Dear Parents and Carers,

Sporting Stars

Competitive spirits were alive and well at the beginning of this week with a group of our older children in years 5 & 6 representing the school at the School Sports Partnership swimming gala. As they boarded the coach for their trip over to Hengrove, there was a buzz of confidence and excitement, only to return a few hours later, resplendent with their gold medals! A great performance all round – well done children.

Our newly established year 5 & 6 girls football team had their first league meeting against some local schools this week. They played 5 schools in total and managed a few wins along the way. They loved playing against other teams and getting to play football with their friends. They are continuing their Thursday morning training ready for the their next matches on Monday.

Celebrating Lent: A Season of Reflection and Renewal

As we journey through the season of Lent, our school is thinking about this special time to reflect, renew, and prepare our hearts for Easter. Lent, observed for 40 days leading up to Easter Sunday, is a season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that encourages us to grow spiritually and strengthen our faith. Pastor Ruthy has been talking to the children in her wonderful Collective Worship all about Lent and it is lovely to see the children sharing their thoughts together.

Book in a Jar

Many of our children entered their ‘Book in a Jar’ to our World Book Day competition. The entries were a showcase of their creative talents and, in themselves told a story of how many children have a love of reading both at school and at home. The entries have been judged and the winners announced in celebration assembly. Well done to all who took the time to create a jar and entered the competition.

Red Nose Day

Our next charity event will be Red Nose Day for Comic Relief next Friday. Our theme this year is ‘Dress to Impress’ and the children can enjoy wearing their favourite clothes of their choice. We can’t wait to celebrate yet another happy Friday feeling to come!

Maths and Multiplication

As adults, we all understand the importance of knowing our multiplication facts and their division equivalents as well as the skill to recall and apply our tables. As children reach a point in their education, this becomes a key part of their maths curriculum and we have now introduced a new framework to teach children from year 3 onwards. Our Number Sense approach will help us to establish confidence for all children and to practice, recall and apply their times tables through a determined, daily menu that they can enjoy. Complimenting their daily teaching of maths, we are determined to help all children to be better prepared in this aspect when they reach their statutory year 4 Multiplication Tables Check, designed to determine whether a child can fluently recall their times tables up to 12.

Our year 6 children are topping this off with a second maths resource, ‘Rockstars’ that enables them to compete with themselves and others through a fun, interactive software package that has been generously gifted to the school by one of our families.

Neurodiversity Week

Next week we will be exploring neurodiversity with the children and celebrating difference through learning about what neurodiversity is and how we can understand one another better.

Despite the return this week to the chilly winter weather, I wish you all a warm and relaxing weekend ahead.

Kind regards

Mark Oldfield

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

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

Healthy eating was on the learning menu at the beginning of the week. We discussed what is meant by healthy food and why it is so important for us. We really enjoyed sorting the healthy and unhealthy food and loved squeezing, squishing and stirring to make citrus soup outside! Our adults were very impressed by our great knowledge and healthy choices!

Reception were really lucky to have a visit from Mrs Krause who told them all about how best to keep their teeth and gums healthy and everybody was given a goody-bag to take home with items to do just that! Thank you, Sheryl, for reading us ‘Alan’s Big Scary Teeth’ and sharing your knowledge and skills about dentistry. Full of enthusiasm we explored some dental resources in our classrooms.

For Drawing Club, we read the traditional tale 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and enjoyed learning our vocabulary, joining in with the story and drawing our imaginative ideas.We also learnt about the life cycle of a bean and we planted some beans in our classrooms. We are hopeful for a magic beanstalk but fingers crossed they at least grow nice and tall!

At the end of the week we did our very own Gingerbread Man science experiment. We read the traditional tale 'The Gingerbread Man' and then we investigated which of four different liquids would cause the Gingerbread biscuits to dissolve the fastest. We made our own predictions and were very surprised by the results!

Wow! Reception you really have bean busy! Well done all!

This term, Year 1 are discovering the wonders of spring. Ahead of our upcoming trip to the Downs next week, we were visited by Anna to teach us more about spring flowers. We began by looking at aerial photographs of Bristol to locate the Downs and Avon Gorge. Then, we examined a variety of flowers that we’ll start to see blooming on the Downs as we move into spring. Next, we ventured outside and searched for natural objects that matched a stone each of us was given. To wrap up, we created our own spring palettes by gathering and arranging blossom, twigs, and leaves. We had a wonderful morning and are really looking forward to next week’s trip!

In maths we have been learning our number bonds to 20 by using our number bonds to 10. If we know that 7 + 3 = 10, then we also know that 17 + 3 = 20. This week we using our knowledge of number bonds to help subtract.

This week in Year 2 Computing, the children had an exciting lesson where they used iPads to research Tim Peake, the famous British astronaut. They explored fun facts about his life, space missions, and his time aboard the International Space Station. The children enjoyed using the iPads to find out how Tim Peake helped with science experiments in space and how he stayed healthy while living in zero gravity. It was a fantastic way to bring learning about space to life and sparked lots of curiosity about astronauts and space travel!

This week, Year 3 continued their mouth-watering project, bringing their 3D doughnut sculptures to life! After sketching and creating the sculpture bases last week they moved on to the fun part-painting their doughnut!!

Everyone added vibrant colours and creative details to their designs, bringing their unique visions to life.

Inspired by the famous food sculptures of Claes Oldenburg, the children have been working hard and enjoying every moment of the process. The next step will be to add final touches and complete their delicious masterpieces.

