Newsletters

It was a joy to see each child in school interacting with Father Christmas on Thursday. The children were gracious and excited and even the older children appeared to enjoy the opportunity to feel that Christmas sense of fun. We were delighted to have one or two elves visit too, although some were a little bit naughty.

Even on the last weeks of term, learning is at the centre of all that we do at Abberley. The end of term is a great time to walk around the school and hear the children talking passionately and informatively about all that they have learnt. This afternoon there was a history vibe, from learning about mummification in Kestrels, to empathising with Roman Soldiers on Hadrians Wall and exploring a range of scientists from the past in Merlins. The knowledge and engagement with learning across the school is fantastic.  

We hope that you enjoy the football this weekend and that we get the result that we hope for. Whatever the outcome of the weekend's football match, we will have the Abberley World Cup to look forward to next week, where we get to see which house will emerge triumphant. Please see details of this below. 

Abberley Primary World Cup

To celebrate the world cup finals taking place at the end of next week, the whole school will travel by coach to the Astroturf at Abberley Hall on Wednesday 14th December. We plan to kick-off our house tournament at 1.15pm. KS1 children will compete in houses. Houses in KS2 will be divided into an A and B team. 

Children can come to school in PE kit, including tracksuit, jogging bottoms or leggings and must bring a warm coat, gloves and a hat. The forecast at the moment is for cold, but sunny weather, so we need the children to wrap up very warm so that the afternoon can go ahead.

We will have access to the pavilion to provide toilet facilities and will enjoy a warm drink and biscuit as part of the afternoon football celebration.

The tournament will finish at 3.20pm at which point collection will be from Abberley Hall school car park by the netball courts. Children booked into Abberley Acorns will be brought back to school. 

Clubs

A reminder that the final after school clubs are on Monday 12th December. Abberley Acorns is available up to and including the 16th December.  

Parking reminder

Please be courteous and mindful of others when parking at pickup and drop off. Parking on the main road makes it difficult for people to see when crossing, and we have had a number of complaints regarding blocked driveways. Please be aware that it is also illegal to park near to or opposite junctions.  

As a school, we are mindful of the dangers of this junction and have communicated with the county council regarding the need for changes. We have also requested permission to have a crossing patrol. However, our suggestions have been rejected on safety and practicality grounds.

Whilst the village hall car park can be busy at times, we are incredibly lucky to have use of this. In many schools, families have to park on local roads and walk for some distance to get to school as no parking facilities are available. 

Christmas decorations for sale

All pupils made a Christmas decoration which they could purchase at the school Christmas fare for £1.  If you were unable to attend and you wish to purchase your child's decoration then please send in £1 next week.

Incredible cakes for the Christmas Fair

The cakes available at the Christmas Fair were incredible. Thank you and well done to everyone who brought cakes in to go on sale. Those pictured below were selected as the winners and a small prize is available in the school office. If you spot your entry, please come and collect your prize this afternoon or on Monday.

It is hard to believe we only have a week left of term to go.  The last couple of weeks of school have flown past and life in Wrens has been as busy as usual.   

This week the children have been hard at work rehearsing our nativity play “Hooray in a Manger”.  Thank you for helping the children to learn their lines – the performance is really beginning to come together.  I am sure you will enjoy the show next Thursday with singing, dancing and a very special camel! 

On Tuesday morning Reception walked to the post office to post all the letters the children in Wrens had written to Father Christmas.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that they reach the North Pole in time for Christmas.  On Thursday we had a very special visitor in school when Father Christmas popped in for a chat with us all.  He even had some children applying for jobs as elves in his workshop! 

Year 1 have been finishing off their work on subtraction in maths and we have been practicing our counting back skills to aid us when solving subtraction problems mentally.  Meanwhile Reception met Numberlie number 5 and showed good pencil control to draw round their hands and label their fingers with numbers 1-5. 

Please remember that all children will need to come to school in their PE kit next Wednesday for the Abberley World Cup.  We will be spending the afternoon outside so please make sure they have plenty of layers so they can wrap up warm.  On Thursday we would like the children to come into school in their normal school uniform as they will be wearing their school shoes for the nativity performance.  Thank you!

