Dear Parents,
This week has been yet another one full of exciting learning! I was very pleased to award so many certificates in assembly this morning for various achievements and it was wonderful to see House Point badges awarded for such high individual totals. Also this week, Ancient Greek visits and a fire engine have caused much excitement. Please enjoy finding out more below.
Music
ABRSM Results
Congratulations to these amazing musicians who have passed their singing and instrumental exams with merit and distinction. Outstanding effort from everyone in passing Grades 1 to 3.
Informal Tea Time Concert
On Tuesday 23rd May, we had our third Informal Tea Time Concert of the Summer Term 2023. Congratulations to everyone that performed. We enjoyed listening to various pianists and violinists but we were also treated to two delightful drama performances from Sophia and Isabella. The first drama piece was a traditional poem ‘Mix a Pancake’ and the second was a very moving extract from George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion.’
Our next Informal Tea Time Concert is on Tuesday 13th June.
Reception
This week, the children in Reception have celebrated ‘Child Safety’ week. They were very fortunate to be joined by members of the police force and the fire service who were very impressed by their super knowledge and questions.
The children wrote super ‘thank you’ cards in their Literacy lesson and created wonderful leaflets on how to keep safe to share with everyone!
On Thursday, it was World Oceans Day which linked to the children’s new topic, ‘Under the Sea’. The children created their own boats using natural resources in the forest and also explored floating and sinking! In addition to learning all about the different oceans, and how to keep safe when near water!
The children made some super posters to encourage everyone to take care of the oceans, as they were horrified by the amount of plastic pollution there is currently. This linked to solving doubling problems in maths which was lots of fun!
At the end of the week, it was time to judge the tallest sunflower competition! However, there were so many flowers of the same height, it was impossible to choose only one winner, so a big well done to everyone for looking after them so well! Enjoy continuing to take good care of them at home.
Year 1
We had great fun interviewing the residents of Queen’s Court in Bottisham about their favourite toys today! We asked them questions from our questionnaire about the toys they played with when they were little, we also showed them our favourite toys too. To finish, we sang some songs from Mary Poppins and some hymns to them. It was lovely to see many of the residents joining in with us. Thank you so much to the staff and residents of Queen’s Court for allowing us to visit and to Mrs Warburton for leading the beautiful singing!
Year 2
Year 2 has had “the best week ever” according to most of the class! We began the week looking at a fire engine from 1666 and contrasting it with a modern fire engine. There were some similarities but so many more differences! The children agreed we would feel safer with a modern engine coming to keep us safe. We then explored the roll of wheels, axels and chassis on vehicles. There was some fantastic exploration, experimentation and amazing questions and observations to push our learning forward. We then put our learning to use designing a fire engine and adding the chassis, axels and wheels. From there, the children put their considerable creativity to the test and created some outstanding fire engines! On Thursday, the Newmarket Fire Station came to show us all of the equipment on a modern fire engine. The highlight was using the hose!! We are working hard on our Year 2 Class Assembly and will look forward to welcoming the Year 2 families next Thursday.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Years 3 and 4
On Wednesday, Years 3 and 4 had an immersive day of history from Past Productions. The day started with an introduction from our special visitor, ‘Zeus’. He set the scene for the day and amazed us with impressive facts and information. Zeus continued by telling us about how everything started for the Ancient Greeks and the geographical location compared to today. The next activity was a drama workshop. In groups, the children acted out different stories involving the different gods and goddesses. The sketches were fantastic and Zeus couldn’t believe the quality in such a short rehearsal time. Following this, the children were challenged to compete in the Olympic Games, Ancient Greek style! It was very challenging and the rules were very different to today. We even had an overall winner who was announced as the champion. Well done, Lola! In the afternoon, the children looked at some artefacts, designed plates, found out about democracy and wrote their own myths using all of their knowledge from the topic. Zeus was so impressed with our engagement, knowledge and behaviour. We ended the day with a quiz to test our knowledge and understanding. Zeus was impressed that we scored 100%! The children thoroughly enjoyed the enhancement of our
topic learning with an immersive day of bringing history to life. What a day to remember and a fantastic way to support this topic! A huge thank you to the parents for the brilliant costumes and to Ben (from Past Productions) for being so fantastic!
Year 5
We started this week by visiting Devils Dyke for our English inspiration. The aim was to understand how we can show how a person feels or what an area is like by talking about facial expressions or references to the environment. We call it show, not tell. While there, we also discussed, monoculture, insects, the effects of pesticides, crop rotation and animal routes to mention but a few.
Then, on Wednesday, we played South Lee at cricket. There was some excellent bowling and fielding and it was wonderful to see them putting into place the skills they have been practicing. Even more promising was the way they could respond to advice given, thereby improving their game as they played. It is wonderful to see how they have returned with energy and enthusiasm and I am sure it will remain for the rest of the term.
Year 6
In Geography lessons, Year 6 have been studying famous landmarks of North & Central America and were given the opportunity to create a presentation of interesting facts and images about their favourite natural or man-made feature(s) to share in class. The children enjoyed becoming the teacher for 10 minutes and choosing who to answer their questions. Lottie created a very entertaining quiz in the style of ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’, setting up a phone-in scenario for classmates entitled ‘Who wants to be an Americanaire?’! Tabi’s presentation was particularly detailed and included facts about people in the past voluntarily ‘rolling down’ Niagara Falls in barrels! Well done to everyone for presenting their findings in such interesting ways.
In English lessons, Year 6 have been revising the key features of reports. They were given an imaginary situation in which 10-11 year olds were asked to test a new brand of trainers for one week and then provide feedback to the manufacturer or retailer. Using their chromebooks, the children had lots of fun creating an image bank of the coolest, craziest and most expensive trainers on the market to generate ideas for the latest product that they had been asked to try out. With labelled drawings and a list of ‘magpied’ vocabulary from exemplar texts, they wrote a report that included correct terminology for each part of the trainer, a range of connectives such as ‘Furthermore’ and ‘On the whole’ and wonderful phrases to indicate room for improvement such as ‘Unfortunately, nothing is perfect…’ and ‘I suggest you improve the trainers by…’. Super writing this week, Year 6!
Class Music
This term in class music we have been exploring different styles of percussion music from various countries including Ghana, Brazil and India. This week, pupils have worked in groups and performed pieces inspired by music from India which have included talas (time cycles), improvisation, call and response and subtraction effect.
Have a lovely weekend!
Michael Radford