Newsletters

A request from Mrs Postlethwaite, Art Teacher

Please would you bring into school any unwanted brown, tan or sheer coloured tights for us to use in our school art lessons.  Thank you.

Starting Well Partnership

We were very excited this week in Wrens to be the very first ever winners of "The Golden Lunchbox"!  The children had worked very hard to show our "Happy Lunchtime" values and consequently collected the most pompoms since half term.  The children really enjoyed their prize of an ice pop. Just right on a hot day!

In maths this week, Reception have been continuing to practise their subtraction skills and started to record their calculations as a subtraction number sentence.  Meanwhile, Year 1 have started a new topic of Time.  We have been very impressed with the children's knowledge.  This week we covered using a calendar to measure time and learning the days of the week and the months of the year.  We also started to look at telling the time on an analogue clock to the hour and half hour.  The children worked really hard to master this skill.  Please continue to help your child practise this skill at home.

In English, Year 1 explored the next part of the story "Jack and Baked Beanstalk".  In the story Jack found a castle and a giant at the top of the beanstalk but they were a little different to the ones we came across in the traditional tale.  We used adjectives and similes to write some fantastic descriptions.  Reception have been working hard on their independent writing skills this week, and we have been impressed with their creative sentences.

In Topic, Reception were inspired by the story "What the Ladybird Heard" to draw and label their own maps of a farmyard.  Next week we will be finding out a bit more about what a farmer does in preparation for our trip to Noverton Farm the following week.

In History, Year 1 have started to look at the Victorian time period and contrast life in Victorian times with life today.  We will be linking this to our history study on Witley Court over the coming few weeks.  All the children enjoyed a lovely afternoon out in the sun on Thursday practising for Sports Day.  We are very excited for this event and just hope the nice weather lasts.

It has been a great week in Skylarks, especially with the sun shining so brightly!

In English, we have started out new book ‘Hermelin the Detective Mouse’. The very beginning of the book shows a busy street with lots of residents looking for their belongings. A secretive mouse, ‘Hermelin’ is watching and has spotted where all of their things are. He uses a typewriter to send notes to explain. The residents aren’t too pleased to find out Hermelin is a mouse and VERMIN! The children played detectives themselves to predict where all of the belongings were and then have designed an invitation which includes important information to invite Hermelin to a party to thank him for his help. We then used our computing skills to type up our invitations, just like Hermelin!

In maths, our new topic area is ‘statistics’. The children have practised using tally charts and then transferring data into block diagrams. Next week, we will be using pictograms to represent different data, exploring most and least popular and finding differences between totals.

In RE, the year 1s and 2s have been thinking about why specific places are sacred and special to different people from different faiths and backgrounds. We spoke in detail about what makes a place special and sacred - we used key words like ‘peaceful, calm, and quiet’. All the children drew pictures of their most special place and wrote sentences about what they like to do there and how it makes them feel.

In computing, we learnt how to sort data using a branching database. Here is the link if your child would like to create a branching database at home. It is important to remember you must ask 'yes or no' questions to sort the data JIT5 (j2e.com)

In outdoor learning we learnt about the fire triangle. This week we were looking at the heat part of the triangle and practised using fire steels to create sparks and light cotton wool. This was so exciting!

In history, we compared Victorian and modern-day homes. The children were fascinated finding out what life was like in the Victorian era. We all decided we would like to live in the 'rich house' of Witley Court and not live in a 'poor' house, especially one without a toilet!

In English this week, the children produced an informative poster about our school. The posters aimed to reassure a new child joining the school. They explained things such as the daily schedule, uniform and where things in the school are. The children had to think very carefully to not write this in the first person as they needed to write in third person. We have also read a large chunk of our book this week which helped the class to understand the characters a little more and make further inferences about them ready for next week's learning.

In maths, Year 4 have focused on coordinates and learnt how to plot, move and describe coordinates. Both year groups then moved onto telling the time. We began by revising o'clock and half past, before moving on to quarter to and quarter past. After, the children learnt how to tell the time in 5-minute intervals accurately and most then moved on to tell the time to the minute. If you have an analogue clock at home, it would be great if you could test your child on telling the time every so often or ask them how many minutes there are left until a certain time. This will help reinforce and embed the learning from school. 

In science, we began our new topic of Rocks and Soils. The children learnt about the layers of the Earth. They also learnt about the different types of rocks and how these are formed. They produced scientific posters to explain these rocks and the formation process for each. 

In French, we have been focusing on the topic of 'Lifestyles'. At the moment the children are learning the vocabulary needed for family members and are learning how to talk and write about their family and friends.

In English this week, we have continued reading 'Wild Boy'. We have spent time looking at the descriptions of Mr. Finch, the man who takes Wild Boy from the workhouse. The children have used the categories of facial features, mannerisms, physical features, etc. to look in depth at the language the author has used to show just what a nasty man he is. The children then used this information to come up with their own character descriptions of him in the form of a wanted poster.

In maths, we have been adding and subtracting decimals with the same number of decimal places and different numbers of decimal places. The most important thing the children had to do was to write these calculations with the decimal points lined up, not the amount of digits in each number. This revisited previous work on place value and was a good reminder for some children.

In science, we are starting our new topic of electricity. We learned how electricity is produced in power stations. The children then spent time finding out about important scientists who worked in the field of electricity to make important discoveries.

In PSHE, our lesson this week was all about puberty in girls. The children showed maturity and curiosity during our session and lots of questions were asked and answered. It was lovely to see the boys asking as many questions as the girls as it is important that both sexes understand the changes each other goes through during puberty.

You may have seen the poster by the school gate advertising the KS2 summer production. Tickets go on sale on Monday and you can buy these from the school office.

This week, Merlins class began with an exciting day out bell boating on the River Severn. The children had a fantastic day, the weather was beautiful and they did a fantastic job representing Abberley. 

We have continued to read our class book, Wild Boy. After the gruesome murder we read about last week, the story has taken an interesting turn. Wild Boy and acrobat, Clarissa Everett, have been framed for a second murder. We have read about their daring escape and their plans to solve this puzzling mystery. We have reached a point in the story where these characters are about to enter a secret, hidden room. We are working towards writing a setting description of this mysterious new place.

In maths this week, we have continued with our topic of ratio and proportion. This week we have continued to use scale factor to draw scaled drawings. Later in the week, we applied this learning to 3D shapes. We used the multilink cubes to calculate the surface area of cuboids of different sizes. We ended the week by solving proportion problems using our existing knowledge of fractions.

In history, we have been learning about what life was like in Baghdad during the early Islamic civilization. We went on to analyse several sources and try to decipher how historians have come to the conclusions they have about the people living in this interesting, historical city.

This week, we had our third rehearsal for the production of Star Warts. The children are working determinedly and with enthusiasm. I would encourage the children to continue to learn their lines off by heart as we are no longer using scripts within rehearsal time.