internet day. These are two very important themes that are already woven into our curriculum however, it is good to join the national events. For further information try the links below.
https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk/schools
Safer internet day is 7th February- https://saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/safer-internet-day-2023
Want to talk about it? Making space for conversations about life online
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Term 4 Parent/carer meetings with the class teachers will be held on 8th & 9th March. A communication regarding how to book online will be sent early next week.
Children’s disco: 24th February - we look forward to seeing you later today!
Upcoming PTA events: click here to find out more: https://forms.gle/uffqg7HThWXVH5jcA
Children’s Disco – 24th February
Adults Quizz Night – 24th March
Campfest - 7-9th July
We have had another busy and fun week in reception learning about woodland animals. We read a book called ‘Fox in the Dark’ and learnt about nocturnal animals. We enjoyed finding out about different animal habitats and used natural materials to make different habitats. We have been re-telling the story of the Gruffalo using puppets and small world. We impressed our teachers as so many of us knew the story word for word! On Tuesday the sun came was out so we took our PE outside. We enjoyed moving around our school woodland area as different woodland creatures. We played games where we had to listen to instructions and move in different ways. It was lovely to be outdoors and for both classes to do PE together. In phonics we learnt the last of our phase 3 vowel digraphs and enjoyed playing with the diggers outside after learning ‘er a bigger digger.’ In maths we continued learning about number 6, 7 and 8. We read ‘Simon’s sock’ to learn about making pairs and used tens frames to combine two groups.
Year 1 - Dancing in the Jungle and The Big Birdwatch
This week Year 1 loved taking part in the Big Schools’ Birdwatch. To help us with identifying the birds in our playground, we looked at pictures of a variety of common garden birds, listened to their songs and painted our own bird identification sheets with watercolours. Then we headed outside to count up what we could find. We mostly spotted gulls, crows and magpies but we are keeping our eyes peeled for more! In our PE lessons we have continued working on a dance sequence inspired by The Jungle Book – this week working on mirroring our partners movements. In Music Year 1 enjoyed moving to pieces of classical music and discussing how each piece made us feel.
Following on from looking at Claude Monet’s Water Lily paintings, we have completed weavings based on his work. This involved us making collages of the colours we saw in his work and then using these strips to weave on a cardboard loom, we are very pleased with them.
On Tuesday we were visited by Iris from the Bristol and West Progressive Jewish Congregation. We learnt about Jewish festivals and celebrations and Iris showed us some important objects which are special within the Jewish faith before we learned a special song which is sang in celebration of Shabbat. We were even able to try some homemade Challah bread!
Year 3 - Fruits from Tropical, Mediterranean, Dry, Temperate and Polar climates
We have had SUCH a busy week in year 3. So much so we can’t actually fit it in to one newsletter. We will therefore tell you about the beginning of our week. We have been focusing on DT, in particular food. We have been researching fruits and vegetables across the world and why they grow in specific climates, including Tropical, Mediterranean, Dry, Temperate and Polar. We then used fruits from a tropical climate to create fruit kebabs. This lead to discussions of food miles and the importance of knowing how far your food has travelled. In our next session we focused on the UK and which fruits and vegetables grow seasonally. To help with climate change, we decided to choose a winter fruit and made apple crumble! As well as learning new recipes, the children have become conscious of our foods environmental impact.
The children also had our long awaited stone age day this week! We have so much to share on this but you will have to wait for the final newsletter to enjoy that!
In Literacy, Year 4 have been learning about non-chronological reports and we have started gathering facts into subheadings for our reports about The Amazon Rainforest. In Maths, we have been learning about converting metres into kilometres and metres into centimetres.
We have also started our R.E. enquiry 'Why do some people think that life is a journey?' The children all reflected on the things that ground them, their life achievements so far and finally, there ambitions and hopes for the future. We used a tree as a metaphor as life as a journey.
Following on from reading ‘Everest – the remarkable story of Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay’, Year 5 has been planning a narrative, retelling the journey of two men over the Khumbu Icefall. They have wowed us with their great description language choices to build suspense and tension.
They stood still as statues as they gawped at the sight before them – weeks, months, and even years seemed to pass before they snapped back into reality. (By Eloisa)
A rumble like a giant footstep shook the mountain. An avalanche! Like a white horse, it charged toward them… (By Josh)
Would he take that life-changing step? One slip and he would plunge into the abyss. (By Coco)
Shivering, the freezing wind washed over him. His lips turned purple, his cheeks red, and his knuckles white as he gripped the shaking ladder which perilously clung to the mountain’s edge. (By Leah)
In Science this week we have been learning the importance of a fair test. During our Forces lesson, we learned all about air resistance and conducted an experiment to investigate the following question: How does the surface area of a spinner’s blades affect the time it takes to fall? We used paper autogyro spinners to investigate how the length of the blades affects how quickly it falls. We made a prediction that the larger the surface area of the blades the slower the spinner would fall, we then went to work scientifically. We discussed reliability and performed our tests more than once for each condition to ensure reliable data. We recorded our results in a table and drew conclusions by providing explanations. A great start to our unit on Forces.
Year 6 - Superior Orders and the Beat Goes On
Year 6 had a great afternoon with Mr Campbell this week, discussing WW2 and having a debate around the subject of Superior Orders. They learnt to debate thoughtfully and politely with one another and to justify their opinions, giving reasons or evidence for their thinking. It was great to see how much learning they drew upon from their WW2 project and homework research. Well done Year 6.
Year 6 spent a great morning with the Beat Goes On team, culminating in a performance in conjunction with 4 other schools from our NW24 Teaching and Learning Partnership.