News from Year 3

What a wonderful week we have had! From Christmas lunch to carol concerts, it has been a busy week in the run up to the Christmas holidays.

In RE, we concluded our learning of Advent focusing on the different visitors Jesus received at the time of his birth, and why these particular people.

We also enjoyed making party hats with Ms McCarthy for our Christmas lunch, which we also relished in our classrooms. Most of us donned our Christmas jumpers for the occasion too!

A big well done to the children who participated in today’s mass with father Francis. It was thoroughly enjoyed by all across the school. Another well done to children’s performances in the KS2 Christmas production, we are so proud of you all!

Also, a big and final thank you for the very generous gifts and cards, we couldn’t thank you all enough for your continued support and gratitude. Have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year,

Miss Battams and Ms McCarthy 🙂

End of term news from Year 2

Year Two have had a tremendous end to their first term in the class. The children enjoyed singing along to their performances during the KS1 nativity play and were justifiably proud of the way in which they spoke their lines so clearly. They also had great fun during our Christmas party (attended by Father Christmas!), which followed a delicious Christmas lunch.

The week ended with a much more thoughtful Friday, during which the children celebrated mass with Father Francis, prayed for family and friends as they finished decorating the class Christmas tree and described what was so special about their kriskringle while exchanging gifts. A final fun experience to end the week was watching a music concert called The Night Before Christmas that has been streamed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and it was a joy to see the children soaking up this music and giggling at the antics of the Elf presenter. If you would like to rewatch the concert together, a link can be found on our Google Classroom.

Mrs Brunt and I are so very grateful for the smashing gifts and cards that we received at the end of term and would like to thank you for your continued support as we all work together to teach your wonderful children.

Have a very happy, healthy and holy Christmas and I look forward to seeing everyone again in 2021.

Year Two News

The children have been enjoying the story of ‘How to catch Santa’ this week and have worked hard on their writing as part of this teaching sequence, in particular thinking about writing sentences with conjunctions such as but, because, so, and as well as punctuating question sentences correctly. Having focussed on learning how to accurately draw the hands onto a clock face, in maths, we are learning how to subtract within 100, using manipulatives, 100 squares and place value strategies that explore how to subtract from the tens and ones.

As part of our art topic on Leaves, the children also created some beautiful artwork inspired by poinsettias. The children all worked so hard on this paper collage learning and if you sneak a (socially distanced) peak through the classroom window, you will be able to see their artwork, which is making us all smile.

Thank you for working with your children to write some lovely Advent prayers, which the children have been reading as part of our daily prayers.

The recordings for our Christmas play were completed on Monday and the final video with all the pieces edited together is wonderful. We are all looking forward to sharing this with you on Tuesday at 7pm. Further details on how to access this video will be sent to you early in the week.

To allow for the recommended quarantine period, the final ‘posting’ day for class Christmas cards is Tuesday, so that all the cards can be delivered on Friday, along with the exchange of our KK gifts, which should also be brought to school by Tuesday. We are all looking forward to our Christmas lunch on Thursday and the children are invited to wear a Christmas jumper and bring in Christmas hats on Thursday.

Once again, thank you for your continued patience and support as we ensure that everyone stays safe inside their own classroom bubble and close to their families at the start and end of the day.

Have a lovely, lovely weekend.

This week in Year 1

What beautiful Advent wreaths the children have created. Thank you for putting so much time and effort into them.

The children worked so hard finishing our English text Mr Big. The sequence finished by writing a letter from the perspective of Mr Big, focusing on joining two single clause sentences with ‘and’. I have noticed a huge improvement in everyone’s handwriting and the pride they are taking in their work.

We have been focusing again on Adding Numbers to 20 following Maths No Problem. We have been using the method of grouping 10 then adding the remainder. To support their understanding I demonstrated how to show Dienes to show Tens and Ones.

My phonics group have started to learn the five split digraphs. This week we have been learning ‘a_e’ and ‘e_e’. We have been noticing which spelling patterns we can use to support our spellings.

Mrs Ruffell’s group have been practising, ‘oo'(book), ‘oo'(moon) ‘ai’. The emphasis has been on writing words using these sounds.

Next weeks challenges are:

After Christmas, I shall be adding another challenge to support the children’s learning further.

Have a relaxing weekend.

Miss Perry

Advent in Year 2

The children have had great fun this week, learning their lines as well as the actions and songs to lots of cracking nativity songs. We have recorded groups of children in their roles and they all look wonderful in their costumes. We look forward to sharing the completed play when it goes live during the last week of term.

In a whole school competition, the children refined their speed stacking skills and it was lovely to see how their times came down as they practised more and more. This activity was done as part of our maths topic on Time and it would be great if you could continue to help your child to tell the time using an analogue clock, reading half past, quarter to and quarter past times first and leading on to reading times to five minutes.

As part of our English learning, we have started to read the book ‘How to catch Santa’. This is a great read and the children had lots of questions to ask Father Christmas, so we used their ideas to write letters to Father Christmas. I was very impressed with how the children remembered to punctuate all their sentences beautifully when they were writing to Santa!

To mark the first week of Advent, we lit the first candle on our Advent wreath and decorated our Christmas tree. The children have set each other Advent Challenges such as ‘Share a friend’ and ‘Help Mum and Dad’ and we open one of these challenges each day as part of our school journey through Advent.

As we go through Advent, one of my favourite activities is to walk around my village each Sunday afternoon as it begins to get dark and look to see how the houses are being decorated. As the weeks go by, there are more and more lights and this is a wonderful way to see just how important Jesus’s birth is in the lives of so many people around us. I wonder what the Christmas lights are like down your street? Maybe you could take a walk and find out.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

News from Year 3

It has been another busy week in Year 3! At the end of last week, we made sedimentary sandwiches in Science. To help learn about the formation of sedimentary rocks, we made sandwiches with lots of different fillings to represent the different layers that form these rocks. This week, we will be focusing on the formation of igneous rocks using ice, chocolate sauce and sprinkles!

