Year 5 - River studies and volcanos?

We have had another very exciting week in Year 5. Despite the weather, we have completed outdoor learning in English and enjoyed a field study trip to the River Itchen.

In maths, we have been set a challenge with very complex math problems about volcano studies forming an extremely important sector of geological studies. Calculating everything carefully (using our understanding of multiplication, division, addition, subtraction and fractions), we have successfully completed most of our task; we look forward to continuing it next week.

In English, we have continued our learning journey based around single use plastic and how it is bad it is for the environment. For this journey, we have learnt how to use colons and semi colons and will be using these in our balanced arguments, which we will be writing next week.

Following on from our exciting trip last week to Winchester College, this week we studied the river Itchen (Winchester’s own chalk river!). We learnt all about hydrology, ecology and classified invertebrates. Again we had lots of fun, learnt new skills, developed our knowledge and most importantly we had more cake!

Year 1 - visit to the farm and World Book Day

What an exciting week we have had in Year 1! On Tuesday we had a wonderful day out at Longdown Dairy Farm to bring alive our current topic of ‘Down on the Farm’ (see the photos below). The children were eager to be farmers for the day and enjoyed animal feeding as well as collecting eggs and holding the baby chicks. We loved seeing the tiny piglets (Mrs Jones wanted to bring one back to school!) and baby goats, as well as some of the larger animals, such as Pearl the Shire horse. Very many thanks to our parent helpers who accompanied us on the trip; we hope that you had a lovely day too! Some of the photos from our trip are on the website now.

On Thursday, we celebrated World Book Day by dressing as a crayon from the book ‘The day the crayons quit’. The children thought that the story, comprising of letters, was very funny and were eager to write their letters to Blue Crayon to ask him to come back. During the rest of the week, we have been learning grammar skills in preparation for our story writing next week. This has included the prefix ‘un’ (unhappy, unkind etc.) as well as recapping on the use of capital letters and full stops. Next week, we will be learning about personal pronouns (he, she, they, I, we) as well as planning and writing our farm stories. 

In maths, we have continued to work on addition and subtraction, and thinking about the different ways that this could be represented, such as with concrete resources, pictorially, on a number line, as a bar model etc., and using these skills in a variety of contexts. Next week, we will be revisiting multiplication and division by 2, 5 and 10.

We have been learning about the United Kingdom in Geography, including the countries and their capital cities, as well as the main seas that surround our island. We have started to look at the features of the countries and will be thinking about what is the same and what is different about them.

We continue with our guided reading and daily phonics, as usual. 

Notes:

Parents’ evenings – 12thand 14thMarch 2019

Many thanks to everyone who has booked a slot for parent’s evening already. Please see your class teacher to arrange an appointment if you are having problems accessing the online booking system. 

Toys in classrooms

A gentle reminder, please, that no toys are to be brought into school; this includes leaving them in book bags or rucksacks. Thank you for your understanding. 

Parent mornings (Wednesdays 8.45am – 8.55am)

It is lovely to see so many parents joining us for reading or maths activities on a Wednesday morning – the children very much enjoy welcoming you into their classrooms! Please can we remind you that children must be accompanied by an adult if they are in the classroom before the whistle goes at 8.55am, unless they have been in Breakfast Club. Thank you.

Year 5 - plastics, rivers, snakes and spiders

We’ve had a brilliant week in Year 5! We have been putting our keys to success into practise to help us succeed in all areas of our learning.

In English this week, we have been gathering facts about single use plastic. We have been doing this because we will be writing a balanced argument. At the moment, based on the facts, Beech class are against single use plastic.

In maths this week, we have been practising our addition and subtraction; we have been consolidating our knowledge and skills by answering multi-step problems in different contexts.

On Wednesday afternoon, we were very fortunate to be invited to Winchester College for the first part of our river project. While we were there, we learnt lots about Chalk Rivers and even got some cake! They brought out lots of interesting animals such as snakes, cockroaches and millipedes. But the highlight of the afternoon was Miss Kingshott’s face when the tarantula appeared!

All of year 5 came in jubilantly on Thursday (World Book day) because we were all yellow crayons! As you all know, yellow is the colour of the sun not orange. This is what years 5 and 6 were debating. In groups of six, we came up with some compelling arguments as to why yellow should be the colour of the sun. We debated in two parts, A and B, C and D. The group containing A and B, had their debate in the quad and run by the lovely Miss Kingshott, whereas C and D were inside in elm class. Both groups were very close.

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.