Weekly Newsletter

Loading...

page background

What a busy 'thank you for helping us to minimise the risk' kind of week!

Oh my word - this week! It has been quite a week for us all.

Perhaps some of you won't know but we have been launched into action against the virus this week. It has felt like we were fighting a real battle in a real war at times.

Our amazing allies - you the parents - have helped us so much by being alert to symptoms, taking children for PCR tests and Self Isolating them if they were potential spreaders.

I can't thank you enough and let's all pray that this next week's holiday is not ruined by new cases in your family and also that the empty school environment acts as a firebreak to the virus when we come back.

Do please continue to be vigilant over the holiday and do please email me with any news of positive lateral flow or PCR tests.

I hope you all have a happy, healthy and restful holiday.

Thankfulness is one of our school values

This week was very disappointing in that we had to stay at school for our Harvest Service via Google meet or in the school hall instead of taking the children to St Wilf's. However - we did have smashing services all about thankfulness and we are very thankful to Rev Pete for leading them, Mrs Watson for organising them and the classes for their fabulous passages, poems, paintings and prayers. We are even more thankful for your incredible generosity as always - we have a mountain of tins and food that will be going to the Homeless Charity in York very soon.

Thank you for your patience, understanding and tolerance - but more than anything - thankyou for your charity.

Message about Parents' Evening

Thank you to those parents who have booked already. I've been asked by the teachers to explain to you why we are using the phone again this term for parents evening appointments.

We are using the phone and not the Googlemeet because there are nearly 400 children and that's a lot of parents to speak to! Here are the very good reasons why:

To ensure that the whole of the slot time is taken up by discussion and not spent wasted on frozen screens and buffering (not everyone has good internet!)
To ensure equality - not all parents have access, ability or facility to googlemeet - more than anything our school seeks to be fair and equitable.
To help protect the teachers from visual screen stress.
To ensure that the appointments run on time as much as is humanly possible - a phone call happens when the phone rings, a googlemeet has to be scheduled and all parties have to join at the same time to get the full allotment and therefore is at the mercy of 400 watches all being synchronised - that's impossible!

We can only dream of face to face meetings one day - until then we will meet by phone. In the future we may be able to canvass you to offer you your preference but that will take a lot of co-ordinating so please bear with us - this may come to pass next term.

Nursery - Stars

The children have explored the theme of Harvest this week. We have looked at the story Oliver’s Vegetables and Tops and Bottoms. On Thursday we celebrated Harvest Festival with Rev Pete. We enjoyed singing the song Big Red Combine Harvester and joining in with all the actions. In the provision we have printed with vegetables, played with the small world farm, counted how many animals were in each field and baked cakes. In phonics we have added noises to a story to make a NOISY story, looking at what noises we might hear on each page. We have talked about the noises water can make and guessed what is in each jar by listening to the sounds it makes. All of these activities help to make us good listeners. In maths we have been pattern detectives searching for patterns in our environment. We have also copied patterns and made our own simple patterns.

Superstar - Jasmine Whitby

FS - Moon and Mercury

What a fun filled Autumn week we have had in Reception this week. We enjoyed sharing the story of The Roll Away Pumpkin by Junia Wonders and Daniela Volpari. We sequenced the story and wrote captions to match the pictures. We wrapped up to go on an Autumn adventure collecting different leaves around the school grounds. We then threaded the leaves to practise fine motor control. To end the week we celebrated Harvest with Rev Pete. We hope you have a lovely half term.

Superstars - Emily Sharlotte, Oliver Beaumont

Y1 - Galaxy and Venus

What a busy, baking bread and writing instructions kind of week in Year 1. After working on 'bossy' verbs on Monday, the children followed instructions carefully to bake their own bread hedgehog. We then sequenced the photos to plan our writing before using the 'bossy' verbs to create instructions. In maths, we have introduced subtraction and enjoyed playing 'subtraction squash' with playdough before using part, part, whole models and counting back on a number line. We have created our own artwork to share during the Harvest Festival service and have been busy practising harvest songs. We are incredibly proud of Year 1 this week and think they deserve a week off.

Superstars - Joshua Littlewood, Jaxon Lamb

Year 2 / 3 Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune

Year 2 and 3 have literally been on fire this week! We bravely lined up our precious Tudor houses (after taking photos) and set fire to them to experience how the fire would have spread during the Great Fire of London. Thankfully, we had the fire brigade on hand to put out our fire unlike in Tudor times. The fire fighters then gave us all a fire safety talk as part of our PSHCE curriculum. In English, we wrote wanted posters for Guy Fawkes using our excellent expanded noun phrases and similes to describe him.

We were proud of the children during our virtual Harvest Festival when they made their pledges to look after God's wonderful Creation. They also enjoyed making comic strips about the story of Adam and Eve during RE. In Maths this week, we have consolidated our skills in adding and subtracting using a place value chart. After all that the children are ready for a holiday.

Superstars - Iris Miller, Aurora Anderson, Billy Carmody

Year 4 Mars and Earth

This week we have been reminded of how we can be creative just like our creative God. While worship may not have gone to plan, all of the children were able to take part in the worship with Rev Pete and show off their beautiful sky artwork which they created using watercolours. Following our creative theme, we also used artwork to help us plan and write our dragon nursery setting descriptions. All inspired from our class book 'How to train your dragon', of course. In guided reading, we have been focusing on our summarising skills by summarising the events of our class book from chapter 1 through to chapter 4.

Superstars - Lewis Herring, Rhys Knight

Year 5 Asteroid and Pluto

This week , in Year 5, we have been getting to grips with interpreting and plotting a variety of line graphs, some of them on very important themes - numbers of biscuits eaten in the staffroom during the day, and the temperature of cups of tea over time! In English, we have written some impressive descriptions of a Tudor town setting, showing off our use of both expanded noun phrases and prepositional phrases. Many of these descriptions would fit in beautifully in our class novel, Treason. Being arty, we have added water colours to our Tudor portraits and look forward to seeing them displayed in our Tudor art galleries. At the end of the week in PSHCE, we have had a virtual tour, learning about the inside of a court of law, while in French, we have learned about parts of the face through song and mime. We all agree that after another busy week, we definitely deserve a week off. Wishing everyone a safe, happy and relaxing half term

Superstars - Taylor Wanless, Elliot Kelly

Year 6 Nebular and Constellation

In what has been a very busy, tiring and exposed to the elements, sort of week, year 6 have really showed their metal. The Bikeability team has been with us this week, ensuring that our children are safe and proficient road users. They have been so impressed by their abilities, their behaviour and their acceptance of the issues created by the weather. A very well done to everyone who has completed the course so far.

Throughout the week, we have been completing assessments in some of the core subjects. We will be able to use this to assist with the Covid Recovery and see just how much progress the children have made in such little time, and with the ongoing distractions.

Although many of us have rather large personalities, we realised this week just how small we actually are, when being compared to the rest of the planets in the Solar System. Using the maths skills of measure, geometry and scaling; and the art skill of blending, to create appropriate colours and shades, year 6 created planets that were in scale. We are indeed a pale blue dot (ish)! The time is almost here for Liam Digby to reveal how he made it into space in our class novel. In just 7 weeks, we are almost 300 pages into our text - that is some good going. In no time at all, we will be starting our new one! In RE, we have been looking at what God is, and isn't. This is something very important, especially as we celebrate Harvest. Well done everyone; Mrs R says you can have a week off now! : )

Superstars - Thomas Summerton, Macey Lamb

Loading indicator