We have really enjoyed practising and filming our parts for the school Christmas play and carol concert. Well done to all the children for putting in such a tremendous effort, I’m sure the final ‘virtual’ product will look smashing!

In Maths, we have moved onto division. We have found it a little tricky but our times table knowledge as helped to support our learning. Don’t forget that there are new times table challenges available on Sum Dog every three to four days, please have a go. This will really help support our division learning!

Have a happy and restful weekend,

Miss Battams 🙂

Relationships and health education

Relationships Education has become statutory for all primary schools from the summer term of 2021. For all schools, Sex Education as part of the Science curriculum remains the same.

Key documents

Parent portal to the school’s scheme of work

Statutory government document

Online Safety and Well-being

We will post important, relevant and up-to-date information on online safety and wellbeing here. As with all aspects of your child’s education, learning and wellbeing, close school/home relationship is the best way to support children, parents and carers. Navigating the internet so your family can benefit from all it has to offer, while protecting your young people, can be complicated and time-consuming. These resource should help. Please feedback with successes and particular issues so we can inform other parents and carers.

Could your family do with a “reset” on digital use? To start 2024 there are some New Year Digital Resolutions below….

HfL produces a termly newsletter to update parents and carers on current online safety issues. The latest edition will be published here.

The organisations below publish authoritative, relevant information on online safety and their websites are updated. Together with ChildLine, they are the first places to go to to if you have queries or worries about your child or young person online.

(As suggested by Ineqe Safeguarding Group). Any links in the text below (in blue or not) can be found here https://ineqe.com/2023/12/20/new-digital-resolutions       

There’s no denying that the way we use tech continues to evolve. Let’s pledge some New Year resolutions to take on tech with a new approach, where we’re in control and can enjoy the advantages it brings.

Words matter. Whether spoken out loud or posted online, what we say to each other has an impact. This resolution means that, as a family, you’ll avoid online conflict (like engaging in arguments on Facebook, saying mean things out of frustration while gaming, or criticising a stranger’s outfit on Instagram), and instead pledge to say kind or encouraging things whenever possible. You can use our ‘What Are Your Words Worth’ activity pack to find more information, ideas, and ways to explain to the whole family what this resolution is all about. Find it here.

If your family rules got thrown out the window over Christmas, you’re certainly not alone! Now that the New Year is here, it’s time to get everyone back on track. A lot of New Year resolutions fail because the expectations aren’t reasonable, so keep any ideas for new screentime limits realistic. A good example would be to have a device-free dinner time including all mobile phones. Use our Family Screen Time activity pack to help the whole family make better screentime decisions all year round.

Being privacy and security aware is one of the greatest tools for creating a safer online experience for the whole family. This resolution could include doing things like creating better passwords, learning how to spot dodgy links and emails and keeping scam aware. To help you on your way, check out our Cyber Security Toolkit for children. You’ll find more helpful articles and ideas in our Online Safety section.

What are your most visited sites, platforms, or apps? For most of us, the answer is probably a social media site but there’s also a whole online world full of interesting platforms that can help us learn new and exciting things. You could learn a new skill to try together, like making simple origami or learning a new language. Watch our video for more hints about learning a language online.

Through our Home Learning Hub, and Safer Schools App (available for download on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store), you can use practical tools to help you stay in the know. You can also listen to our weekly Safeguarding Soundbytes podcast. It’s free, easy to access, and delivers the latest safeguarding news in a ‘byte sized’ way. You can also sign up to our Online Safeguarding Hub newsletter. For the young people in your care, we have recently launched the brand-new Online Safety Show. Find it on our Safeguarding Apps and on Teach Hub.

Well-being ambassadors

We have a dedicated group of students from Year 5 and 6 who are supporting the well-being of their peers and friends by positive problem solving and finding solutions.

This an important life skill which will support everyday life from now until adulthood. 

ELECTRIC UMBRELLA WORKSHOP

As part of Children’s Mental Health Week, we invited Electric Umbrella in to entertain with an inspiring message – There’s no such thing as normal! is their motto. ‘ Sing like no one’s listening, dance like no one’s watching, give like no one’s giving and laugh like no one’s judging!’ We certainly did all of that! The group create amazing live music experiences with learning disabled people. In doing so, they help change the way the world looks at them – and others.

‘On Thursday, we were treated to a workshop called Electric Umbrella, it is about how people with disabilities come together and enjoy life.

There was lots of singing and dancing, it was a lot of fun. They made our teachers sing, dance, and have a fun time too.

They picked children to tell very funny jokes to make everyone laugh.

We were able to see how having a disability doesn’t mean you cannot have fun.’ By Jessica

‘My experience of Electric Umbrella was a beautiful moment. The funny thing was the lady asked who would like to sing but i thought she said who would like to pay the guitar so I put up my hand. Then I realised my mistake but my friends wanted me to sing like noone was listening. Then I sang like a proper singer. After I sang, I wanted to play the guitar an the small melody I played made everyone smile, I hope!

I hope Electric Umbrella will carry on making people happy and inspiring them and i hope i will see them once again as they have inspired me to sing my heart out and to never be shy and I have realised it does not matter who you are or what you look like. Anyone can achieve anything if they have the right approach and guidance to do what they want to do- practise makes progress! I hope Electric Umbrella will continue their legacy together making people happy and I wish them all the best!’  By Gabriel