Abberley Primary School is part of Operation Encompass, which is a national scheme that operates jointly between Educational and Early Years Settings, Police and Health. 

Operation Encompass is a report that is generated by police and sent to the Education/ Early Years setting, when a child or young person has experienced domestic abuse. 

As an Educational setting, we have ensured that a member of our staff, (Claire Shelley), known as a Key Adult, has been trained in the Operation Encompass procedures allowing us to then use the information that has been shared, in confidence, to support the child/ren in our care. 

The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 identifies children who experience domestic abuse as victims of domestic abuse in their own right. 

We are keen to offer the best support possible to all the children in our care, and we believe this will be extremely beneficial for all those involved. 

This week our activities have been inspired by the traditional tale "Little Red Riding Hood". Our role-play turned into Grandma's cottage complete with a naughty wolf. In our art area we made tissue paper flowers and play dough cakes for Grandma. 

In Topic this week, we enjoyed looking at some aerial photographs of Abberley and used these to plan our route to Abberley shop. On Wednesday we enjoyed an afternoon walk to the village shop to buy the ingredients to make some chocolate chip muffins.  During our walk we looked at the features of a village and discovered that Abberley doesn't have a funfair or a police station, but it did have a speed camera! On Thursday we used the ingredients we had bought to make some delicious chocolate chip muffins. 

In maths, we started a new topic on comparing the size and mass of objects.  We learnt the terms heavy and light and pretended to be human balance scales. We put our knowledge to good use during our cooking activity. 

The children are really enjoying their weekly PE lessons. This week we introduced playing games and the children are beginning to learn the importance of listening to the instructions, playing by the rules and showing good sportsmanship.

This week in English, Year 2s finished their wonderful 'I Love' poems. They included rhyming words and alliteration to make these poems interesting to read. We then began looking at our new book, 'The Day the Crayons Quit'. Our classroom crayons 'quit' too this week and the children had to decide why. We read the book and the children made inferences in pairs about the crayons' feelings based on the letters that the crayons wrote. We then began learning about writing to persuade and techniques used to do so. 

In maths, Year 1 has been learning to recognise parts and wholes, e.g. if 5 is our whole, 3 and 2 could be our parts. They applied this learning to solve problems using part whole models. We drew a giant chalk part whole model on the playground and the children used this to explain their workings out to different questions. Towards the end of the week, they have used this learning to write addition number sentences to match the part whole models. 

Year 2 has been ordering objects and numbers from greatest to smallest and vice versa. For Year 2s there has also been a big focus on counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. They have used a hundred square to identify these and the patterns when counting in these multiples. They used their knowledge of these multiples to then solve word problems. 

In geography this week, the children learnt about aerial photographs and bird's eye view. They then imagined being sellotaped to the ceiling of our classroom to draw an aerial picture of our classroom before labelling it. We also began looking at different classrooms around the world. This initiated some fantastic conversations about the similarities and differences of children's lives around the world and many of the children expressed gratitude for our classroom and school. 

This week in maths we have completed our work on place value and have moved onto addition and subtraction. We have recapped using number bonds to ten and adding and subtracting ones.  

In English, we have done some amazing work on our inner monologues with a focus on a character’s thoughts, feelings and reactions to situations. We have looked in detail at how we can use rhetorical questions to provide a framework for a narrative and describe these thoughts and feelings. The children have written the first paragraph of this and will be continuing to do so next week.  

This week in science we are coming to the end of our life processes work and the children have begun a fact file focused on all of the fantastic things we have learnt throughout this topic. We will be completing this next week ahead of moving onto our new topic. 

In history, we looked at what life would be like for the early humans living in the Neolithic Stone Age and what was specifically “new” about the Neolithic period as well. We introduced the idea that pottery artefacts can give us enormous insights into the changes in Stone Age life. We also looked at the fact that settled farming arrived in Britain for the first time during this period and how that so dramatically changed the course of or history.

In music this week, we have been learning how to notate and perform different rhythms. Our rhythms include crotchets, quavers, minims and semibreves. We have been using body percussion to represent each type of note used.

In English this week, we have been identifying the features of a recount. The children have focussed on the part of the book which explains how the Krindlekrax came to be living in the sewers and picked out what they felt were the five main parts. They then added these to their planning sheets along with the who and when of the story. They will be using this planning next week to write a recount of this event.

In maths, we have started our new topic of addition and subtraction. This week our focus was on addition and we began by looking at the importance of lining up the place value columns and setting out calculations neatly to avoid confusion. We discussed what each of the digits was worth, especially when we needed to carry digits as we cannot have digits greater than 9 in each place value column.

This week in Merlins class we have had a great week. The children have planned and begun writing their stories based on The Highwayman poem by Alfred Noyes. They have thought carefully about what will make their stories effective and have worked hard to incorporate these ideas into their writing. 

In maths this week, we have been revisiting addition and subtraction and the children have been practising using the formal written method. They then had the opportunity to secure their understanding through a range of reasoning and problem-solving activities.

Year 5 and 6 began the week with a visit to the Balaji temple in Oldbury. The children had the opportunity to learn about Hinduism and asked many thoughtful questions as they were shown around this fascinating place of worship. 

In History this week, we evaluated a number of historical sources about a family that lived in Northamptonshire during WW2. This gave us the opportunity to learn a lot about the differences and similarities in the roles and expectations of men and women during the war. 

In RE, we explored the theory of cosmology, evolution, and creation. We discussed whether we believed that you could be both a Christian and a scientist. We learned that there are many areas where religion and science complement each other and looked at a range of views from Christians on this topic. 

In science, we continued with our topic of light and looked in greater depth at colour. The children used filters to see what different coloured objects looked like through them. They learned that objects absorb some colours and reflect others, e.g. a pear reflects the green light but absorbs all the other colours of light. It is only the green light that bounces back into our eye.

In music, the children continued to compose their own anthem song and were writing the lyrics for their second verse based on D-Day.

Please note that any orders for Young Voices tickets and t-shirts must be in school by 12pm on Tuesday 10^th October. The Young Voices concert really is something not to be missed!

Please see below information from within the community and independent of the school

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