FoS - Cake sale proceeds

We made £172 at our cake and uniform sale yesterday and the rain just about held off! Thanks to everyone who supplied such a lovely selection of bakes, to those who helped run the stall, to those who spent their pennies and to mother nature for being kind! Rachel, Jen, Hayley, Ali and Jo.

Year 6 - Young Writers Spooky Sagas Competition

Mrs Kempson entered 10 hair-raising tales from Year 6 writers into this year’s Spooky Sagas Competition. After receiving 22,000 entries, we are very excited to have received confirmation that all 10 children have had their work chosen for publication in Spooky Sagas for the South East!

“I am delighted to let you know that I’ve chosen all of the work from your school for publication in Spooky Sagas – The South East. Having work published is a fantastic way to boost confidence and showcases writing skills as well as giving pupils a real audience and purpose for their writing. Having all your pupils’ work chosen is something to be proud of, it doesn’t happen every day! I was impressed with their reading and writing and it’s clear you’ve really inspired them with Spooky Sagas – it’s been a privilege to read and every piece will make a fantastic addition to Spooky Sagas – The South East!”

The book is scheduled for publication on 31st May 2019 and we will receive a free copy to share with the children at school.

A massive well done to all the children who entered and a huge ‘thank you’ must also go to Mrs Kempson who has worked tirelessly to enthuse the children and promote their love of reading and writing (as well as taking the time to organise the entries!) We are very proud of all of you!

Year 5 & 6 - our girls playing football

The Year 5/6 girls took part in football tornament on Wednesday afternoon at Henry Beaoufort School, Winchester. Despite not playing as a team before, the girls played from strength to strength against some tough competition. Not only did they do themselves proud, they represented the school showing great sportmanship, teamwork and persistance. The girls had enormous amouts of fun even though they did not win, their enthusiasm kept Miss Kingshott and Mrs Kempson smiling. 

Well done girls!

Year 5 - bridges and high speed trains

Year 5 have had a busy week, displaying their amazing bridges built in Design and Technology. Parents and carers were invited in to take part in a lively debate about whether a High Speed Train link is needed to connect the northern cities with the south. The children presented well constructed arguments in favour and against resulting in the adults voting 48% in favour and 52% against, in contrast to the children who were a resounding 93% against the High Speed Train link after considering all the pros and cons. 

Year 1 - the farm, place value and the UK

Welcome back after half term

What super Spring weather we had to start our new half term! It was a treat to see the children enjoying the sunny weather as they played together outside.

Very many thanks to everyone who has paid for the Longdown Dairy farm trip; we had a fantastic day last year and I am really looking forward to another great day! 

To ensure that we have a safe and enjoyable day, please note the following:

• We will be leaving school at approx. 9.15am and will return before 3.00pm. 

• Please wear school uniform on the top half, comfortable trousers on the bottom half.

• Shoes/boots suitable to wear on a muddy farm.

• Coat suitable for the weather (possibly wet).

• Packed lunch, drink and snack in a bag that the child can carry.

•  (for those having a school packed lunch, please provide an additional drink and a snack) 

In maths this week, we have been revisiting number and place value. We have used a range of resources to find 1 more/less and 10 more/less. We have compared numbers and used this knowledge to order whole numbers too. We have used these skills to solve different problems and challenges to do with place value.

We have been asked to write some new stories to entertain other children in KS1. As we will have been on our farm trip, we will be writing farm-based stories and will be compiling them into a ‘book’ which can be shared by other children. We are all very excited about this and can’t wait to get cracking! We will be including new grammar skills in our stories, as well as consolidating existing skills, such as punctuation and spelling. 

In geography, we have started to explore the United Kingdom, learning about the 4 countries and their capital cities, as well as the main seas that surround our island.  

In ICT, we are starting to use our new coding software. As some of the children are finding logging in tricky and time consuming, their passwords have been sent home for them to practice on a keyboard. If you are able to support your child in navigating the keyboard to type their password, this would be very much appreciated and will greatly speed up the log-in time! Many thanks in advance for your assistance and support with this.

We continue with our daily Guided reading and phonics – please see your class teacher if you would like copies of the phase 2, 3 and 5 sound mats to support your child when reading. 

