Dear Parents and Carers,

School Events

It has certainly been a busy time for the children and staff at Christ Church School with several trips and visits out of school and an equal variety of experiences and visitors joining us. Our Reception, Year 1 and 2 children have visited the Redgrave Theatre to see the Gingerbread Boy production, enjoyed by all. Year 3 were invited to the Christ Church Christmas Experience and spent a morning at the Church taking part in all sorts of fun activities and learning about the meaning of Christmas. Both the Redgrave and Christ Church have commented on the excellent behaviour of our children, something that we are all proud of. Our Winter Woodland Workshops have been a huge success with our Reception, years 1, 2, 3 & 4 listening to Jenny tell woodland stories, making bird feeders, toasting apples and drinking hot chocolate by the fire.

Once again, our wonderful Christ Church School choir have performed their talented singing, this time at the Bristol Beacon on Wednesday evening for a Bristol wide Key Stage 2 Winter Sing. Our stage presence will continue next week with our Key Stage 1 and Reception performances to parents and carers and we are looking forward to watching and supporting the children.

I hope that this will provide you with the assurance that we are absolutely committed to enriching the wider learning experiences beyond the daily curriculum for all children. This is only possible due to your generosity in providing voluntary contributions and we are ever grateful for this. 

School Council

Congratulations to our new School Council! We are looking forward to working with our elected council in their important roles, representing the voice of all of the children at Christ Church.

Staff Changes

As we approach the end of term, we will soon be saying a fond farewell for now, to Miss Cator and Miss Riddiford as they begin their maternity leave and prepare for a future as parents. Although they will both be missed greatly by children and staff, we wish them well in the coming months and look forward to both hearing about the arrival of their children and their return.

It is therefore important that we share with you the new arrangements in place in January for the rest of the academic year. We will be welcoming Miss Eaton as the new class teacher in year 3 and as a teacher that has supported us already in her role as a cover teacher, I feel sure that she will complement our teaching team perfectly.

I am also happy to inform you that both Mrs Brown and Mrs Petters will be leading their current classes in a full-time capacity for the rest of the school year and this will enable Mrs Rowe and Mrs Castle to share the lead in year 5, succeeding Miss Cator. We are thrilled that these changes will bring both stability and experience at a time of change for the children and we look forward to a happy and successful 2025.

Sadly, we will also be saying goodbye to Miss Ward at the end of this term. Having been a true asset to our school in her role as Learning Support Assistant, Miss Ward is moving on to a new and exciting challenge in her career and will continue to bring her energy, care and cheer to many more children in the coming years.

Finally, our long serving School Business Manager, Mrs Jordan is nearing the end of almost twelve years of service to our school. As I have already shared this news with you in a previous newsletter, you will already know what a crucial role she plays in the leadership of our school and the huge impact that she has had on the success of Christ Church School. Mrs Jordan will be much missed by all and we again wish her every happiness and success in her future. I am pleased to inform you that we have now recruited a new Business Manager, Mrs Tracey Farwell, who will be joining us in January and I am sure that you will join me in welcoming her to our fantastic school.

Awards and Rewards

As you will know, our Celebration Assemblies held each Friday recognise the children who have achieved the Star of the Week award. On the final week of this term, we will be awarding three new termly awards – Values Ambassador, Determination Award and the Progress Award. We have also this week, awarded our first winners of the ’50 Value Point’ award and are looking forward to recognising the fantastic work of every Christ Church child with this hard-earned award in the coming weeks and months.

Thank you again for all of your support and I wish you a lovely weekend ahead. 

Kind regards

Mark Oldfield

Headteacher

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

• Friday 23rd May - Academy day
• Monday 21st July - Inset day
• Tuesday 22nd July - Inset day

A big thank you to all the children who sang at Bristol Beacon on Wednesday night at the KS2 Winter Sing. Those children sang their hearts out and sounded absolutely phenomenal! Lots of lunchtimes were given up to learn, rehearse and perfect those songs so well done children – you showed resilience, dedication and professionalism at all times and did yourselves and Christ Church School proud.

Mrs Brown

Reception have been incredibly busy learning song lyrics for their much-awaited performance ‘Shimmer, Sparkle and Sing. They cannot wait to astound and amaze you with their super singing. It has also been a fun-filled week of learning opportunities as ever!

Reception had a wonderful trip to the theatre on Tuesday morning to watch ‘The Gingerbread Boy’. Everyone listened brilliantly and thoroughly enjoyed the show especially when Victoria from RLB and our very own Mrs Petters were chosen to be part of the performance! What a magical morning to get us in the festive spirit, we even got a present to take home!

This week the children found out about the importance and meaning of ‘Advent’ by looking at an advent wreath, learning about advent calendars and lighting an advent candle. The children were asked what they had ever needed to ‘wait for’ and how easy ‘waiting for something’ really was. They were also told that Christians are still waiting for Jesus to return.

