Autumn term Issue 3: 20th September 2024
Dear families
Early Monday morning we waved our year 5 children off to spend a week on a working farm in Gloucestershire. They have had such an amazing experience getting stuck into sheep shearing, milking, tending to calves, picking their own food from the vegetable gardens and much more. Well done year 5!
In school we have started to rehearse our songs for the upcoming Harvest Service. As always, Ms McGregor is helping the children sing beautifully and think about through the lyrics focusing on being thankful. The service will be held at St John's Church on Friday 4th October at 9:30. We will be sending out more information on how you can donate goods to Southwark Food Bank as part of the service.
A reminder for reception parents- next Friday (27th at 9:15) we have an Early Years Parent Cafe - come and join the session to hear about how children learn in reception and find out a bit more about phonics.
And finally, we are really looking forward to our International Evening next week (Friday 27th September at 3:30-5pm in the school playground). This is a brilliant community event and we hope that lots of you can come along, bring a dish and enjoy celebrating the rich diversity that makes our school so wonderful. Details of the event (how it works and what it means by 'bring a dish') will be sent early next week.
Have a wonderful weekend
Alli
Upcoming Diary Dates
Reception
Another exciting week in Reception, at a Prospective Parent Tour on Wednesday, the visitors couldn’t believe that these children were only 4 and how well they had settled in, busy in every area inside and outside the classroom, learning through play! The children have been out in the big playground to join in OPAL at lunchtimes which is great.
This week we have learned about the Christian creation story and the children have drawn super pictures. We’ve shared our family trees in Understanding the World and read the great book My Family by Todd Parr in Drawing Club. We have started learning phonic sounds - this week ‘s’ ‘a’ ‘t’ ‘p’. We have given you phonics flashcards of sounds learned so far, do practice ‘reading them’ and if your child is ready, forming the letters, always starting at the red dot, and going the right way.
Please note the Parent Café next Friday is “What my child does all day in Reception”.
Year 1
This week in Year 1, we’ve been exploring the ocean through our text Julian is a Mermaid. The children loved attending our carnival in the hall where they pretended to be an underwater sea creature. We have been using verbs to describe how they move through the water. In Maths, we have been learning how the numbers 6, 7, 8 and 9 can be made from ‘5 and a bit’. We enjoyed exploring this through numicon, rek n reks and tens frames.
Year 2
This week the Year 2’s have been maths superstars! They have been working hard practising their 10 times tables and developing an understanding of different ways to represent 10. The classes enjoyed using a variety of resources including cubes, blocks and items in our classroom to practise building groups of 10. Great effort, keep it up!
Year 3
After learning about different forms of figurative language, we identified and discussed examples we found from reading The Tear Thief. We then used our knowledge to sort the examples into the four different groups of similes, metaphors, personification or alliteration. We have now started to use this knowledge to create our own poems based on the author of the Tear Thief, Carol Ann Duffy.
Year 4
In Kapoor class, our guided reading book is all about poetry. One poem was written because the poet was inspired by a man who can dive and hold his breath for over 4 minutes. The poet is known as a spoken word poet. We watched his performance and then took upon ourselves to have a go. The children did not disappoint! You can see from the photos, that they enjoyed performing and took it very seriously.
Kids poem inspired by BBC series Human Planet - Just One Breath (Simon Mole Poet) - YouTube
(this is the link to the original poem)
Year 5
This week, Year 5 have had a memorable week either on residential at a farm in Gloucestershire or visiting local farms in London.
The children on residential have had fun apple pressing, bird watching, horse grooming and animal feeding and much more.
The children in school have been to forest school, taken part in gardening and cooking activities and have spent two days visiting local farms.
Hopefully, they have made memories that last a lifetime.
Year 6
Up in Year 6, week 3 brought with it the opportunity for… drama! Our English text, The Arrival by Shaun Tan, features a perilous trip over land and sea for one our characters. To help us better understand what it must feel like to undertake such a journey - and to search for more promising lands – Year 6 got into role. We donned a range of costumes and used our imaginations to create an ocean liner filled with passengers who each had a purpose. The children were brilliant at telling the stories and motivations behind their curious characters: Miss Cosby and Ms Earp are looking forward to finding out more about them this week.
Music this week…
In music this week, Year 2 were learning the words and accompanying actions to our song, Tony Chestnut. The children were also using two notes on chime bars to practice singing the names of their classmates in the style of a Cuckoo.
Year 4 Kapoor were keen to show off some of their performance skills at the end of our lesson.
Stars of the Week
Stars are celebrated because they have demonstrated the school values, or gone above and beyond.
Well done to all our stars this week …
Have a great weekend. See you next week!