Details of an excellent website that supports phonics learning can be found below; many of the games can be accessed free of charge and the children love playing them!

www. phonicsplay.co.uk

Our classrooms have been alive with the sounds of the recorder on Tuesday afternoons. The children are very much enjoying their music lessons and are becoming more confident with the handling and fingering of the notes. 

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please speak to your child’s teacher so that we can address it as soon as possible. Thank you.

Notes:

World Book Day

It is World Book Day on Thursday 7thMarch. Year 1 children have been asked to come in dressed in blue. 

Parents’ evening 

The booking is now open for you to book an appointment with your child’s teacher on Tuesday 12thor Thursday 14thMarch. If you are unable to use the parents booking website, please see your child’s teacher who will be able to make an appointment for you.

Inset Day

Friday 15thMarch 

Year 3 - A cricketing good time!

On Monday 25th February, some of our Year 3 children had the oppotunity to take part in a criket Festival at Places for Leisure Eastleigh as part of the ICC Cricket World Cup Trophy tour. The children took part in many exciting activities led by trained cricket coaches who encourgaed the children to develop their throwing, catching and batting skills.

Fortunately, for Years 1, 2 and 3, we have a follow up cricket taster day, led by St Cross Cricket Club, on 22nd March 2019. 

Outcomes and parent meetings

Dear Parents,

Well done to Year 2 children who presented a very colourful and positive pantomime experience earlier today. Thank you to Mr Read and the Year 2 team for all of the hard work and effort that went into the production. The audience response tells me that it was extremely well received. This half term has seen a number of different very successful and varied outcomes. Thank you to all parents who have supported the outcomes through the home learning or by attending. An Anglo Saxon stew in the slow cooker is going to take some beating though. No pressure!

Thank you to all the parents who joined us to discuss our school improvement journey this week. We had a very open forum which gave us the opportunity to explore some of the questions, concerns and suggestions that parents have about our school. We will continue to provide opportunities like these to share new information and engage with our parents and carers. 

I enjoyed meeting children with the highest number of Dojo points earlier today for a celebratory hot chocolate.  This week we revisited our behaviour policy to ensure that we are applying it consistently and effectively across the school.  There are a number of small changes we are making as a result. Dojo points are now linked to our Keys for Success and our Headteacher Merits are linked to high quality work that children will share with me in order to receive a merit. Our sanctions will remain the same but children will be spoken to privately rather than through the behaviour chart in the classroom.

We have also taken time to look at our communication processes.  Messages to parents will be communicated to parents via the newsletter or text messages. We will not be using Dojo for a number of reasons. I appreciate that communication, particular having dates in advance, is not yet as smooth as it needs to be. We are working on this. 

Unfortunately we are having to cancel some trips. If your class is affected you will be notified by text. I appreciate how disappointing this is. We do rely on voluntary contributions, although of course we also recognise that they are voluntary. If we cannot cover the cost of the trip we are not able to proceed. Unfortunately the school budget cannot support school trips.

We are re-visiting the Stanmore Curriculum in the summer term. I firmly believe that school trips are an essential part of a rich curriculum. We are taking this problem seriously and looking at ways to resolve it. What we can do is plan more low cost trips using the local environment wherever possible. Perhaps this would help us to prioritise one further afield trip a year. Let me have any ideas or solutions that you have heard of from friends or family in other schools.

In previous newsletters I mentioned our Ready to Learn room being up and ready after half term.  I believe this will be a great resource to support our children.  We will be giving parents and carers an opportunity to find out more about this facility during next half term.

This half term has sped by and reflecting on the last six weeks, I am thoroughly enjoying being part of the Stanmore Community. I am extremely grateful to all the children staff, governors and parents for the commitment and support to being the BEST that we can be. We are continuing to take positive steps forward.

Thank you.

Year 1 - 2D shapes, beans and fruit

Happy half term!

We have reached the halfway point in the year – a term and a half completed and a term and half to go! The children have worked extremely hard in their learning this week and have produced some excellent pieces of work. We are very proud of their achievements!

In maths, we have been exploring 2D shapes. After naming a range of 2D shapes, we learnt about their properties, using the language of ‘edges’ and ‘vertices’ to describe them. The children made Mr Men ‘ID badges’ for the different shaped characters, and played games of shape ‘odd one out’. We also used hoops to sort shapes according to different criteria. Some children drew their own Venn diagrams to help them to explain their thinking. 

