It’s been a wonderful week at Christ Church School, as you can see in this newsletter we have been out and about amongst the newly budding daffodils and observing the birds in our grounds, welcoming visitors to lead workshops and telling stories to each other. 

Next week we will be participating in Mental health week activities and safer internet activities. We will tell you more on Monday including how you can get involved.

Jane and Tim are returning to lead Forest school activities with Years 4 and 5 on Friday and Year 3 have a Stone Age workshop on Thursday. On Tuesday Year 6 are walking to the Mshed for a workshop about the cranes and Year 2 will be going to perform at the Dance festival on Thursday. There is a lot to look forward to.

    

Our Agents of Change have returned with Episode 1 of their Newscast, which brings together all the wonderful things we are doing here at Christ Church School to promote a Healthy School : Healthy Planet. This week's episode focused on food waste, with our Year 5 Eco Councillors.

https://youtu.be/eo795yE-1us

On Thursday 3rd March we will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of World Book Day. We will be celebrating a range of fiction and non-fiction books,  with a whole school focus on vocabulary.  

Each year group has chosen some books to share and we invite all the children to dress up as a person, character or word linked to their year group theme.  

The themes across the school are:

• Reception - People who help us
• Year 1 - The natural world
• Year 2 - Explorers 
• Year 3 - Science 
• Year 4 - History
• Year 5 - Geography and art 
• Year 6 - Music and sport  

On Google classroom we have added all the information about the theme and inspiration for dressing up.  This doesn't need to be a whole costume; it could be a prop but we would like every child to display their word (with their definition) on their costume using a label or sticker.  

As part of our World Book Day celebrations we will be including lots of reading for pleasure opportunities and celebrating 25 years of reading for all. 

Thank you for your support.

Miss Cator and Mrs Richardson 

Please check out our second edition to the Christ Church Reading Newsletter. At the beginning of every month, teachers will share their top fiction and non-fiction books to celebrate reading for pleasure. Within each newsletter, there is a comprehension focus with some top tips that you can work with on throughout the month. There will also be at least one copy of the books in the school or class library, so if your child would like to borrow or read the book in school, please make sure they ask their class teacher. In addition, if your child has an amazing book recommendation, please encourage them to bring it in to share it with their class teacher and peers! 

https://whiterosemaths.com/resources/1-minute-maths

This week Reception took part in 'The Big Bird Watch'.  We spotted magpies, crows and a robin in our playground then enjoyed learning all about British garden birds. We continued developing our observational skills by creating beautiful oil pastel drawings of a variety of birds.  

We have also loved learning about the Lunar New Year. We created decorations, practised using chop sticks and were even treated to a dragon dance! We learnt that this year will be 'The Year of the Tiger' which also inspired us to read 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea' by Judith Kerr. 

This week in Science Year 1 have been learning all about animal groups. We learned about the different characteristics of mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and amphibians and wrote reports to show off our knowledge. Year 1 also enjoyed learning a bit more about British birds in preparation for the Big Garden Birdwatch. Some of us painted our own bird identification guides and we listened to a variety of bird songs before heading out to the outdoor classroom to count and tally how many of each species we could find.

Year 2 have enjoyed another busy week sharing and dividing in maths, practising their dance routines and perfecting their handwriting. To celebrate Storytelling Week, Year 2 have rehearsed The Magic Paintbrush and performed it in small groups. Both classes have been celebrating a love of reading and have enjoyed listening to more chapter books and using their visualisation strategy to create images in their minds- you could've heard a pin drop when our teacher read George's Marvellous Medicine! 

This week we have been looking at comprehension strategies, and with the help of the VIPRS dogs we've looked at the protagonist Anna Hibiscus and inferred how she is feeling from a close reading of the text. Year 2 have been writing postcards using the first-person pronoun and expanded noun phrases. Both teachers have been very impressed with their effort. The sunshine also made an appearance for Year 2 to do some bird spotting! 

Perhaps the highlight of the week has been a visit from Iris who came from the Bristol & West Progressive Jewish Congregation to discuss Judaism. The children were captivated and asked very insightful questions. Hungry bellies were relieved with some of Iris' handmade Challah, which was so delicious children were asking for thirds! Iris has kindly sent the recipe to us and it will be sent home to make if you wish. 

