Uniform

I am hoping that those of you who have already had the need to contact AlleyCatz have been very happy with the service received.

I am delighted to confirm that after a long search girls in Year 3 and above, will have a new pink and white summer blouse available to them. I am aware has been long awaited after we consulted with the school council over one year ago. AlleyCatz expect to have the new stock in for the start of the summer term.

Naming Uniform

We do our very best to return lost property but we do come up against the challenge of nameless items. We would be grateful if you could please ensure that every piece of clothing (including shoes) are clearly labelled, ideally with a sewn in name tag. If possible, please ensure these labels are attached in the neckline of tops/ coats and in the back waistband of bottoms to help with easy identification.

Collection Arrangements - Safeguarding

We would be most grateful if any messages regarding collection are passed at the gate with Mrs Watts or Mrs Blower, emailed or called through to the office and not left with the teacher.

Similarly, we would also be grateful if any last minute changes to collection (from 2.30pm) are called through to the School Office and not emailed to ensure the message has been received.

Our week has filled been with poetic prose and intrigue as the Wind howled in from the west ‘while chasing clouds away’; beating upon the terrain of our easterly view. Fire raged in their Science lessons with Mr Stevenson, whilst the down to Earth nature of Michael Rosen was exposed. ‘Every man has a place, in his heart there's a space, and the world can't erase his fantasies’. This may apply to Mr Rosen who we spent much of our time researching as we prepare to write our reports about his writing and biography of his life. In preparation, Year 4 and 5 have been learning about his upbringing and how he began his career and acted out our own impersonations of him with hot seating and reading transcripts from interviews. We have been impressed with how pupils have observed and adopted his performance mannerisms (and accent too) in order to gain a further insight into his character. To express elements of his life, which centres around his family, we consolidated our learning of relative clauses that all begin with relative pronouns (Who, whose, which, where and that).

It was unfamiliar to all how this week we hadn’t anywhere to visit outside of school, other than our usual sporting / adventure escapes. We made an excursion to Richmond Park for Adventure School and worked on team building and communication with a series of images that ‘took a ride in the sky, on a ship fantasy’. Rearranging a series of images that continuously revealed more of a complete picture proved testing, but exemplified resilience and perseverance towards problem solving. Prior to this, pupils had been collaborating in smaller groups and Mr Bond spoke highly of their efforts as they attempted to move ‘helium’ sticks over a series of different obstacles. Pupils were in their element as they used only a straightened index finger to pick up sticks together.

Following our investigations into perimeter and area pupils worked on their volume in Maths. Not the amount of noise they make unfortunately, but still pupils made great progress with understanding how volume is a measurement of three-dimensional space by the amount of cubic units. Understanding the formula for calculating perimeter, area and volume was then put to the test on Friday as they began investigations into objects within the classroom. The results of these investigation will enable pupils to work out the volume capacity of inside their desks, and understand how much stuff they can shove and compact inside them.

We will continue to consolidate our knowledge of perimeter, area and volume whilst revisiting methods for multiplication of 2 digits.

To continue my weather analogies, there was a wind of change in other lessons. A protest! An uprising! A REVOLT!! Pupils learnt how if you abuse people’s freedom, they will revolt and turn against you. Unfortunately for those who revolted; their lives where lost, and freedoms they asked for not granted. However, those in charge did learn that perhaps they needed to treat their employees with more respect. Mr Stevenson’s Computing lessons teaching them entrepreneurial endeavours can excite and fire them up somewhat, especially as their businesses plans will be put to the ultimate test next week.

As for our Humanities lessons, we returned to Medieval History and the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381. Similar to their exploits in Computing, only a little less gruesome.

That concludes our week, a wonderland that was: down to Earth; with lots of blustery Wind and a Fire to succeed .

A great week, Year 4 and Year 5.

Well what a week it’s been!

This week started with a bang and a lot of stop motion animation. We joined Year 1 to teach them to use stop motion, green screen, clips, and iMovie. Year 2 structured stories around a particular setting and theme, and then creating animations to tell the story. We then ‘app smashed’, combining iMovie, clips, and green screen with our animations. A truly exciting activity.

Maths has taken some time this week, with the children learning to read time, calculate the difference between times, writing time in different ways, and solving time problems. Many ticks were given.

The skeleton was explored in science this week, and it proved to be quite humorous.

The children draw around each other and labelled the bones in our body. We even danced like Elvis to reinforce our knowledge of bones, up on our phalanges, and even on our patella’s.

Reception certainly embraced the rainy weather for our trip to Hobble Down farm, jumping into puddles and singing in the rain! We learnt the names for cow and sheep in French, singing Old MacDonald in French too! The children enjoyed petting the small animals like the guinea pig and rabbits and were lucky enough to feed the goats carrots and bamboo. We persevered in the rain as much as we could and were lucky to see some meerkats, Otters and Lamas. Unfortunately, the rest of the animals were shying away from the rain.

Within our classroom environment, the children interacted collaboratively, engaging in role play. They set up a garden centre, with Timothy (our ‘fish professional’) hosting a ‘fish talk’ and chose to write invitations for others to join us. Some children produced their own posters which they did all by themselves!

In Maths, we focused on sharing and halving with chocolate stars. They all worked hard to share an equal amount of sweets between everyone. Well done everyone!

First Steps children and teachers and Sophia’s dad (we hope) had so much fun at Hobbledown Farm this week. The children had a chance to hold and stroke a rabbit and guinea pig. Some of the children didn’t want to touch the animals first then when they observed other children having so much fun with animals they decided to have a go. And they didn’t want to stop stroking them. We visited all the other animals in the farm and saw a turkey, goats, otters, meerkats (they were hiding but managed to see a tail), parrots and Shetland ponies.

We heard that the goats were so hungry and were waiting for us to feed them we couldn’t wait longer and ran to the barn. We held bamboo sticks and goats came really close by and ate all the leaves.

Of course we didn’t miss the opportunity to jump into muddy puddles. We jumped and splashed water all over us. And we had so much fun!

We spend our last hour in the soft play area and children climbed over mountains, rolled over on the floor, walked through magical mazes.

All children behaved extremely well, well done First Steps! We are looking forward to planning our next trip!

In the class, children have improved their shape and colour knowledge doing wooden blocks printing.

Messy play tray was full of with flour and children enjoyed making imaginary pancakes from Pancake Day from last week.

Car printing was another favourite activity of the week. The children focused on different texture prints on the paper and discussed traffic rules.

On Friday children wore their red clothes for Red Nose Day and talked about the meaning of the donations. Thank you all our parents who generously donated today.