School Journalist: A Day in the Life of Miss Hague

At the start of the day, Miss Hague usually arrives in school at 7:30 then checks if staff are in and catches up with emails for the first hour between 7:30 – 8:30. She opens the gate at 8:35 and closes the gate at 8:55. Miss Hague will then come in and have meetings with parents and other people who work with schools to support children.

Did you know….
Miss Hague is also the SENCO. This means she is the Special
Educational Needs Coordinator for our school.

At 12:00, Miss Hague will work with children individually. Then, at 12:15 she helps supervise our lunchtime. Every Friday, children do litter picking for their amazing jobs with Miss Hague.

In the afternoon, Miss Hague will meet with children, have more meetings, visit classrooms and do lots of work on her laptop. An assembly is always provided on a Monday. After her busy day, she opens the gates at 3:05, unless it is raining and then she asks Mr Catherall to do it! But if she doesn’t go out she does more work on the laptop.

There is always going to be something different or unexpected almost everyday. Sometimes there are nice emails or complaints about bad parking. Miss Hague has also spent 7 years of being the head teacher of our school. She really enjoys her job and is really proud of it.

School Journalist: The Transition to High School

This week, we’ve another update from our now lone reporter, Jimmy in Y6.

The transition from primary school to secondary school can seem daunting. Our year 6s have just entered their final term at Scholes. It is a good time to check in with our leavers about what lies ahead for them and to look back at their time at Scholes.

I interviewed Thomas, Alex and Emma on this topic to find out their thoughts.

What has been your greatest moment in primary school?
Emma: Getting a school job.
Thomas: When I did some very good cooking that expanded my horizon around flavours and recipes
because my passion is cooking.
Alex: Probably when I scored a volley from the halfway line two days in a row in football earlier this
year! (Editor’s note: I know this is true as I was on the same pitch!)

How do you think that high school will be different to primary school?
Emma: We’re going to have to move around different classrooms a lot.
Thomas: It will feel a lot more grown up because we will have to take ourselves to our own
classrooms and there will be a lot more responsibility.
Alex: There will be a lot more people, much harder learning and a lot more homework, but I can cope
with that.

What are you most worried about going into high school?
Emma: Making new friends because all of my friends are going to different high schools.
Thomas: All the new people and different personalities that I will face.
Alex: The teachers and how strict they’re going to be.

It is very normal to feel this way and have anxieties about moving to secondary school. I interviewed a year 7 from Lawnswood school who I know through an out of school activity. She said that within her first month at high school, she had already made a new circle of friends and had found it
surprisingly easy to settle in.

Well that’s all, folks. See you next week

An exciting week at school…

Hello!

This is another school journalist news report, this time featuring an exciting new development in school and an interview about the show Gladiators, after a 27 year gap between the last episode of Gladiators in 1997 until the first episode a few weeks ago at the start of 2024. The show first appeared in 1991, a competition where brave and determined challengers take on the superhuman gladiators, many of which have been or still are professional athletes. This show has become very popular since its comeback. We interviewed Mrs Hogarth to find out more.

What is your favourite event in Gladiators and why?

I have two – duel as I like watching the contestants plummet off the podium. My other favourite is the travellator because they’re exhausted and it gets tense.

If you were on Gladiators, what would your name be? Why?

“The Fear” – it would put fear into the opponents.

Who is your favourite Gladiator?

Fury because she’s super resilient.

Which event do you think you would be best at?

Duel because I am very competitive.

An exciting new adventure playground was recently built in place of our old adventure playground. This was because our old one had been at the school a long time and the wood was starting to rot. However, the new adventure playground is better as it is more spacious, there is some fun new equipment and the surface is all-weather which means that there is always an opportunity to go on it. The grand opening of the playground was on Tuesday and everyone has been very excited to try it out.

We interviewed Stanley in year 4 on the new playground:

What do you think about the new adventure playground?

It’s better because it’s a nicer play area and you can go on it whenever you want because it isn’t grass.

What is your favourite part of it?

The slides as there weren’t any on the last adventure playground.

Are you excited about playing on it and why?

