Attendance

Merlins - 97%
Kestrels - 92%
Kingfishers -  94%
Skylarks - 97%
Wrens - 97%

Overall school attendance - 95 %

Music Lessons - KS2 (Years 3-6)

If you would like your child to start having music lessons or to continue with their lessons, please return the reply slip from the letter sent out last week by Monday 1^st July.

Instruments are available for hire from Severn Arts or you may qualify for free instrument hire if:

• Your child is eligible for Free School Meals (excluding Universal infant free school meals (UIFSM))
• Your child is in receipt of Pupil Premium
• Your child is receiving a Severn Arts Music Award
• Your child is on the Worcestershire Furthering Talent programme
• Your family is in receipt of Universal Credit which has replaced the following benefits:
  • Child Tax Credit 
  • Housing Benefit 
  • Income Support 
  • Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) 
  • Income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
  • Working Tax Credit 
• You are in receipt of Incapacity Benefit
• Your child is a Looked After Child or Previously Looked After Child
• You are in receipt of Pension Credit (Guarantee Credit)

All the information about instrument hire is on the Severn Arts website.

We do ask for a full academic years commitment but if you do need to cancel your child's lessons, we have to have at least 7 weeks' notice and you will be charged for the lessons during that time as we are still charged by Severn Arts who provide the music teachers.

If you have any questions about music lessons, please come and see Mrs Day in the school office.  Please see below a copy of the letter that was sent out.

We have been enjoying the sunshine in Wrens this week with lots of outdoor play.  On Thursday we had our second transition day for our September starters and the children were excellent hosts once again making sure our pre-schoolers felt settled and at home.

In other news, the dinosaur is back!  This week he left some clues in our outdoor area so we could find out a bit more about him.  The first clue was some bones and we found out that palaeontologists use fossils of dinosaur bones, teeth, claws and horns to find out what they looked like.  We then found a dinosaur egg and this helped us to discover that dinosaurs were reptiles.  I wonder if the egg will hatch?  It has been lovely to watch the children using their prior knowledge and reasoning skills to find out more about dinosaurs as our topic progresses.

Our maths this week has been all about shape and how these can be manipulated and changed.  We made some lovely shape pictures using the pattern blocks and then challenged ourselves to create pictures using a tangram puzzle.  Later in the week, we looked at how shapes could be combined or dissected to make new shapes.  We had fun using our imaginations to create pictures out of a "perfect square" of paper.

In RE, we have been learning about special Christian buildings and looking at some of the external and internal features of a church.  We looked at some photographs of different churches, some of which were local and some of which were in other parts of the world.  We also looked at old and new churches and talked about the physical features that they have in common. We were then given the challenge to represent a church either through a model or piece of art showing some of the key features.

The children have now come to the end of our phonics programme for the year so there will be no more phonics homework in their books.  However, we will continue with our phonics lessons to revisit some of the areas where the children need more practise prior to completing our last set of assessments before the end of term.  Please continue to practise the phonics sounds and tricky words with your child at home.  Thank you!

This week in English, the children have been sequencing events from The Squirrels Who Squabbled. They worked in pairs and annotated and illustrated the events. Also this week, the children have been recalling how to write questions and exclamations. Finally, using all of their work from the past two weeks, the children wrote a narrative as a character from the book.

In maths, Year 1 have been practising counting money. They have done different activities throughout the week to practise this skill, such as visiting our role play shop, playing matching games and counting their coins to buy their ticket and to go on a trip on our bus that we made in the classroom.

Year 2 have carried on with their topic of statistics. This week they have been looking at pictograms and learning how to read and understand them and the importance of checking the key.

In art this week, the children finished off their Mod roc fish sculptures. They used paint to decorate their fish and made sure to add details such as scales. They have worked hard on these and they look great!

In music week, we have introduced minims when performing rhythms. Using a selection of percussion instruments, we performed a selection of rhythms using crotchets, quavers and minims. We have continued to rehearse our song, 'The Rock Stars of the Reef', replacing the actions learnt with the rhythm played on a percussion instrument.

In English, the children have been working towards writing a biography of William Shakespeare as our class book is A Midsummer Night's Dream. They have learnt about the life, times and achievements of the great man.

In maths, we have completed our work on angles and accurate drawings and have started our final topic of statistics. We looked at different types of pictograms as a way of representing data.

In geography, we continued with our topic of 'Where does our food come from?' focussing on how we get our chocolate! We followed the journey of Theo the cocoa bean, identifying the different parts of his journey from tree to shop.

We are trying to collect information about where we import food from so if you, together with your child, could look at food labels, especially fruit and vegetables, and make a note of its country of origin, we can add this information to our class display. Thank you.

In science, the children reviewed their knowledge of habitats and living organisms. Having looked in detail at the different types of habitats that we might find around school the children completed a survey of these different habitats and the organisms they found living in them.

In computing, the children worked collaboratively on a fact file all about different animals.

This week in French, the children familiarised themselves with their dates of birth in French using their knowledge of numbers and months.

In DT, the children are in the process of designing and building the shell for their slingshot cars.

In English, the children have been proofreading and editing the final version of their Romeo and Juliet precis. They were surprised to see what 250-300 words looked like and lots of them had to really think carefully about the language they used in order to stay within this limit. Our next writing focus is a monologue. We watched a BBC animated version of Romeo and Juliet in order for the children to see another version of the story. They are going to choose a character and write a speech from their point of view.

In maths, we have started a new geometry topic of angles. We started by recapping the children's knowledge of turns, right angles and how to measure angles. Y4 were practising clockwise and anticlockwise turns and solving problems involving right angles. Y5 learned how to use a protractor, the importance of knowing whether an angle was acute or obtuse when reading said protractor and how accuracy is key!

This week in Merlins class, we have returned to the story of Macbeth. This week, the children have written their soliloquies. They sound fantastic! They have worked hard to include figurative language, punctuation to show rhythm, conjunctions to show contradicting thoughts and description of thoughts, feelings, fears and desires. I hope to record the children's soliloquies to share on the school website very soon.

In maths, we have been interpreting pie charts and we then went on to use our knowledge of angles to help us draw pie charts using specific data. The children worked hard to ensure accuracy. They also included clear keys and titles to ensure that their pie charts could be read and understood.

In geography this week, we explored how energy is used in the UK. We specifically studied the Port of Blyth in Northumberland. We used an OS map explorer to find specific energy features using 6 figure grid references. This was a challenging skill, however, the children worked well collaboratively to help each other find all the important features.

In DT, the children designed packaging labels to include on their bolognaise sauce jars. It was important that these labels showed the nutritional value of the sauce in addition to the ingredients whilst also being a bright and captivating design.

In science, we have been revisiting our topic about the human body. The children worked in groups to draw around each other and then drew the different body parts to add to their body outline. It was fascinating to see what the children could recall about this topic and the activity helped to embed this learning.