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We are ready to welcome everyone back on Monday and are looking forward to seeing you all very much.
Please ensure you have read through the documentation to support a calm and organised start on Monday morning. Most importantly we need to have up to date information regarding contact details and medication your child(ren) may require. Please also be mindful that we may need to contact you in order for your child to be collected at short notice if we have to isolate a bubble or your child is unwell.
World Book day added a final flourish to our lockdown learning provision both at home and in school. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the day; please view the World Book day article below to see the wonderful range of books and activities enjoyed.
The teachers have prepared curriculum newsletters to share with parents/carers outlining the content of the curriculum the children will be learning in school for the remainder of term 4. I will be writing to parents/carers next week about our plans going forward for the Summer terms.
All of the adults in school are looking forward to settling the children back into the routines we had in place in terms 1 and 2 so these will be familiar to the children. Within the school day we have planned time and activities for the children to reconnect as a class, talk about their experiences and feelings looking ahead. We have a fabulous team at Christ Church; the senior leadership team, the class teachers, teaching assistants and our additional non-class-based teachers are ready to support the children and take their learning on whilst supporting their well-being. Our site manager has maintained our school grounds during some particularly muddy months and our office team have ensured we are well resourced and organised. The school is gleaming thanks to our cleaners and our caterers and Shine are raring to go. Our school Governors have maintained their due diligence and provided their voluntary support whilst home working and home learning!
Monday is a significant moment for us moving forward; we need to continue to work together to do it safely. A huge thank you to parents/carers for your efforts to support and engage with our home learning provision and your kind and positive feedback is appreciated.
Spring is shivering, as it’s bitterly cold at the moment please ensure your child has a warm layer under their school clothes and a coat as we will be well ventilated in school and using the outdoors. An early night for us all on Sunday evening maybe needed.
Yesterday was World Book Day and the children at home and in school loved celebrating books and taking part in a range of fantastic activities from art to writing book reviews and live sessions with authors and illustrators. Well done everyone and thank you for the great photographs to show the unique and strange places you chose to read in! Thank you to all the teachers for planning such lovely activities and to you the families for supporting at home.
Don’t forget every year you receive a World Book Day token. This was sent in the newsletter last week as a link to the digital voucher.
Reception
Reception have had a totally ‘pants’ World Book Day!! Not really, they have had a fun day with activities revolving around the book ‘Aliens love Underpants’ by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort.
The children both at home and in school have been designing their own aliens and writing a simple description. They were given the challenge of a scavenger hunt to find different characters in books that they were exploring and creating their own patterned pants – spotty, frilly, stripy or rainbow-coloured!
‘The best part of the story were the aliens using grandpa’s pants as a slide and a trampoline’ – Sam
To start World Book Day, Year 1 listened to the story ‘Luna Loves World Book Day’ by Joseph Coelho. We planned a party for all of our favourite story characters and made characters out of potatoes (like Luna does in the story) and junk modelling. We learned to draw Luna by drawing along with the illustrator, Fiona Lumbers, and some of us turned our pictures into book marks.
Year 2
Many of the Year 2 children chose to dress up for World Book Day and it was great to see them in costume on our Google Meets. The children have also been very inventive when finding unusual spots to do some reading and even reading to siblings and pets! We have been looking closely at the Simon Bertram’s fabulous book Man on the Moon and to help Bob, the Man on the Moon, the children wrote some rules for the tourists visiting him. We have received some super ideas and wonderful writing. Well done Year 2.
Year 3
Year 3 had a great World Book Day. We enjoyed sharing our class story on our google meet and talking about books. We completed a range of activities to celebrate the day.
Year 4
Year 4 had a brilliant World Book Day. We all celebrated our favourite books on google meet and then completed a range of book themed activities. From book reviews and story maps to full blown stories and character inventions inspired by David Walliams' World Worst series, we covered a lot of ground. The children also enjoyed the challenge of reading in unusual places.
WE LOVE READING!
Year 5
Year 5 had a busy World Book Day in school and at home. They thought about their favourite characters from a book or story. They took on the Extreme Reading Challenge and came up with imaginative and creative places to read their books. Check out the photos to see where they've been reading!
Year 6
Year 6 had a busy world book day in school and at home.
We began our day with a fiendish ‘lost in the Library’ maths puzzle where we had to solve clues in order to find numbers to calculate an escape code.
Later on we took part in a webinar by the writer Helen Rutter in which we got lots of tips on comedy writing and character formation-it was wonderful.
