Living & Learning: I recognise that mental health is important
Over the last three weeks, year 5 and 6 have been discussing mental health. We’ve looked at ways to engage in self care techniques. We discussed who we could speak to if we have concerns.
Help at home: discuss the idea of having a trusted adult that your child can talk to either at home or in school.
Thank you!
We have been absolutely overwhelmed by your generosity. At the recent Christmas productions, we collected for our school charity, Cancer Research UK. You didn’t let us down and you managed to raise an amazing £266.91.
Thank you so much.
Class 5/6A News
This time next week we will have wrapped up our first term of the year! Our pupils and staff are working flat-out at the moment, having survived test week, and the end is in sight. Let’s see what we have been getting up to this week.
Maths, Reading, Grammar and Spelling tests have been on the agenda for our Year 5 pupils this week, whilst our Year 6 pupils have tackled Maths and English SATS papers. We are proud of how our students have adapted to test week and the effort they have put in. Learning Updates will be sent home with pupils on Wednesday. These will provide an update on your pupils attainment, progress and attitude to learning during the first term, with targets on how you can help support your child’s learning at home.
Whilst we have the Year 5/6 Christmas party to look forward to on Wednesday, it will be business as usual next week in terms of learning. Pupils have today been issued Book Club homework as well as a list of spellings and times tables ahead of our regular tests on a Friday morning.
Help at home: Help your child with their spelling practice by testing them daily on this week’s words in the car, around the dinner table or on the journey to school. Practising everyday can make a big impact on a child’s retention of these spellings.
A slightly shorter Class News this week (I’ve been out of school for a couple of days due to illness), but I promise to make up for it with a bumper post next week. Just time for our certificate winners:
Certificate winners:
Living and Learning – Ella. Provided some excellent ideas on how we can use self-care to help protect our own mental health.
Great learning – Amelie. Pushing herself in every subject, particularly in Maths, to be the best version of herself.
P.E – Arthur. A ‘pocket rocket’ who has dazzled on the football pitch this week.
Peer recognition – Luella. A real role model for learning and friendship. Never without a smile on her face. Freya – providing a shoulder to cry on and support for a classmate who was in need.
Snowman at Sunset
Thank you to everyone that was able to watch our performance of ‘Snowman at Sunset’. We’re really proud of the children ; it’s quite daunting standing on stage in front of a hall full of people and we thought that they did brilliantly. We hope you enjoyed the songs about building snowmen and snowflakes falling and that it left you feeling in a festive mood. Super singing Nursery, well done!
In Nursery, we’ve been learning about the Nativity story, making Christmas lists, building sleighs, drawing maps for Santa and decorating the trees outside.
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We’re looking forward to our final week of the term and have lots of Christmas themed learning planned. Don’t forget it’s our Nursery party on Monday afternoon and you are also invited to join us for one of our ‘stay and decorate’ sessions where you can read your child’s Learning Journey and enjoy making some Christmas crafts together. Please see the Christmas letter or reminder letter for more details.
A donation pot for your £1 contribution towards our party costs will be outside Nursery this week. Thank you to everyone that has contributed already.
The Jolly Christmas Postman
This week in literacy we have been reading the book ‘The Jolly Christmas Postman by Allan Ahlberg and Janet Ahlberg. We were excited to see all the letters, games and puzzles in the book.
The children were keen to write their own letters.
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off auto play – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.
Every week, we look at a new adventurous word. We call this our ‘word of the week’. This week our word of the week was ‘jolly’. We looked at the definition – ‘happy and cheerful’, drew pictures and used the word jolly in our everyday speech.
I feel jolly when I go the park.
Christmas is a jolly day.
I felt jolly at my party.
Maths – 3d shapes
This week, we have been naming and recognising 3d shapes.
The children enjoyed exploring different shaped Christmas presents and finding 3d shapes in our classroom. We even had a go at making 3d shapes, using playdough.
Ask your child to find 3d shapes in and around the house. Can they name each one?
Phonics
This week, the children haven’t learnt any new phonemes. It has been our ‘review week’ where we review all the phonemes we have learnt so far.
