Dear Parents and Carers

After what feels like the first week of summer, the children have enjoyed an uninterrupted week of learning and outdoor play. Thank you for ensuring that your children have come to school in the correct uniform and with caps, sun-screen and water bottles to keep them cool.

Value of the Week – Curiosity

In our whole school collective worship this week, we focused on the value of curiosity and learning about the amazing world around us. Looking at the awe and wonder of the natural world and how we can find out the answers to our ‘curious questions’ helped the children to think about the importance and value of learning, questioning and sharing our knowledge.

All Aboard

Our year 6 children took a trip on the train from Clifton to Temple Meads to learn about the design of the station. This is part of an exciting competition they are taking part in called ‘Look, Draw, Build’ – an architectural design focus. The children had a fantastic (and hot) morning together; thank you to our wonderful staff and parents for making the visit possible.

Similarly, our youngest Reception children took part in a fantastic train workshop, learning all about train safety, how to travel, and train facts as part of their transport topic. The children are really enjoying the topic and are building their knowledge every day.

Sports Stars

Our budding hockey stars took part in an inter-school challenge on Thursday at Merchants Academy. We took an A and B team with seven players in each. The children all played exceptionally well and we are proud of their performance and sportsmanship.

Power of Reading

As part of our continued efforts to encourage, teach and support reading for all children, we have recently purchased some high-quality books, texts that have been widely recognised and celebrated. We continue to add to our quality library of books to ensure that we support the different learning objectives from our Literacy focus to our key pastoral messages.

Play Equipment

Thank you for your generous and kind gifts in response to our request for specific play equipment for our playground. Alongside the donation from our fabulous PTA who are funding a reading shed and other storage we will be able to give the children hours of fun during playtimes. We will report to you again when everything is in place.

Our Amazon Wishlist is still active should you wish to contribute a donation to the school.

Amazon Wish List

Place Planning

We are always thrilled to welcome new children to Christ Church School and have been fortunate to have seen many children and their families join the school throughout the year. Sadly, we also lose a number of children for various reasons such as moving away, relocating abroad and children moving to the independent sector. As we work to carefully manage our year group and class numbers we have some children on a waiting list and also are approaching the time of year where we begin to make decisions on how we structure the school. Therefore, we would be very grateful if you would inform us as soon as possible if you are thinking of a move to a new school for any reason, especially to a local independent school.

Term Dates for 2025–2026

We have now shared with you the term dates for the next academic year including the INSET and Academy days. As we all know, attendance at school is both mandatory and crucial to every child’s education and we would respectfully encourage families to avoid at all costs, booking holidays during term time as this is unauthorised and may result in a penalty administered by the Local Authority.

I wish you all a wonderful Bank Holiday weekend and look forward to our return on Tuesday 6^th May.

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

INSET AND ACADEMY DAYS FOR NEXT ACADEMIC YEAR

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

If you are thinking of signing up please can you do so soon so we can get an idea of numbers.

This event is a fabulous social opportunity too! You can come as a team of 8, or join a team on the night.

Book your tickets here:

https://buytickets.at/christchurchcofeprimaryschoolpta/1627867

The event is held at school - doors open at 7pm and the quiz will start at 8pm.

PTA 2nd Hand Uniform Sale - Fri 9th May, 9-10am @ Mary's Living and Giving on Regent Street in Clifton.

Please drop any second hand uniform off to the drop-off point in the far end of the car park before 9am on Fri 9th May, thank you 

We have had another busy week in Reception. We started the week with our 3rd yoga session with Carolyn. We spent time being calm and still and learning some new yoga poses. We read ‘The Naughty Bus’ by Jan and Jerry Oake, a book about a cheeky London bus that went on an adventure. We enjoyed talking about the illustrations and using the book to make predictions about what the bus might do next. One of our favourite pages was when the bus fell into the pond! In Literacy we used the illustrations from the book to write simple sentences, ensuring we remembered our finger spaces, capital letters and full stops.

In maths we have continued learning about numbers beyond 10. We have been really focusing on the tens and ones in teen numbers, using Numicon tiles, threading beads and using unfix cubes to make towers of ten and ones. We have been counting to 20 and beyond. We had great fun learning to ping pong count in pairs to 20. Please help us to practise counting forward and backwards to and from 20 as this can be a little tricky in the beginning!

On Thursday, Ellie came in to talk to both classes about keeping safe on and around trains! This linked perfectly with our classroom learning about different forms of transport – including trains from the past and present! In the classroom we also talked about how to be a safe pedestrian when out and about and did some role play on how to cross the road safely and sensibly.

We have been drawing, discussing, ordering, building, observing and enjoying old and new forms of transport. This has really brought out our creative, communicative and observation skills as well as our ability to work as part of a pair, in a group or share information to the class.