Well, we really have squeezed in SO much this week. Money, Science, Computing, Sewing and Story Telling to name a few! The children have absolutely loved our coding topic this week. We have used the program ’Scratch’ to understand algorithms, coding, loops and creating animations. As you can imagine, the children were often more knowledgeable than the teachers. We also moved onto our new science topic of ‘rocks’. The children thoroughly enjoyed studying fossils and exploring the process in which they are formed. The learning got slightly messier when we explored a variety of soil samples and the children were literally covered in mud! Finally, the school has been celebrating story telling week this week. In year 3 we re-told the famous ‘Hare and the tortoise’ with many actions. As well as enjoying Michael Rosen’s re-telling of ‘Chocolate cake’ and Tony Williams ‘The gingerbread man’. Phew, time for a rest before starting up again next week!

Year 4 have been storytelling superstars this week! We've all learnt to retell the Russian tale 'Baba Yaga's Black Geese' in our own words and it's been great hearing each other's retelling. We've also learnt that there's a storyteller in all of us! 

Whizz! Bang! Pop! The Year 4 Nutty scientists have been let loose this week. We've been investigating the weight of carbon dioxide in fizzy drinks and also how fast chocolate (when solid) changes to liquid when it is warmed. We conducted a range of experiments and attempted to make them as fair as possible, while practicing the scientific skills of predicting, evaluating and data collection. We made sure to record our experiments accurately and to discuss whether or not the test was fair and how it could have been improved. 

On Tuesday we tiptoed into the Woodland Area to do a spot of bird watching. We were lucky enough to spot a variety of different bird types: woodpigeons, starlings, blackbirds, house sparrows, chaffinches, and a blue tit.

Another highlight of the week was our RE workshop; Lydia and Sharon from Encounter Christianity came in to help us answer our focus question, ‘If God is everywhere, why go to a place of worship?’ We took part in five interactive tasks such as sorting Bible verses and choosing from a selection of potential applicants who would be best placed to be a vicar.  Emilia said, “The workshop was fun and interesting”. Imogen said, “We got to learn lots of things that we didn’t already know.”

For National Storytelling week we enjoyed listening to and retelling of Beowulf. We, first of all, heard the story, then as a class, we mapped out the events, then we practised the story in small groups. When learned we enjoyed adding in drama. Our finished retelling was a joy to listen to.

Another Thursday … another David Hockney art lesson. This week we focussed on his use of colour and texture in more depth, continuing to look specifically at his landscapes. We were each given a segment of one of his landscapes and an A3 piece of cartridge paper. We then had to observe our segment accurately and recreate it as closely as we could. Using poster paint we took time to mix the right colours. Also, as we painted we observed how the artist had created certain effects (e.g. paths, logs, bushes, fields) and tried to mimic this in our own paintings. At the end of the session, we then put our pieces together to form a complete painting. We all agreed our completed paintings look fantastic. We now need to display them somewhere in school!

Year 6 had a special visitor to share their learning. Hettie and Sophie came to show us Hettie’s mountain that she has made as part of her learning about Africa. Year 6 are considering ‘Why are Mountains Important?’ so being able to share their knowledge with Year 1 was brilliant.

Year 6 have been getting stuck into meteorological data this week as they consider the challenges of climate in the Cambrian mountains from the point of view of Farmer Dereck. They showed perseverance in the pursuit of comparative data and skilfully worked out averages and plotted temperature and rainfall on graphs.

Y6 also had a lovely afternoon with their Reception buddies this week. They visited the school library together and shared books with one another.

WOW! WOW! WOW! What an incredible way to kick off the Year 5 & 6 girls' football tournament. 

Christ Church girls had a truly terrific evening at Imperial Sports Ground on Thursday. From five games, the inspirational team managed four wins and one draw. Not only was their behavior extemporary, but the girls also showed courage, resilience, determination, and brilliant team work to top their group and establish themselves as the team to beat!  

We are incredibly proud of you girls!

PTA Facebook group
The PTA now has a Facebook page where you can keep informed of all upcoming events. Don't hesitate to join:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/888300882075291/?ref=share 

Dates for your diaries - up and coming events:

• Quiz Night Friday (adults) Friday 18th March
• School Disco (children) Friday 1st April
• Mile of Pennies Friday 20th May
• CampFest 9th & 10th July