Can your child read the following words?
quick
thank
wing
them
chick
shells
Can your child read these captions?
a red sock
jam on a hen
Poetry Picnic
Each week, we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. This week’s poem is ‘Who Has Seen the Wind’.
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this weeks poem? We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm. Can your child tell you if this week’s poem is fast or slow?
Click here to watch our Poetry Picnic.
In provision…
Reminders
Swimming/Football
There will be no swimming 14 Dec
Spring 1 – swimming
Rainbow Class- 4 Jan, 18 Jan, 1 Feb
Sunshine Class- 11 Jan, 25 Jan, 8 Feb
When your child is not swimming, they will be taking part in Foot Tech Football sessions. Please ensure your child comes in PE kit every Wednesday, including suitable trainers.
Learning Journey Drop in
- Monday 12.12.22, 9.00-9.30am
- Tuesday 13.12.22, 9.00-9.30am
- Thursday 15.12.22, 3.30-4.00pm
An invitation for parents/carers to come into the classroom and take a look at your child’s learning journey.
Reception Christmas Party day. 16.12.22
Your child can come to school in party clothes on this day with their own party snack.
3,4 A Class News
In Writing this week, we’ve continued looking at features of a promotion such as alliteration, questions and commands. We’ve started to plan our own around the artwork we’ve been creating in Topic and will be writing these next week.
In Science, we’ve continued our learning about sound and today enjoyed a talk from a sound technician who works in theatres. The children listened really well and had lots of good questions for him.
We’ve also been looking at some more different styles of architecture and in particular, focusing on the architect Zaha Hadid who designed one of the stadiums in the current Men’s World Cup. Many of us are very excited about the football! Well done 3,4 A on all your super learning this week.
Talk to a scientist
Today, we engaged in a wonderful Zoom talk with ecologist Tim Body.
The children were really fascinated about bats so we researched their sounds and species here. Why not listen and read with your child?
Later in the afternoon, we also had a chance to join with STEM science to learn about Symmetry in Snowflakes. Watch this space to see our learning …
Printing masterpieces
We are sadly coming to the end of our Art topic and we have spent the week finalising our prints and adding the last final touches. The children were working on overlaying their prints with different colours or adding detail to their designs. The children really thought carefully about their colour choices, choosing complementary colours or vivid contrasting ones.
Some children took their designing skills further and designed a new printing tile – still inspired by nature. They created new designs of different sizes and their aim was to try and create their own repetitive patterns, very much like wallpaper. They considered colours carefully again. Here are some fabulous pictures of their finished pieces. Parents, you can breathe a sigh of relief as hopefully they won’t be coming home with much paint on them next week!
3,4B: Book Club
Every week, we enjoy our ‘Book Club’ session. This is an opportunity for us to share what we’ve been reading at home, celebrate this and explore different books / authors.
This half-term, we’re reading books as part of a group. This means we can all discuss the same book. We enjoy this and get a lot from having a shared experience of reading.
In our ‘Book Club’ session, we discuss what we’ve been reading…
And celebrate the great work we’ve done in our reading journals…
Help at home by…
- asking your child about what they’re reading
- reading every day with your child
- being a reading role model yourself
- encouraging your child to engage with their reading record
We know it’s busy at home. But, equally, we know how important reading at home is!
Science – tyres, air and bouncing!
We have been learning about John Dunlop and his invention of the pneumatic tyre. He wanted to make wheels bouncy and therefore more comfortable to travel with. We tested 4 different balls for their bounciness : a yellow tennis ball, a wool pom-pom, a solid hockey ball and a green plastic football. We made the comparative test fair by rolling the balls from the same place down a ramp. We measured how far the ball bounced back from a table.
Most us of predicted that the tennis ball would bounce the furthest.
The tennis ball and football bounced back from the table but the football bounced the furthest.
The solid hockey ball hit the table and stopped. It didn’t bounce at all.
The pom-pom didn’t reach to table to bounce at all!
We thought that air inside and the stretchy plastic material of the football made it the bounciest.