Watch out Santa! In English, Skylarks have been planning how they can catch Santa on Christmas Eve from reading the book ‘How to catch Santa.’ They have planned lots of different traps so hopefully he won't get caught before he delivers presents to my house! 

In maths, all Skylarks have mastered adding 2 digit numbers by partitioning into tens and ones, adding these together and then recombining to calculate the total. 

In science, we carried out an investigation to find out what snakes eggs feel like. William said 'they felt soft and squiggy and not hard a like chicken eggs.' 

To keep warm during outdoor learning on Wednesday we all enjoyed a sitting around a camp fire and making Christmas decorations using natural materials. 

Thank you for learning the Nativity lines with your child. We are very much looking forward to performing it to you next week. 

This week in English, the children have put their final touches to their newspaper reports. The newspaper reports that they have written explain the 'miracle' words that have been found in Charlotte's web. The children have been taking it in turns this week to read the story aloud to the class. We have been working on their intonation and fluency when reading aloud. 

In maths, we have been practising times tables with different games. It is so important that the children are continuing to practise at home too in order to improve their speed and accuracy of recall. Year 3 have been revising how to divide through sharing and grouping. Year 4s have been learning how to multiple by 10 and 100 and what happens on a place value grid when this happens. 

In history, we recapped our learning on Boudicca and finished off our work on how she might have looked. The children examined 9 different depictions of Boudicca and had to rate which picture they felt was the most accurate representation of her to the least accurate and justify this. The children also learnt all about Hadrian's Wall. We looked at why it was built and its layout. Also, we looked at what life might have been like as a Roman solider stationed at the wall. With this new knowledge they 'became' Roman soldiers and wrote a diary entry explaining how their day had been whilst working at Hadrian's Wall.

In English this week, Kestrels have continued to read The Silver Sword. Our writing focus is suspense writing and the children have been looking at different ways to include drama and suspense in their writing. The penultimate chapter of the book is called The Storm, and it is all about a huge storm that happens while the children are waiting for the boat carrying their father to arrive. The children end up getting separated and there is a cliff hanger where they are not sure if one of them has died. The children have broken this chapter down into the most important parts and have been creating figurative language to describe them. They will use this information next week to write their own suspense story.

In maths, we have continued with our topic of fractions. This week, we have been focussing on adding mixed numbers. This relies on the children being able to recall their previous learning on improper fraction and converting between these and mixed numbers. The children have found this tricky and we have spent time going back over prior learning to help support them and make sure they have grasped this method securely. It has also meant the children have had to be able to find common denominators, something where having a solid knowledge of times tables makes a tremendous amount of difference.

In science through their topic of Evolution and Inheritance, Y5&6 have been researching famous people who played an important role in this area. The children could choose from Charles Darwin, Mary Anning or Alfred Russel Wallace. They had to find out what they did and why they were famous in scientific terms and produce a fact file for their chosen scientist.

The children have been working very hard, learning carols and practising readings ready for our Carol Service next Tuesday. Their singing sounds beautiful and they read with such confidence. It is always such a special event and it would be lovely to see you all either at 2pm or 6pm next week.

This week in Merlins class,  we have continued to read 'The Silver Sword'. In the later part of the story, the children have battled extreme weather and illness in efforts to be reunited with their parents in Switzerland. This week, we have practised summarising the chapter 'The Storm' in which the children get caught up in 'the freak storm of 1945'. Next week, we will be writing paragraphs to build suspense using our summaries of the exciting and tense moments of this chapter. 

This week in maths, we have begun to practise multiplying fractions. The children have learnt that this involves multiplying both numerators and both denominators and have even taken on the challenge of multiplying mixed and whole numbers. Next week, we will be consolidating this learning with problem solving tasks before we begin to divide fractions by fractions, whole numbers and mixed numbers.

In History this week, the children have thoroughly enjoyed learning about the ancient Egyptian mummification process. This week they have written a set of instructions for any newbie embalmer and then we have begun our apple mummy experiment! We are mummifying one apple slice with salt (natron) to see the effect this has on the apple overtime and compare this to a control apple.

In Art, the children were enthused at the prospect of bringing together all they have been learning to create a typography map. They worked collaboratively to build up a 3D visual map they demonstrated their typography skills. You can view their brilliant results on the website!