Dear Parents
This week has been full of awe and wonder! The Year 4 children returned from the Museum of Zoology buzzing with excitement from their trip, keen to share their learning. It really was a wonderful outing and the children were lucky to handle artefacts. As you will see below there have been many other exciting opportunities this week and I hope you enjoy reading.
Open Event
The first open event of the term was very popular this morning, with over twenty families visiting the school. The visitors were treated to musical performances and also superb tours by our Year 6 children.
Parent Evenings
There will be parent consultation meetings on Tuesday 17th October, Wednesday 18th October, Thursday 19th October. These will be in person and will take place in the Performing Arts Centre. Each appointment will last ten minutes and will operate in a similar way to the one that we held in the summer term last year. Timings will be between 4.30-6.30pm and I would ask that parents email Paula Hazelwood with preferred timings, and then she will confirm availability. If you are unable to attend during those days, please contact the class teacher to arrange another ten minute slot.
FHPA
May I remind you of the following dates, further details of which can be found on the Class List app:
- 7th October – Quiz Night
- 16th October – Pumpkin Carving Competition
- 19th October – Halloween Biscuit Decoration Event
Zoological
KS2 Class Drama and Class Music
Our class drama and class singing lessons are tightly packed learning African lyrics, dance choreography and script. We treated our guests at the Open Day with a song from the Lion King and the beautiful Harvest Moon song with Makaton hand signs.
Reception
Visiting Newmarket Library today, was the perfect way to celebrate ‘National Libraries Week’. It is so exciting that the children will be able to enjoy monthly visits there to borrow and return books!
The children also thoroughly enjoyed ‘National Poetry Day’ on Thursday, sharing a variety of poems about Autumn.
They were also joined by some enthusiastic volunteers from Year 6, who enjoyed sharing poems with the class too. Thank you, Year 6!
Sitting outside in the autumn sunshine, amongst the leaves, inspired the children to write their own class poem. They decided to call it ‘Dancing Leaves’ and they had lots of fun exploring outside to find their own dancing leaves! They then used these to create leaf rubbings.
Thank you to everyone who has brought in items for our autumn display and especially, for all the conkers! The children have loved using them during their exploring time, this week.
In maths, the focus has been on repeating patterns and the children have been very creative, using a variety of resources to demonstrate their understanding of the topic. Enjoy having more fun with this over the weekend!
Year 1
In English, we have been reading ‘The Queen’s Hat’ by Steve Antony. We had great fun following the Queen’s hat around London’s most famous landmarks when it was swept away by a gust of wind. We were challenged to make changes to the original story by plotting our own route around London for the hat to take. We rewrote the story including our own routes around London, we also used onomatopoeic words to describe the hat’s movements!
Year 2
Year 2 have had such a creative week! We have written book reviews for a very alternative version of Little Red – she was a mighty girl indeed! We have also been practising counting in 2s, 5s, 10s and 3s. We need to be confident counting on and back to 50 and 100. In science we have been exploring materials and their ability to bend, twist, squish and stretch. Building from last week’s learning, we worked in partners to conduct our own experiment and record the findings. We have also been researching and presenting information on owls and using watercolours to paint different types of owls. Our trip to the Fitzwilliam Museum was the catalyst for all our owl exploration and art! We have also been continuing our challenge of weaving like a spider – the children have been using threads and thick wools to weave in a circle, which has been a tricky challenge with a lovely outcome. By far, the highlight of the week was creating a ‘contraption’ to help Humpty Dumpty fall safely. Watch this space for an update on how Humpty faired!
Year 3
In English, we started reading The Twits by Roald Dahl. The children loved being introduced to Mr and Mrs Twit and they have been writing revolting character descriptions to match the personalities of our two main characters. In maths, we started learning the formal method of column addition (without crossing boundaries). Here, we represented our calculation using concrete objects, pictorially and then moved on to the more abstract calculations. We also created structures of 3D shapes and identified their properties including vertices, faces and edges. In science, we worked hard to learn the common and scientific names for many bones in the body. We couldn’t believe how long some of the scientific names were!
Year 4
What a day we had on Tuesday this week. We spent the day surrounded and looked down on by giants of the air, sea and land. Elephants, rhinos, giant deer and even whales brought a magical change to our usual classroom. We all received a wonderful talk about teeth and bones and were even able to handle some wonderful exhibits. The children were enthralled and loved every moment there.
After we had finished our engrossing lesson, the children started to search for animals based on clues about their mouth parts. These included flamingos, lampreys and anteaters to name but a few. These few animals alone generated so many questions with the children it was hard to keep up with them. Then, after lunch, we looked at the top floor and again the wonder was palpable. If smiling faces and questions are signs of children learning, the children learnt enough on Tuesday to keep them going for months (not that we will stop learning).
I am sure that every child could name a favourite part. The hard part is only naming one favourite part. I think they will have to many memories to select just one. I hope they told you all about the trip an that the photos below add more colour to their descriptions.
Year 5
Thursday 5th October was National Poetry Day and year 5 pupils have been analysing the use of figurative language in poetry. They have also been writing their own poems about a sea monster, linked to our book, Malamander.
Lily summed up the feeling of many of the class: “I enjoyed writing my poem because I liked the rhyming and experimenting with different words.”
As did Amelia: “You can describe it in so many different ways to create an image. I had a go at writing a kenning.”
Here are two outstanding examples of monster kennings that Amelia and Anna produced. They are excellent examples of Year 5 being able to create vivid imagery. Well done.
(The other pupils have created poems, but they are still typing them up!)
Poem by Amelia (click here) and Anna (click here).
Year 6
It is lovely when children share interesting items from home with classmates. Last Friday, Mia chose a Swiss theme to celebrate European Day of Languages and Year 6 had a turn at ringing the impressive cowbell that she brought into school. The huge Toblerone that she kindly shared also went down very well! On Thursday, Jess brought some wonderful artefacts to our Thursday afternoon history lesson, especially the toy dog and two very fragile bears. Thank you, Mia and Jess! Throughout the week, Year 6 learned a poem off by heart to perform at House Assembly. Well done to Annabelle, Isabella and Fenella for reaching the final! Finally, a huge thank you to the whole of Year 6 for their tremendous effort and enthusiasm on Friday morning when they led our Open Day visitors on tours around the school. We had many comments about the children’s confidence and pride in their school. Well done, Year 6!
Have a lovely weekend!
Michael Radford