Her top tip-don’t get it right-get it written! How true….
The afternoon saw our extreme reading challenge-where could we find that was an extreme place to read our book?
We also shared our thoughts on our favourite books in our Google Meet and designed book tokens for the World Book Day competition.
Finally, we thought about our favourite author and used the chrome books to research them and then made a poster all about them.
Photos from all year groups from World Book Day:
This week reception have enjoyed completing lots of fun activities based on another one of Julia Donaldson’s books ‘Tiddler.’
The children at home have been amazing us with their super phonic skills to tell their own Tiddler tall tales! They enjoyed learning about sea creatures to help them write fact files. We were so impressed with the writing. We cannot wait to continue learning about life under the sea when we are all together next week in school. The children channelled their creativity again this week making fruity sea creatures and creating a pictures of sea creatures. They continued learning about the numbers in the world around them and this week learnt to compare amounts with numbers to 10. Well done reception a fab final week of home learning!
This week Year 1 have been learning more about seasonal changes and the signs of spring. We searched outside to see what we could find and noticed leaf buds on trees, birds singing and blossom on trees. Inspired by all of the beautiful blossom, we painted our own blossom trees in an impressionist style.
In Year 2 we are continuing to really enjoy our Power of Reading book, Man on the Moon, by Simon Bertram. This week the children were asked to imagine they were Bob and to write a letter to one of his friends telling them all about what he gets up to as the Man on the Moon. First, the children planned their letter by drawing parts of Bob’s day that they wanted to include. Miss Delaney and Miss Holland were really impressed by the super writing that was sent in.
Year 3 Cave Paintings, Word Art and Wild Robot
The final week of home learning! Yet again, Year 3 have thrown everything at it. We had a wonderful World Book Day at school and at home whilst weaving in all of our other learning. We are still enjoying our new text 'The Wild Robot' and created some beautiful word art inspired by the vocabulary Peter Brown used. We celebrated World Book Day with many activities, reading in unusual places produced some hilarious photos! Sharing our favourite books and creating book tokens. We are also still enjoying Stone Age projects that children have spent many hours working on throughout home learning. Attached is Jonah's incredible cave paintings and stone age tools he has worked on at home!
We would like to say a HUGE well done to Year 3 for being so engaged throughout this tricky time and endlessly producing such high-quality work. We are very proud of you and cannot wait to get back into the classroom on Monday.
This week, Year 4 have been enjoying a range of activities linked to our Power of Reading book 'The Great Kapok Tree.' They have researched rainforest animals for a fact file, drawn animals with thought bubbles to empathise with their thoughts and feelings about trees being chopped down and discussed reasons for and against deforestation. We have been super impressed with your energy and enthusiasm for learning this week and we can't wait to welcome you all back into school on Monday!
This Week Year 5 have entered the magical world of mythical creatures. After being etymologists on Monday they focused on reading the myth, Theseus and the Minotaur. From this they let their creativity come alive through sketches, descriptive character profiling and creating a set of instructions on how to become a hero like Theseus and capture a mythical creature. Such fantastic and imaginative scenarios Year 5, well done!
Talking of imaginations, Year 5 are already hard at work, finding imaginative and creative ways to read their books today to celebrate World Book Day. Benjy and his sister sat on top of the car!
As well as this, the children particularly enjoyed hearing about each other’s favourite stories for World Book Day. The breadth of authors, genres, fiction and non-fiction really displayed a love of reading by all as well as inspiring each other to try out a new book series or author.
Mia shared a personal achievement this week of making banana and cinnamon muffins – delicious!
This week, Year 6 have been celebrating Saint David’s day by making daffodils at home and at school. Mrs Derrington managed to slip some maths in there as well to test basic arithmetic and there was also the chance to brush up on some basic skills using rulers before our two-week measure topic that starts this week.
There was also the opportunity to cook some delicious Welsh Cakes which didn’t last more than a few minutes in school!
Both teachers and children alike are bursting with excitement for next week (as we're sure parents are too!). Whilst our Home Learning experience has been a brilliant learning journey for everyone involved; up-skilling ourselves technically and academically, you simply cannot replicate face-to-face learning.
Roll on next week!
Magic Gareth
Thank you to everyone who participated in the online Magic Gareth show! The children seemed to have a lot of fun and we raised £250.
Around the World Trail
Stay tuned for more info on our upcoming around the world trail!
Christ Church Worship Assembly
Please see below link to the Church Collective Worship from Pastor Ruthy