Year 1 - Happy Easter!

This half term has simply flown by and here we are – at the end of our second term together in Year 1. The children have stayed focused on their learning this week, as well as enjoying events such as the spring concert and a very entertaining Easter assembly, run by Mrs Laver. 

We have finished our ‘chick’ art project – the children were so proud of their work. They worked very hard in each of the sessions to independently create their chick and making it the best that they could. The finishing touches were added on Thursday, along with a ‘birth certificate’ for each one.

In maths, we have been working on using non-standard units to measure length and height. We had great fun drawing around a partner and seeing how many straws, felt tips and Dienes high they were! We also worked on thinking about how long some tasks might take (a clap, writing a sentence, watching a film), and sorting them into hours, minutes and seconds. We also compared time (hours, minutes and seconds), and asked questions like, ‘Is ten seconds longer or shorter than one minute?’. To end the week, we have been exploring turns (quarter, half and three-quarters), and used our knowledge to give ‘robot’ instructions to a partner. We also looked at turning ‘tiles’ into patters and describing the turns that we made. Many of the children found this quite tricky, so if you are able to have a go at home, that would be great!

We have finished our ‘Oi Frog’ poetry and enjoyed sharing it with the children in Year R. Our poems have made a super display outside Juniper Class, which many children have stopped to look at and read the poetry. Fantastic work, Year 1!

 In RE, we have been continuing our learning of Remembering- sad then happy, by learning about the Easter Story. After listening to the story, the children created a timeline of the events of Easter week, identifying when those involved would have been sad and then happy. We thought about the messages that the story gives us today, and the importance of Easter to Christians. 

The children loved performing at the Recorder concert on Tuesday; very many thanks for being a wonderful audience! Next term, we will be learning to play … that’s a surprise for after the holidays!

We continue with our phonics and guided reading daily. Many of the children have moved book bands this week – congratulations to you all! We hope that you keep reading and enjoying books over the holiday.

Next half term, our topic will be ‘When I grow up’. As part of the topic, we will need each child to have a named, empty, clean and dry 2l soft drinks bottle with the original label removed (lid needed too!). Please bring these in after the holidays.

We will also be thinking about the different jobs that people do. A letter will shortly be coming out to request parent/carers/family members to come into the classroom and talk to the children about their job. This only has to be for approx. 20 minutes or so, and if possible, we would like to hear information such as what you do, if you need any special equipment/skills/training/clothes and the best thing about your job. Very many thanks in advance if you are able to help!

We would like to wish everyone a lovely, relaxing Easter break!

Year 2 - KS1 SATs at Stanmore

At the recent KS1 SATs evening we covered:

• What are SATs in Key Stage 1?

• What do the SATs tests look like?

• How do teachers assess/results?

• Age related expectations

• What can you do to help?

The slides can be downloaded here

Year 1 - Chick-loads of fun!

Creating feathered friends

The penultimate week of the term draws to a close, and the children have had a feathery ending! Juniper and Maple had a wonderful time this afternoon creating their feathered friends, which they will be bringing proudly home in time for Easter! 

As well as our DT activities, the children were extremely excited to wear their pyjamas and onesies to school today; happily, no-one fell asleep in class…

Investigating 3d shapes

In maths this week, we have enjoyed learning about 3D shapes. We have worked on identifying and naming 3D shapes, exploring their properties and working out how we could sort them, justifying our reasoning. Next week, we will be moving onto measure, using non-standard units to measure height and length, as well as exploring seconds, minutes and hours. We will end our unit of measure by learning about turns and using our knowledge to explore the school grounds!

We have now planned and written our animal poems, which we will be publishing on Monday. We look forward to performing them to Year R later in the week! The children have worked extremely hard on including plural nouns and prepositions in their work – we await the final results!

In RE, we have started to think about the Easter message, and exploring sad and happy feelings. We have shared a lovely book, ‘Badger’s Parting Gifts’, by Susan Varley, which stimulated conversations about when we have been sad and then happy. Next week, we look forward to hearing the Easter story and learning about it in more detail.

