Year 1 - Howzat!

Year 1 have enjoyed a busy week of learning again, which concluded on Friday with an active taster session from Hampshire Cricket. The children practiced throwing, catching, batting and bowling during the session – I think we have some budding cricketers among us!

In maths, we have been working on fractions, focusing on halves and quarters. We have been using a bar chart to show how we can find a half or a quarter of an amount, and then writing number sentences about what we have discovered. There were some tricky challenge questions to get the children thinking about their understanding of halves and quarters – some children noticed equivalent fractions in one of the questions and were able to independently show this in a fraction wall – fantastic learning! Next week, we move onto learning about 3D shapes.If you have any empty cardboard boxes (cereal packets, jaffa cake boxes etc.) please could you bring them in for Tuesday 26thMarch? Many thanks.

We have loved our new English text, Oi Frog!, which we will be using as a base for writing our own rhyming poems next week. Miss Norris has invited the Year 1 children into Year R to share their final pieces of work when finished. We can’t wait! Features of the poems will be plurals and prepositions, so these have been the focus of our grammar learning this week. 

To bring our geography learning (countries of the UK) alive, Year 1 welcomed Mr Thomas into Juniper Class, who introduced the children to the magic of Wales, including practicing the Welsh language and alphabet. He also shared with us the traditional foods and costumes of Wales and explored some of the beautiful Welsh castles. Maple Class were very fortunate to have Mrs O’Mahony, who shared her extensive knowledge of Ireland, including the traditional dress, games and language. Our thanks to you both for sparking the children’s curiosity and answering the many questions that they had!

We are only two weeks away from our recorder concert (Tuesday 2ndApril – approx. 2.30pm but the EXACT time is to be confirmed). We have been very busy working on our breathing and fingering of the notes, as well as making sure that we are in time with the rest of the class. 

As always, we continue to teach phonics and guided reading daily. 

Notes:

Pyjama/ Onesie Day – Friday 29 March 

On Friday 29th March, the children may come into school dressed in their pjs or onesie in return for a small donation. Monies raised will be split between the SPEAK charity of the year, Winchester Young Carers, and the FOS. 

PLEASE NOTE – Year 1 have PE on a Friday, so if you are planning on your child wearing a onesie, please make sure that your child is able to INDEPENDENTLY take it off and put it on again, as well as being able to manage going to the toilet during the day (trailing sleeves, tails, getting it undone and done up again). Many thanks.

Recorder concert 

Tuesday 2ndApril in the hall. Approx. 2.30 – 3.00pm (exact times for Year 1 are to be confirmed). 

Advance notice

For our next topic after the Easter holidays, each child will need a 2l soft drinks bottle which has been rinsed out, dried, had the label removed and then clearly named with your child’s name. If you have any spare bottles, we would very much appreciate having those too. 

Please bring these into your child’s classroom after the Easter holiday. Thank you.

Year 5 & 6 - Athletics competition

A team of thirteen children from Years 5 and 6 had the privilege to attend an athletics competition at Kings School Winchester.

Each child took part in a running race, as well as throwing and jumping competitions. The children were keen, confident and resilient during each activity; their smiles and enthusiasm lit up the sports hall.

They all did their very best and worked co-operatively by cheering on their team and other teams too. Well done! 

Local art, by local artist

Wow, what another exciting day at Stanmore! On Wednesday, we had a special visitor from The Arts Society Winchester, Pam Meir, who presented the school with a fantastic a screen print of Winchester by Sophie Alice Wiltshire. 

The print will be displayed outside Mrs Taylor's office to be enjoyed by all the children.

Mrs Taylor and pupils receiving a print of Winchester from Mrs Pam Meir.

The artist, Sophie, is orginally from Winchester; she attended Weeke Primary school before persuing a career in art.

Thank you to the The Arts Society Winchester Arts Society for such an inspiring gift.

Friends of Stanmore - upcoming egg-citement

The FoS are very excited about the next few weeks because we have some really fun events planned!

Thursday 21st March is our cake and uniform sale. Please can Years 3 and 4 supply us with nut free bakes. Thanks.

Next week your child will be a given an envelope containing information about our logo competition. We would love the children to design a logo that represents the FoS, one which we can use on all our promotional material and correspondence. Any entries are to be handed in by Friday March 29th, the winner will be announced at the Easter Egg hunt on Friday April 5th and receive a prize! Remember, the FoS organises the Christmas and Summer Fairs, the cake sales, the Easter Egg hunt, the Halloween and Hawaiian discos, bags2school, the Sports day refreshment stalls, quiz nights and non-school uniform days. The money raised from all these events is used to fund projects that support and aid your child's experience here at Stanmore School. We've recently bought over 1000 new reading scheme books and updated the outside playground markings. We're paying for the listen2me music lessons and donate £100 to each class every year for the teacher to buy anything they need to help the children's learning journey.We're in the process of developing ideas for the regeneration of Stanmore's outside spaces, including new vegetable patches, sensory and quiet areas. We hope the children will help us with the designs! Please encourage your child to design a logo that represents the FoS and what we do. Thanks.

Friday March 29th is the FoS and SPEAK non-school uniform day. Onesies and pyjamas please, but no slippers! Please can your child bring in a small donation in return which will be collected by SPEAK representatives. The money raised will be divided between the FoS and SPEAK's chosen charity, Winchester Young Carers. Thanks for your support.

Finally, our free Easter egg hunt will be on Friday April 5th from 3pm onwards. Details to follow. Phew, that's it for now! Rachel, Jen, Ali, Hayley, Jo.

Year 1 - our children become authors!

Although we have only been in school for 4 days this week, we have squeezed in plenty of exciting learning! We were really delighted to share all aspects of the children’s learning with you at the two Parents’ Evenings too; if you were not able to make it, please speak to your class teacher to arrange another suitable time.

In English this week, we planned and wrote our farm stories, based on ‘Farmer Duck’ by Martin Waddell. We were so impressed to see how the children structured their stories and included many of the grammatical features that they have learned during this unit of work. We have compiled a class book of the stories which we are looking forward to sharing with other children at Stanmore Primary School.

We have also sent off our ‘thank you’ letters to Longdown Dairy Farm. Here are some examples of the children’s independent writing.

Multiplication and division has been our maths focus this week, particularly multiplying by 5 and 10, and seeing how we can use multiples of 10 to derive multiples of 5. The children have explained their understanding throughout the activities. Next week, we will be revisiting fractions (halves and quarters) and applying our knowledge to a range of problems.

In science, we have started to look at animals and their young, identifying their similarities and differences and why this might be. We have also spent time outside in the Quad to explore the seasonal changes and hunt for signs of spring. We compared our observations with those that we made in winter, noting the changes to flowers, trees, the weather and our clothing. 

We continue with our guided reading and phonics daily. 

We hope you had a wonderful 3 day weekend!

Year 6 - art worth an award

A group of Year 6 children entered an art competition recently. On Tuesday, this week, four children were invited to receive their awards. Out of 175 entries, two children from year 6 received 3rd place prizes and two children received special accreditation awards. Well done Year 6!

Zoological learning

This week we were invited to a lecture and afternoon tea with Jane Goodall, a zooologist, at Winchester College. We had 3 boys attend to represent Stanmore.

On arrival, the boys were presented with two books, one of which has been signed by Jane herself. These books will be available in the library soon.

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.