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We gathered for a whole school assembly on Thursday to reflect upon the events of the week and to think about why school will be closed on Monday for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. The children shared their thoughts about the life of the Queen; ‘She was kind and cared for us all,’ ‘on 5th June we celebrated her Platinum Jubilee, she was Queen for 70 years and she lived through the second world war.’ We reflected upon how you feel when someone dies and the purpose of a funeral and what we might see on the television on Monday if we chose to watch.
School is closed on Monday 19th September, for the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
Thank you to the Y6 and Y2 parents/carers who joined the year group welcome meetings this week. If you were unable to attend, the presentations will be sent out via SZapp after the meeting.
School snacks
Please remember NO NUTS, we have children in school with allergies to nuts. Healthy snacks include; fruit, rice cakes.
Tulip photography took individual/sibling photographs on Thursday. Details of how to purchase them, should you wish to, are in the children’s bags.
Dates (please also see dates on szapp school calendar tile):
September
20th Y5/6 Tri Golf, invite only
24th PTA Fun run 10 -12 Clifton College New Fields
26th Y5/6 Rugby League
29th Year 3 to the museum for workshop
October
3rd&10th Y5/6 Rugby league
8th Tour for Reception children starting school September 2023
12th&13th Parent/Carer meetings with class teachers-appointment booking information to follow
20th 10am Whole School Harvest celebration at Church, all welcome to join us.
Friday 21st Last day of term, term 2 starts Monday 31st October.
What a fantastic second week in Reception! The children are settling into their new routines and have loved exploring the outside area, our classrooms and getting to know each other. We have thought about starting school and read ‘The Colour Monster’ and ‘The Colour Monster goes to School’ by Anna Llenas, inspiring lots of important conversations about how we have been feeling. We have also read ‘Kind’ by Axel Scheffler and ‘All Are Welcome Here’ by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanna Kaufman which have helped us to think out our school value of kindness. Reception have also been practising their counting skills to see how many children are here each day. We ended the week by all coming together and sharing our first school lunch in the hall. Well done Reception!
Year 1 Somebody Swallowed Stanley
Year 1 have had a fantastic week exploring our Under the Sea topic with our new story Somebody Swallowed Stanley by Sarah Roberts. The story follows a plastic bag, Stanley, who is swept into the sea and mistaken for a jellyfish. In Literacy, we role played being Stanley on his journey through the ocean and then wrote thought bubbles for the character. In PSHE, we have been learning all about a growth mindset. We read the story ‘The Dot’ by Peter H Reynolds and discussed the mindset of the characters in the story before creating animal pictures that all started from a dot.
This week Year 2 have continued to revise tens and ones using place value charts, base ten and even chalk in the playground! They’ve worked hard in English to identify interesting adjectives based on our book ‘One Night Far From Here’, in preparation for their expanded noun phrases next week. In PSHE, Year 2 showed their peers respectful listening as we talked about our hopes and fears for the year and coping mechanisms for different emotions.
In art this term our learning is based on our animal kingdom. This week in art we used oil pastels, our focus was on how to talk about what can be seen before starting and during the drawing process. We learned how to hold oil pastels correctly, produce a range of marks made, and control pressure to make intentional light and dark marks.
This week in year 3, we were very excited to enter the whole of Ancient Egypt. Our first History topic is full of wonders, facts and revelations and the children are already so excited by it. To start understanding the Ancient Egyptian civilisation, we explored the importance of the River Nile. To do this we created out own rivers with crops and soil. We then (as would have happened annually 7000 years ago) flooded them! We are eagerly awaiting whether this method of crop growing will still work and will reveal our results next week.
We have continued our place value learning and are so impressed with the children’s existing knowledge and want to know more. Finally we rounded off the week by creating our own onomatopoeia poems based around our book ‘Into the Forest’. The children came up with some powerful vocabulary and enjoyed performing some to the other class.
In Art this term, Year 4 will be learning about the technique of batik and will use washable glue to create a rainforest-inspired piece of art. We have been collecting ideas in our sketchbook by looking at the artwork of Henri Rousseau. We have looked at several of Rosseau’s paintings, discussed their content, and learned more about his life.
In Music, we have been learning about motifs and composing our own using xylophones. We have also had a go at transposing our motifs to create a more varied composition. All children have had the opportunity to perform their motif in front of the class and were able to demonstrate amazing listening skills.
Year 5 has had a fantastic week. In Science lessons, we have been busy making mobiles of the solar system. Creating these not only helped us think about the size and diameter of each planet, but colouring and decorating our mobile planets was a great chance to learn about the visible surface of each member of the Solar System. We are also now really familiar with the mnemonic to remember the order of the planets – My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming planets!
As our French unit is also Space, not only have we discussed this mnemonic but we have also found out a French mnemonic too. Mon Vaisseau te mème jusque sur une nouvelle planète (My ship takes you to a new planet). Mercure, Vènus, Terre, Mars, Jupiter, Saturne, Uranus, Neptune, Pluton. In French we have been creating sentences and learning how to compare two objects using more than or less than. In Art lessons, our focus is ‘People in Action’ we have been practicing gesture drawing, we drew our partners in various action poses using quick free strokes with great results.
This week we have been learning about Brute Force Hacking in our Computing lessons. We tried to crack passwords using trial and error but then found out that computers were much quicker than humans! We used Scratch to programme a code breaker and timed how long it took to crack the code. We learnt that the longer the password / code, the longer it took to crack it which means that we should use long passwords to protect our data online.
The children worked in pairs to solve the clues, and reveal the treasure at the end of the puzzle. Well done Year 6 – these code-breaking skills will definitely come in useful in our upcoming WW2 project!
PTA Fun Run Saturday 24th September, New Fields, Clifton College
The event will be from 10am to 12pm at Clifton College New Fields.
This is open to all Christ Church pupils and siblings who register, via the link below. Fancy dress is optional. Running, walking, hopping...you decide!
All Children receive a medal after competing! Prizes for most sponsorship raised and best dressed!
All welcome to come and support the children!
Please use this form to sign up: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfw_pPR2OtcJqzunNXtsK12Ufy9xPyOUzUJvOgDxt5OM4vOnw/viewform
PTA Social - 28th September 7.30pm at school
All parents and carers welcome!
PTA meetings are a great opportunity to find out more about the PTA and to meet other parents for new starters. If you already know what we do, come along to have a catch up with friends. There will be a few formalities to cover as well. We will be looking at the year ahead and discussing events - any new and creative ideas are most welcome.
Drinks and nibbles will be provided, so please come along. We look forward to seeing you there!
PTA Contact Information
With a new school year we are updating our contact information for our PTA communications. Please provide your information, even if you think we already have it, via the link below:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxfnV-u2IReotSySk2AmlmGKpuX0oWx0MMD08L1EM0ryeoVw/viewform
PTA Events - some dates for your diaries
Fun Run - 24th September
PTA meeting at school - 28th September
Christmas Fair - 27th November
Wreath making - Date TBA
Disco - Date TBA
Campfest - 7-9th July