In English, the children planned and wrote their instructions for making a fruit kebab. They published their work into bordered paper and used them to ‘teach’ their parents/carers when they visited the classroom on Thursday for our ‘Go Bananas! outcome.  They also write a mini questionnaire which they used at the end of the afternoon to evaluate their work. We were amazed by the quality of the writing, sentence structure and presentation – well done Year 1! Many thanks to everyone who supported our outcome on Thursday, we had a wonderful time!

Our beans have grown beautifully and we have been able to have a close look at the different parts of the plant in our science lessons. We have been investigating the life cycle of a bean plan, drawing and labelling our own version today. Some of the children were able to write an explanation of how the bean was growing at each stage. 

In PSHE, we have been thinking about making choices and their consequences. We thought about good and not so good choices, and how they might make us feel. 

Notes:

Reading books

Over half term, the coloured band boxes will be topped up with some new readers which were purchased by FOS. Thank you to FOS – I know that the children will love having some exciting new books to read!

PE

We will be returning to our Wednesday and Friday PE slots next half term. Please ensure that your child has a PE kit (clearly labelled) that fits in school on these days. 

Music 

We continue with recorder lessons on Tuesdays.

Have a wonderful half term! Thank you for your continued support.

E-safety and 500 words

This week the whole school have been learning about e-safety. Safer Internet Day is celebrated globally in February each year in over a hundred countries to promote the safe and positive use of digital technology for children and young people and inspire a national conversation. Coordinated in the UK by the UK Safer Internet Centre, the celebration sees hundreds of organisations get involved to help promote the safe, responsible and positive use of digital technology for children and young people.

Safer Internet Day is a fantastic opportunity to reflect as a family about how you can use the internet and technology safely, responsibly and positively. Whether you are a parent, grandparent, foster carer, aunt, uncle or older sibling – we can all play a role in empowering children to enjoy their time online! To find out more CLICK HERE

You may have heard of BBC Radio 2's short story-writing competition for children, in association with Oxford University Press. Stanmore School children are entering this year so prepare to be amazed. Children from Year 5 and 6 took part in a live interactive programme for schools, inspiring children to come up with their own amazing 500 Words story ideas.

We were delighted to see the name of our school appear on the screen! To watch the lesson again CLICK HERE

Good luck to everyone participating in the competition! Don’t forget your Keys for Success.

As leaders and teachers we are continuing our improvement journey. We are looking forward to working in partnership with you at our school improvement meetings next week: Wednesday evening 7pm and Thursday morning 9am. We hope to see you there.

Year 1 - Fruit-tastic fun!

The penultimate week of the half term has been bursting at the seams with learning for our two wonderful Year 1 classes!

In maths, we revisited our ‘time’ learning, which started with us sequencing events which happen earlier/later, before/after within a day.

Examples: 

• I go to bed after I have brushed my teeth.

• Before I have my tea, I play with my sister.

• Breakfast time is earlier than lunchtime.

We have worked hard to learn how to tell the time to half past the hour, which can be tricky, but both classes were incredible and showed their ability to read and make half past times brilliantly. 

We also learnt how to describe, compare, estimate and measure capacity. 

The children enjoyed gathering information for their fruity fact file, which they wrote during the week. We participated in ‘Safer Internet Day’, learning what being ‘online’ means and what we can do online. The children discussed the importance of not sharing personal information with others online, thinking about how they can help themselves to stay safe and when to ask for help. 

For information about staying safe online, please click the link https://www.saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/2019

Happily, our beans have been growing beautifully in their plastic bags in the classrooms. We were able to use our own beans plants to label each part of the plant. Next, the children wrote or explained the function of the different parts. 

As part of our geography/art learning, the children worked in groups to produce a collaborate art work of the continents. This was quite tricky, involving a variety of different skills, but the work produced was excellent – the groups are very proud of their work!

In RE, we concluded our work on Passover by thinking about specific foods or drinks that are important to us, and what they might symbolise. 

We continue with guided reading and phonics daily. 

Very many thanks to everyone who has handed in their home learning – what a wide variety of fruits and vegetables you have tried! If you have not yet brought yours in – no problem. We look forward to seeing your creative works! 

Notes:

Go Bananas outcome: Thursday 14th February at 2.30pm in classrooms

Longdown Dairy Farm trip payments due: Friday 15thFebruary