Newsletters

Parents' evening

This is scheduled for 15th and 16th February. This should now be visible to you in parent portal. This can be accessed via the following link: https://www.abberley.worcs.sch.uk/parentportal/?redirect=parents-evening  using the same login details as in the autumn term or via the school app as below. 

If you have forgotten your login details, please e-mail the office and we can issue a password reset.

If further problems persist, please call us on Monday or early next week or speak with Mr Turvey on the gate, and we will book an appointment for you. 

House cross-country

On the afternoon of Friday 17th February, we will be holding our house cross country run around school. All children should come to school in their PE kit and with sturdy trainers. The course is going to be a little muddy.

Lunches

The menu up until Easter is now available to book lunches. The last day to place an order for the first day back after half-term is Wednesday 22nd February.

This week the Wrens have been visiting China with Emma Jane and her aeroplane.  Emma Jane met a dragon on the Great Wall of China and we had a go at building our own Great Wall in our construction area. Our role play turned into a Chinese restaurant and we practised our chopstick skills in the fine motor area.

We learnt all about the celebration of Chinese New Year.  Reception enjoyed acting out the story.  We all thought it was that unfair that the rat won the race when he had cheated! Year 1 worked very hard to retell the story in their English lessons.  We have been really impressed with how they are becoming more consistent at using capital letters and full stops in their writing.

On Wednesday Reception enjoyed a tasting session of different Chinese food. Some of the children showed excellent skills with their chopsticks and everyone loved the prawn crackers!

In maths Reception have been exploring measure through mass and length this week.  We have been ordering 3 items from lightest to heaviest and from shortest to longest. We enjoyed working on these skills independently in the maths area. Meanwhile Year 1 have revisiting addition and exploring the relationship between number bonds to 10 and number bonds to 20. 

Next week is assessment week in our phonics programme.  Please revisit the sounds your child has already learnt this half term for homework this week.

In English, the children have continued work on 'The Tear Thief'. They have worked hard to plan a setting description of the street where the Tear Thief is. The Tear Thief goes into different houses and steals the tears of crying children- this makes them feel much better. The children have been using fantastic descriptive language to describe to the reader just what they can see, smell, hear and feel in the street. They are working on writing these up neatly so that their great writing can be displayed in the classroom. 

In maths, money is still the focus. The children have been consolidating knowing the value of different coins and being able to count up money. The focus this week has been on choosing the correct amount of money and knowing there are different ways to make amounts- e.g. £6 can be made by a £5 note and £1 coin or 6, £1s etc. The more children can practise counting money at home the better. The children have started to investigate how repeated addition can be written as a multiplication sentence e.g. 3+3=6 so 2x3=6

In RE, the Year 1s and 2s have learnt all about why Christian choose to sing to or about God. We learnt a very popular worship song 'He's got the whole world in his hand' and discussed why Christians added in elements such as 'wind and rain', 'moon and stars'. The children then chose other things around the world that Christians may want to include in future hymns. 

In art, our artist focus has been Eric Carle (writer and illustrator of the Very Hungry Caterpillar). He uses collage to create his illustrations and in art this week, the children have created collage of minibeasts using newspaper. 

In PE, the children worked with a partner to adapt the class pirate dance so it included different levels, speed or pathways. The pairs then performed their dances and gave each other feedback about their performances. 

In PSHE, children designed and made their butterfly ready for the whole school display to help celebrate 'Children's Mental Health Week'. The theme this year is 'Let's Connect' and encourages children to connect with each other and realise how we can all thrive when we work together. 

In science, the children explored man-made and natural materials and sorted them into these groups. They went on a hunt around the school grounds to see what man-made materials they could find. 

In English this week, Kingfishers finished off their diary entries as Hogarth's father. They worked hard on these and were able to fully get into the mindset of Hogarth's dad to make these successful. We then began to examine instructions. The children were able to suggest where they have seen or used instructions before and what the purpose of them is. They had some muddled instructions on how to assemble the Iron Man and were able to order these using their knowledge of time adverbials and the structure of instructions. We then annotated these to identify the key features, such as imperative verbs. 

In maths, we have continued to practise using short division to divide. The children used this to divide 2-digits and 3-digits. After they had fully grasped this, we moved on to using the same method with division questions where there are remainders left over. Some Kingfishers went on to solve division word problems involving remainders. We have a big focus on times tables in Year 3 and 4. By the end of Year 4 children should be able to recall multiplication and division facts up to 12x12 accurately and at speed. We play lots of different games alongside TTRS to help them with this. Ask your child to show you a game we play and see who will win the times table battle!

In French this week, we have been learning numbers from 0-20. The children have been using these to ask and answer the question of 'How old are you?' The whole class has been working really hard in French and practising their French accents when having a conversation with a partner or myself. 

In geography, we have been exploring what Asia is like. This week the children used an atlas to locate places in Asia. They also learnt specifically about what India and the United Arab Emirates are like. The children have been hooked on our learning about Asia. I suggested that if they have a little time over the next week that they could do a little more research about Asia in order to help them with the task on Wednesday next week. 

This week in English, Kestrels have continued to write their own narratives based on Alice in Wonderland. The children have used the character they created last week, to write their own stories about them entering Wonderland and being chased by the vicious Bandersnatch. I have been very impressed with their work and next week, the children will be turning these into their very own mini books. They will be bringing this home at the end of next week. 

In maths, we have moved on from fractions and have been working with decimals. We recapped how to use place value grids to help determine the value of each digit in numbers to three decimal places. Once this was secure, the children used this knowledge to help them round decimal numbers to the nearest whole and to one decimal place. 

In science, Y5&6 have been learning about states of matter, i.e. solids, liquids and gases, and reversible changes. They looked at what happened when steam hits a cold surface as well as what happens when a solid mixed with a liquid. We also discussed what a reversible change is and the children were able to give lots of examples of these. 

In PE, the children were honing their goalkeeping skills this week. They worked in pairs and groups to test each other’s reflexes and hand eye coordination as well as their catching skills. The children were very keen to put these to the test with a quick match at the end of the lesson. Hopefully, you will have seen the news article about our dance lesson this week and have been able to watch the videos of the children’s performances. 

This week in Merlins class, we have continued to write our imitation poems based on Jabberwocky by Lewis Caroll. The children have used this poem as inspiration and have thought carefully about the poetic devices and structure. They have created portmanteau words throughout and have used an ABAB writing pattern. Once drafted, the children began drawing and painting their creatures and next week, they will be performing their poems.

In Maths, we have begun our topic of algebra and the children have been solving problems using one and two step function machines. Next week, we will be forming expressions and using substitution to solve problems.

In PE this week, the children have been practicing their goal keeping skills in football and using angles tp track the path of the ball in order to intercept it swiftly. In Dance, we have explored The Lion Dance, performed as part of China's new year celebrations. You can view these dances on the school website under the 'News' tab.

In Geography, we have been learning about the different road, rail, air and port transport developments that are currently underway throughout the UK to help solve the issues that result from our increasing activity and population grown.