Dear Families,

A lovely week this week celebrating Harvest festival with the Reverand Jane leading our assembly. We have collected many tins for such a good cause and are thankful for all your contributions to this. 

It has been a pleasure visiting Bikeability and outdoor learning sessions this week and seeing the teamwork and communication skills developing. Foxes class took part in the Stick Challenge, aiming to build the tallest stick tower possible. The activity encouraged pupils to use engineering, problem-solving and teamwork skills which they used incredibly well. They had to consider how to make their towers tall while keeping them stable. The children demonstrated creativity and perseverance along with a good team spirit and took pride in their creations.

We are proud to be able to offer this enrichment to all our pupils across the school and look forward to seeing how their skills develop. Thank you to those who attended the FOLPA meeting last night.

Next week, we are looking forward to celebrating Black History Month and One Tree Day – Please remember children will need to be in green on Friday with a £1 donation. We also have our first Parents’ Evening of the year. We look forward to seeing you all and sharing your child’s learning journeys thus far.

Many thanks 

Have a lovely weekend
Miss Laycock

Headteacher

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Dates for the diary

• W/C 12th October – Parent’s Evenings
• Friday 16th October Just One Tree Day – Wear Green £1 donation
• Wednesday 21st October – FOLPA Halloween Disco – 21st October – please go to the office to get tickets
• Half Term – 26 October – 6th November

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Year group news

Nursery

This week in Nursery we have been reading ‘My Hair’. We enjoyed playing in the hairdressers in our role play corner and talking about the different hairstyles that we have. Our foundational knowledge has been to learn about chronological order in relation to our own lives, we have really enjoyed looking at photos of the children when they were babies, toddlers and now and putting them in the right order. In maths we have been saying the number names and practising counting backwards and in the right order.  

Reception Rabbits 

This week Rabbits class have been busy outside in our growing area! Our foundational knowledge focus has been to investigate similarities and differences in plants, so we have been looking at a variety of flowers, fruits, and vegetables and how each grows, while planting some tulip bulbs, runner beans, and garlic. Our book this week was ‘Pumpkin Soup’, which we have been linking back to our themes from the term of friendship and kindness.

Hares

This week Hares have continued their learning on measurement and have enjoyed some hands-on measuring of capacity.  We have also really enjoyed our story, ‘Where the Wild Things Are’.  In History we continued to learn about the Great Fire of London and had some fun pretending to be houses and pulling each other down to create firebreaks.   

Fawns

This week we have started our new unit on retelling a familiar story. We have been thinking about how to write in the past tense using the ed suffix. In maths we have looked at crossing boundaries when adding and subtracting. In PE we have enjoyed using the skills of speed, changing direction and balance to plan and design our own games – we are looking forward to trying them out next week.

Otters

This week in Otter class, the children have started their narrative descriptions. They have been given a picture of an old attic as a visual stimulus to aid them with their writing – we are excited to see where their imagination takes them! In science, they children conducted their first experiment. They were testing the hypothesis, ‘if we add bulbs to a simple circuit does this make the bulb brighter?’. In D.T., they had a busy afternoon making their boxes out of cloth! Everyone worked hard and it was lovely to see amazing teamwork. They will continue next week with their DT project.

Badgers

Badgers have worked hard this week with many children accomplishing lots of ingredients of success in their last unit of writing. This week, we have looked at poems which explore form. It has been lovely to see the children think about their intonation, volume and tone whilst writing, analysing and performing poetry. In Geography, the children explored the features of our local river.  

Foxes

This week, the Year 6 children in Fox class had assessments – they couldn’t have tried any harder. In English, the class finished editing their persuasive speech and in science they started a new unit on the circulatory system. The first lesson was on blood and led to lots of interesting questions.    

Owls

Owls have been learning about David Attenborough.  We have looked at fossils and even dug for fossils ourselves!  We used David’s work to learn about gorillas and penguins and completed some excellent writing about them.  In Science, we looked at food chains and found different food chains in a food web.   

Achievement Awards

Rabbit Class  –  Willow for showing real determination to work on her counting skills in maths. 

Hares Class  – Louis for being keen to take part in his lessons.  Keep it up Louis! 

Fawns Class  – Esmae for showing incredible determination with her handwriting this week.  

Otter Class – Violet – for her fantastic scientific skills and use of language during our experiment.  

Badger Class – Summer for an excellently written diary entry.

Fox Class – Kaleb for really good understanding of factors and multiples maths this week

Owls Class – Arthur for joining in with all our lessons with enthusiasm and for sharing his excellent knowledge of penguins! 

Star of the Week Awards

Rabbit Class  –  Ethan for having a great attitude and always being ready to learn. 

Hares Class  – Ember for always being ready to share her ideas.  Well done Ember! 

Fawns Class  –   Bethany for always being ready and respectful – well done.

Otter Class – Raeya – for always being so determined with her learning.  

Badger Class – Austin for showing determination and ambition this week.

Fox Class – Niranjan for coming back to school ready to learn.

Owls Class –  Freya for always being ready to learn and listening carefully. 

Congratulations to you all

Attendance Update

This week’s whole school attendance is 94.9%.

• In first place is Fawns with 98.5%
• In second place is Foxes with 97.3%
• In third place is Hares with 94.8%

Please note, class teachers will be communicating with any parents of children whose attendance drops below 95% to offer additional support.

Well done to all the children arriving at school on time, ready to learn lets see if we can again increase our attendance next week!  A reminder that the school gates will continue to be open from 8.30 am and closed at 8.40am. Registration is at 8.40 am and school finishes at 3.25 pm.

Fines for parents for taking children out of school: What you need to know.

Remember that every day counts and we are in every day next week!

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Harvest Festival

On Wednesday, as a school, we celebrated Harvest by singing together and with Reverend Jane sharing a story.

It has been great to see the School/Eco Council be so enthusiastic in their roles and organising the donations for the harvest display. We were blown away with the donations kindly given. As a school we smashed our target of 200 and ended up totalising a staggering 316 tins! Fawns class were the winning class with a contribution of 81 tins in total. Well done to all involved, I am sure our donations will be greatly received by the Trussell Trust Foundation. Thank you all for your continued support.