Space Chase: Summer Reading Challenge 2019

The Summer Reading Challenge 2019 theme is Space Chase, an out-of-this-world adventure inspired by the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing.

Children taking part in the Challenge will join our super space family, The Rockets, for a thrilling mission to track down books nabbed by mischievous aliens!

Space Chase will feature bespoke artwork from top children’s illustrator, Adam Stower, and will celebrate adventure, exploration, reading and fun!

Illustrations © Adam Stower 2019 for The Reading Agency


Taking part in the Summer Reading Challenge

The Summer Reading Challenge is aimed at children aged four to eleven and it is run in almost all libraries in the UK.

Visit your local library during the summer holidays to sign up – the sooner you go, the longer your child will have to read six books!

Staff will register your child for the Challenge and give them some fun materials to get them started.

Many libraries will also offer pre-school activities suitable for under-fours, including specially designed Summer Reading Challenge materials. Visit your local branch to find out more.


The Summer Reading Challenge is the UK’s biggest free reading for pleasure event for children. It is run by the national charity The Reading Agency in partnership with the UK public library network.

The aim of the Challenge is to encourage children to read any six books of their choice from their library during the summer holidays.

Children receive special rewards each time they finish a book and there’s a certificate for everyone who completes the Challenge.



Year 3’s Thanksgiving Mass

Today we had a Thanksgiving mass in school to celebrate many of the Year 3 class members taking their First Holy Communion recently.
It was a lovely chance for the children to celebrate this special occasion with each other. I also think they enjoyed getting to wear their special clothing and share it with their friends. They all looked so smart and grown-up!

Thank-you to the parents for sending in their outfits and for the kind donations of food and drinks for our celebration afterwards!

Donations required!

When you return to school on Tuesday you may notice a new addition by the gate in the playground … it is our new recycling bin!

As you can see, it clearly states which materials are accepted and we would love for you to get involved by donating some clothes, towels, sheets, blankets, curtains or even shoes. The bank holiday weekend is the perfect time for a spring clean and all donations are greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance,
Miss Costello and the Eco Council

Y3 Maths Strategies

I know that a few parents have asked to see the methods we use in class so they are better able to support their child’s learning. I have put together a document that shows an overview of each method and some examples for the four operations: Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division. I have also included the method we would use in class to approach word problems.

I hope that you find it helpful.
If you have any further questions, please ask!

Miss Costello

Y3 and Y4 Swimming

Some of the children will be working on their life-saving skills in swimming this week and have been asked by their swimming teachers to bring in pyjamas for their lesson.

Thank you!

Fluency Teaser

Thank you to everyone who had a go at our first fluency teaser. Lots of you came up with fantastic ways to give yourself a better chance of winning!

If you didn’t manage to have a go, follow the link below and enjoy!

https://nrich.maths.org/content/id/8016/Strike%20it%20Out%206589.png

Thank you to Katy in Year 5 for coming up with a strategy to better your chances of winning: leaving the bigger numbers to your opponent. Do you agree? Why not give it go!

Our second ‘Fluency Teaser’ is a wonderful activity called ‘Shape Times Shape’. See how good your working mathematically skills are by following the link and solving the problem.

Send any solutions to Mr Sallis.

Enjoy!

https://nrich.maths.org/content/id/6653/NRICH-poster_ShapeTimesShape.pdf

Click the link to take you to the problem!

This week we got a range of solutions from across key stage 2.

Thank you Alice in year 3 for this solution.
And Natalie in Year 4 for this.
And some particularly good reasoning by Adam R in Year 5.

We’ve been sharing stories!

We’ve been celebrating World Book Day this week with special assemblies where teachers have taken it in turns to share favourite stories or poems with the children in their key stage.

We hope that the stories we share will inspire the children to read on and read the books for themselves or find other stories by those authors.

We will list the books we have share on this page.

Monday

  • Mr Hayes (whole school):
    • Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, from Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
  • Mrs Hayes (key stage one):
    • Mrs Wobble the Waitress by Allan Ahlberg
    • All Join In by Quentin Blake
  • Mr Hayes (key stage two):
    • The Rise of Wolves by Kerr Thomson

Tuesday

  • Mrs Teixeira (key stage one)
    • Chocolate Cake by Michael Rosen
    • Please Mrs Butler by Allan Ahlberg
  • Miss Costello (key stage two)
    • Little House in the Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Wednesday

  • Mrs Ruffell (key stage one)
    • The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson
  • Mr Sallis (key stage two)
    • ‘Infinity and Me’ written by Kate Hosford and illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska
How would you describe infinity to Uma?

Fluency Teaser

Welcome to our first ‘Fluency Teaser ‘ of the year.  Fluency is one of the key aims of the primary mathematics curriculum. Try the activity at the link below at home to give you lots of opportunities to recall addition and subtraction facts as well as some conjecturing and convincing too!

https://nrich.maths.org/8016

What will your strategy for winning be?

Hand in any examples of the work you complete to Mr Sallis or your class teacher so that we can choose some to share on our fluency blog! 

Art competition

An exciting competition is taking place across the county.  The task is to:

Create a piece of artwork entitled ‘The Bread of Life’.

Encourage your child to think about what the blessed sacrament, the Eucharistic host, means to them and then create a piece of artwork reflecting their thoughts.  The artwork needs to be A4 in size and can be created using any medium, including paint, collage or printing.  Please label the back of the artwork with your child’s name and year group and return to your class teacher by 9th November.

More details can be found here: