This week we learnt all about the story ‘Tadpole’s Promise’ a story all about how all animals change and grow. The story starts, with a caterpillar and a tadpole who fall in love. The caterpillar asks the tadpole to promise he will never change, but as we learnt all animals grow and change. The tadpole grew into a frog! We learnt all about the life cycle of a frog and how they change at each stage of their lives. In circle time we retold the story through drama! We talked about who were the main characters in our story and then chose some children to help retell the main events. At the Creation Station, we created our own little tadpoles! We looked at the features of a tadpole and decided we needed a body, legs, eyes and a tail. We used part of an egg box to create the body, which we carefully painted. After this, we glued eyes onto our bodies and used cellotape to attach a tail and pipe cleaner legs!
This week we have been looking at the poetry collection First Book of the Sea by Nicola Davies. We started by analysing a poem to find different features, then we moved to looking at a poem called ‘Sea Shanty’. We had great fun reading, performing and even singing the poem. We then wrote our own versions, changing the verbs and enjoyed performing them too! We’ve had a busy week in maths this week, learning about 3D shapes and their properties, days of the week, months of the year and some children worked on fifteen minute intervals on digital and analogue clocks! In PSHE this week we focused on how we can handle emotions that make us feel uncomfortable and created a toolbox of ideas to help us. In RE this week we continued to think about leaders, this time thinking about Moses and the Ten Commandments. From next week, we will be starting the Reading Raffle in Woodpeckers again. When children read 5 times at home with an adult (this needs to be recorded in their reading record by an adult) , they will get a raffle ticket and a chance to win a prize!
This week in English, we have been using drama to act out scenes from our class text Matilda as well as exploring speech bubbles and conjunctions in our writing. In Maths, we have been looking at checking calculations with the inverse operation. In Topic, we have been learning about Mayan trade as well as comparing the Mayan civilisation to other civilisations. In RE, we explored what it means to be a Saint and things we can do to be more Saint like. In Science, we researched and created fact files about Mary Anning. Please ensure your child is wearing the correct uniform to school and brings their PE kits with them for PE on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
This week in English we began researching owls, whose habitat is the UK, so we can write a non-chronological report on our chosen owl. Owls are fascinating! Next Tuesday we welcome Clive back into school – he is bringing us some birds of prey to look at and tell us all about. He will also bring us owl pellets to dissect… In maths we are finishing off percentage and moving on to metric measures. If cooking or doing a bit of DIY you could ask your child to measure things for you and perhaps change it from one metric unit to another – e.g. millimetres into centimetres. In Science the children continued with life processes by looking at the life cycle of plants. In art, we drew ‘messy’ feathers, colouring them with felt tip pen then carefully brushing water over the top to make the ink spread and bleed. Please ensure your child is wearing the correct uniform to school and brings their PE kits with them for PE on Tuesdays and Fridays. PE kits should be brought to school in drawstring bags. The cloakroom simply isn’t big enough for 28 large rucksacks. This leads to belongings being knocked from pegs, which then either gets ruined or lost.
The Government are rolling out their new national drive to improve school attendance. For most pupils, the best place to be during term-time in is school, surrounded by the support of their friends and teachers.
This is important not just for your child’s learning, but also for their overall wellbeing, wider development and their mental health.
As a parent, it can be difficult to know when to send your child into school if they are feeling unwell or a mildly anxious, but finding solutions is a team effort between schools, parents and children, and there is support and information available to help you make the best decision for your child.
Please take a look at the Education Hub Blog, for help and advice.
https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/01/03/improving-school-attendance/
Website
We are having a new website built! Look out in a couple of weeks for our new look, all singing, all dancing website! We are very excited – so far it looks fantastic and easy to navigate!
Have a good weekend!
Dates for the Diary
Spring 2
Headteacher Caroline Walker