If you have not had a chance to come in and be a ‘Mystery Reader’ for the class, please talk to your child’s teacher or send an email via the school office. T6 signing up sheet will be available outside the classroom at drop off time very soon but we can always be flexible for this lovely experience to happen as the children really enjoy it!  

We have had a great week in Reception and made all the adults very proud.

This term, Year 1 are learning all about life in Victorian England in our history lessons. To kick off the topic, we explored the history of our own school. We examined historical photographs and discovered that our school used to be based in the library building!

We then looked at a selection of school photos ranging from the present day to over one hundred years ago. The children worked together to put the pictures in chronological order, helping them understand how things have changed over time.

In Art, we are focusing on the work of William Morris. We looked at a range of his beautiful prints and then created our own careful sketches inspired by The Strawberry Thief and Pomegranates. The children showed great attention to detail and enjoyed learning about his intricate designs.

This week year 2 have been busy working on our knowledge of fractions. We have been focusing on halves, quarters and thirds of both shapes and amounts. We have been using manipulatives to help with the division of numbers to find the fraction.

In other news, we have been busy practicing our songs for next weeks concert at the Bristol Beacon!

In our history lesson we learnt about Florence Nightingale and how she impacted the nursing profession for the better.

Year 3 have thoroughly enjoyed exploring the world of The Wild Robot! This imaginative and heartwarming story captured our curiosity and inspired some fantastic learning. In literacy, the children wrote gripping newspaper reports about the dramatic fire scene—showcasing their storytelling and reporting skills.

We also brought our creativity to life through robot art, embossing our own robot designs into foil to create stunning metallic masterpieces.

As a treat for all their hard work, Year 3 enjoyed watching the film adaptation of The Wild Robot, bringing the story to life in a whole new way. It’s been an exciting and inspiring journey, and we’re so proud of all the effort and imagination Year 3 have shown!

This week, Year 4 have dived into an exciting new maths unit all about money. We’ve been busy learning how to convert between pounds and pence, using our knowledge of place value to help us solve problems and work out different totals.

In history, we launched our new topic by exploring the famous and inspirational people featured on British bank notes. The class has had a fantastic time identifying the various notes, looking closely at their features, and learning about the incredible contributions made by the individuals shown on them.

Meanwhile, in literacy, we’ve been drawing inspiration from the thrilling Spy Fox story to begin planning our own newspaper articles. The children have come up with some incredibly creative headlines, using clever puns and alliteration to grab attention. They’ve also written fantastic introductions using the 5 Ws—who, what, when, where and why—to make sure their readers are fully informed from the very first sentence. It’s been a week full of creativity, curiosity, and critical thinking across all subjects!

This week, Year 5 have been captivated by poems. They were inspired by Kit Wright’s “The Magic Box” poetry, which enabled them to use his model and create their own versions of The Magic Box poem. They used powerful, descriptive vocabulary to describe what they would put in the box and also thought about what they would fashion their box from. Brian Moses then inspired the children to perform some poetry, such as Walking With My Iguana and The Cakes In The Staffroom. The children did a fantastic job focussing on intonation and expression as they performed to their peers.

Meanwhile, in Geography, the children have been learning about National Parks as breathing spaces. They spent the early part of the week using their map skills, locating all of the UK’s national parks, naming them and labelling them. They went on to study the impact of tourism on the Brecon Beacons and finished the week comparing and contrasting Everglades National Park in the USA with Dartmoor in SW England.

Year 6 had an exciting start to the Inter-schools Look Draw Build Project with an inspiring train trip from Clifton Down to Bristol Temple Meads. Huge thanks to Faye from Severnside CRP and Dan, the Senior Accessibility Mentor at GWR, for making this trip possible. The journey itself was a highlight. At Bristol Temple Meads, we explored the fascinating world of railway history and train station architecture. Dan guided us through the station and helped us think critically about how train stations can be more sustainable and accessible for everyone.

Back at school, our learning continued as we discussed the essential elements of a train station. We thought carefully about safety, sustainability, and accessibility in public spaces. Inspired by our trip, each pupil drew their own unique design for an improved train station. We then worked in teams of three to collaborate on sketching a shared concept. The creativity and thoughtfulness in the 2D designs were very impressive—we may have some future architects among us!

Next week, we’ll be welcoming a team of professional architects into school to help us transform our sketches into 3D models. Each group will use the same set of materials, ensuring a fair and exciting challenge across all of the nine schools participating. One model from our class will be selected to enter the inter-school competition. The top three models from across all schools will be showcased at a public exhibition at Cabot Circus on Saturday 7th June. This is an incredible opportunity!

Year 6 love a challenge, and they’ve thrown themselves into this project with great enthusiasm. We are so proud of their hard work and collaboration. We can’t wait to see their final designs come to life.

Our Year 5 hockey team showed incredible determination and teamwork at this week's tournament. Tackling hard and pushing through every challenge, they played with heart, skill, and spirit—earning a well-deserved Gold medal!

A phenomenal performance from every player—we’re so proud of you all!