We can’t wait to share the finished sculptures with you in next week’s newsletter, stay tuned for the spectacular results!

Year 4 have been hitting their learning for six this week! In maths, they’ve been making important connections, building bridges between fractions and decimals. With plenty of problem-solving and real-world examples, the children have developed a strong understanding of how these two concepts link together—proving that maths really does add up to something exciting!

Meanwhile, in P.E., the children have been bowled over by their cricket lessons! Working in teams, they’ve honed their batting, bowling, and fielding skills, all while having bags of fun. Their teamwork and sportsmanship have been on the ball, making for some thrilling games and impressive plays. With every session, their confidence is growing, and we can’t wait to see them continue to knock it out of the park!

This week Year 5 have travelled back in time and immersed themselves in Ancient Greece! They have been reading Greek myths in Literacy, specifically ‘The Cyclops’, and although it was a little gory in places, they loved retelling the story in the form of a playscript. West End watch out!

The children have also focussed on History this week.  They used maps of modern day Greece to help them understand a little more about how the Ancient Greeks might have lived and learnt about daily life, becoming experts in a particular area before sharing their new facts with their table group. The children were passionate about their learning about the differences between the city state of Athens and Sparta and then voted where they would have preferred to live. Year 5 were also blown away by the legacy of Ancient Greece and how many influences we still have today, specifically, the Olympics, chewing gum, buildings and democracy.

Well done for all your learning everyone, what a busy week! 

This week in Year 6, we have been busy with our learning! In maths, we have completed our work on area, perimeter, rectilinear shapes, and volume.

In science, we conducted an exciting experiment to determine which material—aluminum foil, felt, or bubble wrap—was the best insulator. Using a control for comparison, we carefully observed and discussed our findings, considering why certain materials retained heat better than others.

Additionally, we have dedicated time to refining our grammar. This week, amongst other things, we have had lessons on the subjunctive form, synonyms and antonyms, punctuation for bullet point lists, and subordinating and coordinating conjunctions.

We enjoyed publishing our writing that we wrote last week – it looks fantastic! Well done Year 6.

On Monday morning, our Year 5/6 swimming team did an outstanding job at the SSP Primary Swimming Gala, showing incredible skill, determination, and teamwork. Their hard work paid off as they clinched the GOLD MEDALS, demonstrating their excellence in every race. In addition to the competitive events, we also had a group of swimmers who participated in a fun gala, where they showed just as much enthusiasm and spirit. Their teamwork and determination earned them the well-deserved SILVER MEDALS.

We couldn't be prouder of how all the swimmers competed—each and every one gave their best, making it a memorable day for the whole team!

We are super proud of you all. 

Earlier this week we had a panel of three guest judges come in to judge our story in a jar competition. They had a wonderful time inspecting each of the jars and commended all of the hard work and effort put into every single jar.

Their decision definitely wasn’t an easy one, but, they made their choices and today, the winners of the Story Jar competition were announced and are as follows:

Runners up:

• Mirabel – James and the Giant Peach
• Hamza – Stick Man
• Clover – Alice in Wonderland

Winners:

• Reception: Ivor – Tiddler
• Year 1 & 2: Emmi – Charlotte’s Web
• Year 3 & 4: Orla – Secret Garden
• Year 5 & 6: Polina – Alice in Wonderland
• Sibling entry: Hettie and Thea – Alice in Wonderland

Congratulations to the winners! The prize is 1X £10 book voucher to spend exclusively at Heron Books in Clifton Village with Miss Beck. We kindly ask that all vouchers are kept safely in school until we find time to spend them next week.

We would like to issue a final well done and thank you to everyone who entered and all those who helped out at home. Everyone at Christ Church was in awe of the creativity displayed in those jars – you certainly didn’t make the judges jobs easy for them!

Everyone who entered the competition will receive a certificate for participation in Tuesday’s assembly next week.

On Tuesday for our first week of ‘Eat them to Defeat Them’ we offered chopped carrots, peppers and cucumbers. The reception children peeled, chopped and grated the vegetables for the table. There was a cucumber yogurt dip that the reception children made, it was enjoyed by many.

Here is the recipe for you to try the dip at home, with vegetables of your choice.

By Florence, Concorde House Captain

Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel is the UK’s largest walking, wheeling, scooting and cycling challenge. It inspires pupils to make active journeys to school, improve air quality in their neighbourhood and discover how these changes benefit their world.

From Monday 24^th March, until Friday 4^th April we will be competing with over 1,000 others schools in this challenge.

On each day of the challenge schools compete to see who can record the greatest number of pupils walking, striding (parking a little further away and walking), scooting or cycling to school. Classes will register this during morning registration.  Each day we will be entered into a prize draw to win accessories and resources to help Christ Church Primary travel actively.

On Friday 21^st March we will be ‘dressing to impress’ in our favourite and “school-appropriate” clothes in exchange for £2.00 to raise money for Comic Relief, a charity that raises money for people in the UK and around the world.

On Friday the ‘Christ Church Circuit’ will return so please ensure you wear your trainers, or bring them with you for the event. The music will be playing and we will head outdoors in our classes to see how many laps we can do!

Another theme this year is ‘do something funny’ so on Friday lunch time we will be holding a joke telling session. If you would like to come and tell a joke, or two, bring them with you on Friday.

We can’t wait to see what you all choose to wear and seeing if we can raise at least £500 for Comic Relief.

Thank you

Mrs Richardson