We have been finishing off our space topic by looking at stars and the night sky. We read ‘A Cat’s Guide to the Night Sky’ by Stuart Atkinson and used some of our non-fiction books to look up what a star is. We learnt all about constellations and enjoyed making some ourselves. After reading the book ‘Searching for A Roarer’ by Kate Claxton we learnt about the Northern Lights and looked at why this happens.

Over the past weeks both classes took part in a super outdoor workshop. We made bird feeders, toasted delicious cinnamon sugar apples on the fire and had a really great outdoor learning experience.

What a fantastic week! We are looking forward to getting festive in the weeks ahead.

Reception Team

We kicked off the week with a very exciting trip to the Redgrave theatre to see The Gingerbread Boy. It followed the story of a lonesome Gingerbread Boy who made a friend just in time for Christmas. It was an interactive show and the children loved shouting as loud as they could to help the characters, and one member of 1AN even got to go on stage for a cake decorating contest!

We also had our winter workshops with Jenny, a forest school teacher. The children toasted wedges of apple dipped in cinnamon sugar on the fire and made a bird feeder from apples and seeds.

In literacy this week we wrote our shortened versions of One Snowy Night into our books. The children worked so hard to produce their best pieces of writing yet – well done Year 1!

We had a really exciting start to the week with a trip to the Redgrave Theatre to watch The Gingerbread Boy.  The children loved it and it really got us into the Christmas spirit. The children were all very excited to get their first Christmas gifts at the end of the show.

We’ve used the theatre visit to inspire our acting skills as we continue our rehearsals for our own Christmas production.  The children have worked so hard to learn their lines and the songs. It’s already looking and sounding brilliant and we can’t wait to share it with you all next week.

Around all this Christmas activity, we have also continued with our learning and we have been focusing on using the -ed ending to write in the past tense.  In our French lesson this week, we continued to learn The Little Gingerbread Boy in French.  We are doing really well at learning the names for the different characters in French.

What. A. Week. We have absolutely crammed the learning in this week and it’s been such a joy! Firstly, thank you to Christ Church for inviting us to the annual ‘Christmas experience’. It is such an immersive, informative and fun trip and the children have not stopped talking about it!

We started a new Science topic this week on ‘rocks’. We kicked off this module with ‘fossils’ as the children have already shared that they have their own collections and a lot of existing knowledge. As well as learning the process of how fossils are made, we tried making our own using the mould method and plaster. As if that wasn’t enough, we invited a STEM ambassador geologist in to share her rock collection. Rhian ran a workshop exploring her sedimentary, igneous, metamorphic, minerals and fossils collection. Rhian, with her extensive knowledgeable and her vast collection made it a really enriching task for the children, and as you can see from the pictures - they loved it!

Year 4 had a wondrous winter adventure this week during their winter workshop! Both classes enjoyed a magical mix of activities; they listened to a traditional tale that warmed their imaginations, crafted bird feeders to care for our feathered friends, roasted delicious sugar and cinnamon apples, and learned a cheerful winter song. It was a fun-filled day that brought stories, nature, and a sprinkle of sweetness together - what a fantastic way to embrace the season!

Year 5 have been continuing their topic on the Vikings. In art we used drew Viking warrior faces and used grids to help us measure up their proportions. The children demonstrated a range of pencil techniques including shading and cross hatching. In Literacy, we have been learning about Viking sagas. Over the course of this week, the children have listened to and retold their own versions of the saga about the famous explorer, Leif Erikson. 

In computing this week,  our focus was animation. We made either, thaumatropes (a toy that shows two pictures as one when spinning), zoetropes (a spinning cylinder that makes pictures look like they are moving), or flip books.

We wrote blackout poems to launch our new Literacy text this term – Survivors. The book contains 23 different real-life survival stories. We read the first story: ‘The Girl Who Fell From The Sky’. This tells the story of Juliane Koepcke, who survived an aeroplane crash. Flying over the Peruvian rainforest, her plane was hit by lightning: Juliane survived a two-mile fall – she was the only survivor of the crash. We wrote excellent story descriptions from the perspective of the jungle.

School Council

We are excited to announce the newly elected members of our School Council! A big thank you to everyone who applied – we were truly impressed by the thoughtful, creative ideas you shared. The School Council will be working on a range of projects to help make our school an even happier, healthier, and more environmentally-friendly place to learn and grow. Our School Councillors are:

2HB - Annabel & Lulu

2CB - Cason & Ceira

3HR - Honey & Emma

3ED - Addie & Nathaniel

4CE - Lily & Sheva

4RK - Inti & Lucy

5LC - Zoe & Joe

5RB - Arthur & Yomna

6EW - Freddy, Iris, Marceau & Ted

Please come and join us at school for an SEND Coffee morning with Bristol Parent Careres.

Please fill in the google form if you would like to attend - coffee morning google form

We will be collecting Christmas donations for the Bristol North West Foodbank between Monday 16^th – Thursday 19^th December.  Please see below items they would appreciate receiving: