Abbey House museum
We have had a fantastic time at Abbey House museum today. All of our learning links with our current History topic.
Vikings: primary and secondary sources
In this week’s history learning, we learnt about primary and secondary sources of historical evidence and how to judge their reliability when learning about the past.
primary source: a source of information created at the time (artefacts, newspaper articles)
secondary source: a source of information created after the event (drawings, reconstructions)
Help at home: See if your child can tell you what happened at Lindisfarne in 793AD.
3,4 C Class News
This week, we have had an informative visit from Hazel at d:side about the dangers of smoking.
In History, we have learned about when the Romans invaded Britain and why they invaded. Challenge your child to explain why.
In Reading, we have completed some drama to explore the feelings of different characters, after reading an extract taken from Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach.
Help at home by regularly reading and supporting your child to access Numbots and TT Rock Stars.
Living and Learning – Drugs, alcohol and tobacco
Across all classes in Year 3,4, we have been learning about drugs, alcohol and tobacco. The definition we have learnt is that a drug is a substance that changes the way the body or mind works.
We had a visit from local charity D:Side where we learnt about the dangers of smoking and a huge variety of facts. These included there being 4000 chemicals in a cigarette. The children listened really well and made some thoughtful contributions.
Help at home by asking your child which facts they can remember. 
Class novel : The Bog Baby
As our class novel, and focus book for reading and writing learning, we have been reading The Bog Baby by Jeanne Willis.
It is a lovely story and has enabled us to infer the characters’ feelings from the pictures and text. We have also talked about wild animals and nature.
We have used extracts to work on our reading fluency, identify conjunctions and use our phonics to spell words. The children have also written some sentences using conjunctions too.
Help at home by talking about The Bog Baby story. What would you do if you found a beautiful little creature? There is a video version here, read by the author. (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.)
Living and Learning – Dside visit
This week we had a visitor in our school from D:side. D:side often visit our school to talk to us about a number of things, such as how we can be healthy. This week, D:side spoke to us about how to look after our bodies.
Science – animals
This half term in KS1, we are learning about animals in Science. We started the topic last week by discussing what a mammal is.
‘A mammal is an animal that has fur or hair and gives birth to live offspring.’
Examples of mammals include: dogs, cats, elephants, whales and bears.
This week we have been learning about fish and birds. We labelled the features of both types of animal so that we know how to identify them. We also know what these features are for.
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”Most birds have wings to fly, but not all birds can fly, like penguins.’ (2C)
” Fish have fins and a tail to help them swim in water” (1A)
Living and learning: I know that some drugs can be harmful.
We were lucky enough to have D:side visiting us this week. The children got to learn about the different types of drugs including legal, illegal and medical – they learnt about the impact these have on our bodies. Caffeine was even talked about and that this is in the energy drinks that children often consume. They also contain a huge amount of sugar. Smoking and vapes were identified as very harmful and the children now understand the harmful chemicals that are in just one cigarette – there are 4,000.
This was an incredibly informative session and the children engaged brilliantly. They recalled previous learning well and asked some great questions to deepen their knowledge. Some children even applied their learning about peer pressure from our living and learning lesson last week.
Living and Learning: drug education
In this week’s and last week’s Living and Learning sessions, we have been learning about drugs.
We’ve learnt the difference between medical and non medical drugs. Within non-medical drugs, we also learnt about legal and illegal drugs.
A drug is a substance that changes the way the body or the mind works.
We learnt that medicines are drugs that can be prescribed and given to us to help us feel better – for example, Calpol, which contains paracetamol.
We’ve also learnt about being safe and only using the specified amount of a medicine and only when supervised by a trusted adult.
This week, we had a visitor from d:side and we learnt more about legal, non-medical drugs such as nicotine, alcohol and caffeine.
Did you know that an energy drink such as Monster contains around four times as much caffeine than a single shot of espresso? It also contains the equivalent of 13 teaspoons of sugar!
Help at home: See if your child can remember how to safely use medicine.
Well done, Y5 & 6!
Welcome to Nursery – Yellow Group
We enjoyed meeting all of our new children and families at their home visits and we’re looking forward to getting to know you more next week.
Here is a reminder of some of the important information that we discussed during the home visit.
- Your child will need a drawstring bag with a full change of clothes. Please make sure that you write their NAME in everything.
- We play outside in all weathers so a warm, waterproof coat is essential. Please also send gloves and a hat during winter. Children need a pair of wellies at Nursery. Remember to name their coat and wellies!
- Please put your child’s water bottle in the yellow basket in the entrance. You’ll need to collect it at the end of their session each day. Again, please remember to write their name clearly on the bottle.
Registration and end of day
- Nursery opens at 9am and we close registration at 9:10am. If you arrive after this time, please go to the main office.
- When you come into Nursery (main entrance via the path from Morwick Grove) you’ll be asked who is going to collect your child and for their lunch option.
- If you change who is collecting your child, please inform the office. If we haven’t met somebody before, we will ask for your password.
- Once you’ve put your child’s belongings on their peg, you’re welcome to settle them somewhere to play before you say goodbye.
- Nursery closes at 3pm but you can collect your child from 2:50pm onwards. Please make sure you arrive promptly and collect your child on time.
- At the end of the session, parents and carers are able to come into Nursery to collect your child’s belongings and check their folder for artwork.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask a member of Nursery staff. We look forward to seeing you next week!