Yes – the last one was nice but on the old adventure playground, we never really went on it as it was too muddy. Now it’s all weather, you can always have the chance to play on it. It’s also more spacious than the old one.

Are you excited to play games on it?

Yeah – When it wasn’t all weather we couldn’t play any games on it because if you fell you’d land in the mud. Now it’s all weather, we can play tig because of this. As well as this, it is proper soft playground surface so you won’t hurt yourself if you fall.

We hope you are excited to read more of our exciting reports. Thank you for reading!

Year 4 Football Team

We’re so proud of the Y4 footballers who represented our school for the first time recently. As well as coming away with a very impressive 3-3 draw against a local school playing their 5^th game together, they represented our school with pride, humility, confidence and resilience. Most of all, they were genuinely happy to be playing alongside each other.

For some of our children, it was their first ever game of competitive football – although you’d never have known! For others, who might play a lot outside of school, it was their first taste of representing our school. For all of our children who played, we’re incredibly proud of how you represented our school; you were respectful, supportive, humble and giving it your all!

Here’s what a few of the team had to say afterwards:

‘Playing in the game was the best thing I’ve ever done. We had a lot of fun. It wasn’t about winning it was about having fun and doing your best!’ Korewa, Y4

‘The game was really fun and really positive. Even though we didn’t win, it was still great to play and compete against another school!’ Grayson, Y4

‘It was fun. Everyone on the team was helping each other and motivating each other to do their best and enjoy it!’ Rudi, Y4

Bring on the next game!

We’d also like to give a massive thanks to Mr O’Loughlin who has been instrumental in making this happen. We’re all super grateful for the time and effort you’ve put in to this so far!

Winter

Winter

This week, we’ve been talking about typical signs of winter. We’ve been reading a range of winter themed fiction and non-fiction books. We have also been discussing animals that live in a cold climate. Climate is our word of the week!

Rainbow class have been writing about typical signs of winter.

Sunshine class have been writing about Arctic animals.

In Literacy, we’ve also been discussing the features of fiction and non-fiction books, sorting them into groups. Here are some thoughts that children shared during the activity.

Fiction books

“They’re fun to read and they can make you laugh”- Sonny

“Some books can be scary”- Mollie G

“They’re good for your brain because they make you feel good”- Maddison

Non-fiction books

“If you don’t know about something, you can read about it and find out”- Georgie

“I got a non-fiction book from the library because I wanted to find out about pyramids”- Keira

Maths: The staircase pattern

We’ve been counting to find ‘how many’.

With the help of our Numberblocks friends, we’ve revisited the ‘stable order’ principle of counting (Understanding that number names are said in order)

We’ve been learning about the ‘one more’ relationship between consecutive numbers. We discovered that when you represent numbers in order using cubes, it makes a ‘staircase’ pattern!

Phonics

This week, the children have learnt some new digraphs – a digraph consists of ‘two letters that make one sound’. Ask your child to tell you the sounds the digraphs below make.

oo oo ar or

You may have noticed that one of our digraphs is repeated. That’s because the ‘oo’ digraph makes two different sounds! It might take a bit of investigating in our reading to see which one fits the word. Please support your child with this when practising their ‘learn at home’ phonics sheet.

Before reading a word, we always look for any digraphs (two letters that make one sound). Then, we say the sound the digraph makes. Finally, we sound out the word and blend it together – using our phoneme (the sound a letter makes) fingers! This helps your child identify the digraphs (two letters that make one sound) before reading a word.

Penguin observations

Over the past two weeks, the children have loved observing the ‘penguin cam’ at Edinburgh Zoo. They’ve been watching closely, making notes about what they look like, how they move and what they have in their enclosures to keep them happy. We discussed how this is not their natural habitat and what their environment would be like in the Antarctic.

Living and Learning

This week’s Living and Learning statement is: I know that some drugs are harmful.

In Reception, we’ve focused on our PSED (Personal, Social, Emotional Development) statement “I know that I must only take medicines when an adult is with me”

The children shared some fantastic knowledge of why they must be with a trusted adult when using medicines.