The children have been busy practicing for their recorder concert on Tuesday 2ndApril in the school hall. Year 1 will be performing from 2.20pm – 2.40pm approx.., and Year 2 from 2.40pm – 3.00pm approx.. The gate by the school office will be open from 2.15pm. We look forward to welcoming you.

As always, we enjoy our phonics and reading daily. 

Notes:

Recorder concert: Tuesday 2nd April in the school hall. Year 1 will be performing from 2.20pm – 2.40pm approx.., and Year 2 from 2.40pm – 3.00pm approx.. The gate by the school office will be open from 2.15pm. 

Home learning: Due on Monday 1st April please. Thank you to those who have already returned theirs. 

When I grow up topic: For this topic, each child will need a clean, dry 2l plastic soft drinks bottle with the top on and label removed (labelled with your child’s name). To be bought into school after Easter please. Thank you!

PE kits: These will be sent home this week for the holiday. Please could you check that your child’s plimsolls/trainers still fit, as several children say that theirs are too small. Many thanks. 

Year 5 - jubilantly wearing pyjamas!

Following on from the very exhausting week of Bike-ability, we have been working hard on our Maths and English.

In Maths this week, we have been looking at fractions. We have also been learning how to convert improper fractions to mixed numbers. Using bar models to help us, we successfully mastered it!

In English, we are working up to our narrative from the point of view of a plastic bottle floating down the River Itchen. In order to fill in our senses sheet that we were given, we explored the school grounds and used technical vocabulary to ensure our story would have lots of descriptive language in it. Using similes, metaphors and personification, we created sentences that we could use in our stories.

On Friday, Beech class came in jubilantly wearing pyjamas! We are collecting money for young carers and the Friends of Stanmore.

We are all looking forward to our learning next week before we break up for Easter.

Year 6 - A message from the palace (and 10 Downing Street)

Last December, as part of our Monarch topic, Elm class drafted formal letters to the Queen. In the letters, we were asked to inform her of our wishes for the country for 2019. Many of us chose to write about pollution, litter and the plastic in the ocean crisis. We all waited patiently, with crossed fingers, in hope that she would reply- AND SHE DID! 

Arriving in a red and cream envelope was a letter from the Correspondence Officer. We couldn’t quite believe how formal her response was! As our letters had environmental concerns, they were forwarded on to the Prime Minister (how exciting).

This morning, just after Mrs Kempson had read us out an email from our favourite author ( Mrs Kempson had email David Long to thank him for inspiring us with his unbelievable survival stories), Mrs Eagle entered with another VERY important looking letter. 10 DOWNING STREET HAD REPLIED - thanking us for the wonderful letters, and asking us to join the Eco-Schools Programme.

We absolutely love writing letters and sending them off, as having a reply makes it all worth while and we feel like we are being listened to.

A letter from Buckingham Palace to our Year 6 pupils at Stanmore Primary

A letter from 10 Downing Street to our Year 6 pupils at Stanmore Primary

Six nations rugby?

The Tag Rugby team represented Stanmore Primary School at a Tag Rugby Festival on Thursday 21st March 2019 at Winchester Rugby Club.

Each team player showed sportsmanship, teamwork and respect towards their teammates and other teams. They cheered for everyone and clapped when other teams scored; at the end of each match the children shook hands with their opposition. There were some amazing tries scored, great footwork and some fantastic tackles made but the highlight for me was their pure enthusiasm and enjoyment of my favourite game.

At the end of the festival, teams were awarded for different things; I recieved an email after the event from a different school who said 'the children believe that Stanmore showed the best sportmanship and that we deserved this award more than they did'. I then recieved the certifiates which were presented to this school to hand out to our team! Well done to all of you, you all did something yesterday that you should be proud of! I can't wait until next year.

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.