“To make sure it’s not out of date”- Jack

“To look at the label to see how much you need”- Olivia

“If you get the wrong one, it could make you more poorly”- Skyla

“You might take too much”- Alfie

On Wednesday, Rainbow class enjoyed their first fun-filled PE session led by Foot-Tech Academy

This half term, our PE skill focus is dynamic (moving) balance and static balance.

In Friday sessions, we’ll be using a variety of apparatus in the hall to develop these skills.

Inspiration on a rainy day

It’s been a very dreary, soggy week outside but, as ever, the children’s curiosity led to some fantastic exploration. After a conversation about rain, flooding and potentially needing a boat to get around (ha!) the talk soon turned to types of boat and learning about canal boats. The children watched some short clips of ‘Rosie and Jim’ and a group were inspired to build their own canal boat in the outside area. They showed great team work and story-telling. This spontaneous, child-led interest and construction carried on throughout the week.

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 ‘I can build a snowman ’.

We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s 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? We know that learning to recite poems, helps our reading in lots of ways.

Click here to watch Reception recite this week’s poem!

Celebration assembly

Reception have started attending Friday celebration assemblies with KS1. Each week, we’ll be awarding sports, living and learning and great learning certificates. If your child receives a certificate or award outside of school, they can also bring this in to share with everyone in the assembly.

Reminders

Reading- Please remember to bring in library books on Thursdays and reading records on Fridays.
Funky phonics Phase 3 stay and play- Monday 16 January/ Wednesday 18 January 9.00-9.30am Please only attend the session you have signed up for and please remember that we have space for only one parent/carer at this session. We’ve taken on board your feedback from previous stay and play events and have split the session over 2 days, to lower numbers and ensure a calmer learning environment for all.

We are looking forward to welcoming you all back into the classroom and showing you how much our phonics has developed!

Autumn, Harvest and Henrí Matisse

There was so much going on in class this week, we thought we’d celebrate even more great learning in Reception! Your second Class News post of the weekend! …

Autumn and Harvest

“Look an Autumn leaf!… they are orange, brown, red and green”

We’ve been discussing the season of Autumn and learning about the Harvest Festival.

Poppy D- It’s when you get in all the fruit and the vegetables… the farmers.

Max- Crops are chopped up by a machine and the machine is called a combine harvester.

We discussed why collections of food are taken in at churches, schools and community centres.

Lewi- It’s going to hungry people who need it.

We also made some Harvest posters and sang some Harvest songs!

Click here to watch Rainbow Class singing Big, Red, Combine Harvester.

Careful Counting

As well as continuing to learn about the numbers 1,2 and 3, we’ve been helping some toys do careful counting after they made some little mistakes in our Maths lessons!

We made sure we only counted each object once and that the number we identified as how many objects we had altogether, was the same as our stopping number. We said what we were counting after each number, to help us slow down (i.e. “one conker, two conkers, three conkers…”)

We used special tagging ‘wands’ to help us count our objects too.

Henrí Matisse Art Project

This week, Reception explored the art of Henrí Matisse. We focused on his ‘cut out’ artwork in particular. We listened to the story Henrí’s Scissors by Jeanette Winter, to learn about the artist’s life and methods used to create his cut outs.

The children chose their colour, painting a whole page. Next, using a stencil, they drew around the ‘leaf’ shape and cut it out. Together, we created a collaborative piece of art on a large canvas.

We can’t wait for you to see what we have created at our classroom drop-in sessions!

If your child would like to learn more about the artwork of Henrí Matisse, Tate.org.uk have some child-friendly videos and resources you can watch at home. Click here to visit now!

Diary Dates…

Tuesday 9 November- Maths in Early Years (Zoom)

Join us for our zoom session on Tuesday 09 November at 6 pm.

This zoom session will provide you with lots of information about how we teach maths in Reception. You will find out how you can support your child with their maths at home.

The session will start at 6 pm and last around 20-25 minutes, plus there will be a question and answer session at the end of around 5-10 minutes.

The link to this zoom session will be emailed to all parents and carers after the half term break. If you do not receive a link, please contact the school office before Tuesday 09 November.

Friday 12 November, 3.30-4.00- Classroom Drop-in, Rainbow Class.

Friday 19 November, 3.30-4.00- Classroom Drop-in, Sunshine Class.