The Bulletin – Edition 3

A word from Mrs Murphy:

  Miss Maynard has very kindly taken over the reins co-ordinating Pre-Prep’s involvement in School Council this year.  School Council, of course, provides an important forum encouraging the pupil body here to contribute their ideas and suggestions to enhance school life. Our School Council is also pivotal in organising fund raising projects for those less fortunate. To this end, a local, national and international charity are chosen by School Council for us to support through the entire year - the children sitting on council organise all fund raising efforts.  Two children from each class, from Reception upwards, are elected by their peers to sit on the council for one term.  There is no doubt sitting on School Council hones essential life skills and we are delighted to announce the following children have been elected for the term ahead:  Reception: Anush and Rubah; Year 1: Zachary and Henry; and Year 2:  Fin and Arith.  

AWARDS THIS WEEK

  This week the Courtesy Cup and Badge went to Rory (Reception) for his beautiful manners and helpful ways in the classroom.  Very well done!   Stars of the Week went to the following children:

Year 2	Felix for writing a fantastic opening to Quentin Blake’s ‘Clown’ picture book.
Year 1	Harry for working so hard in everything he does. Harry always tries his best.
Reception	Max for working so hard to learn his sight words and sounds.

  Many congratulations to Max for learning 100 Chinese characters – very well done!  

In the classrooms

  Kindergarten have been learning about the story of the Little Red Hen. We read different versions, noticing different farm animal characters in each. One thing was the same, however, none of the animals offered their help to the Little Red Hen! We talked about how they should have been kind and helpful, which of course is one of our Golden Rules. We have been learning all about bread this week, from field to bakery.  That is, the farmer sowing seeds to grow wheat, before this is harvested and taken to be milled into flour.  We looked very closely at some real wheat and then had a go at baking our own bread rolls.  Unlike the animals in the stories, we were all extremely helpful, carefully weighing the flour as well as all the other ingredients. We added a magic ingredient called yeast and watched the dough grow.  Having shaped the dough into rolls, we popped them into the oven and then waited patiently for our bread to bake.  It was most definitely worth the wait - it was delicious! We also read a story about a scarecrow called, ‘Tattybogle’, who had a very important job scaring crows in the field to stop them from eating the corn. We collaged our own scarecrows but added a photograph of our face to finish them off! The role play area has seen some busy shopping action this week as a green grocers – what great fun has been had busily shopping for fruit and vegetables. Our topic next week is The Enormous Turnip.     This week in Reception we have been learning about our bodies. We have talked about what different parts of our body can do and have thought about our favourite ways to exercise. We have made skeletons using different pasta shapes and used our ICT skills to take photographs of our friends’ work using the digital camera. Reception enjoyed a visit from the school nurse, who taught us how important it is to wash our hands to remove germs. Using her glitter germ cream and light box we checked our hands were completely clean and enjoyed hearing the ‘Super Soap’ song too! In mathematics, we have been ordering numbers, and looking for one more and one less. We enjoyed helping the mischievous monkey at the zoo by adding one more animal into their cages on the interactive whiteboard. In our phonics sessions, we have continued developing our blending skills, as well as learning the correct formation of letters /c/, /k/, /e/ and /h/. We’ve been forming these in salt using our fingers and paintbrushes! We also played a fun interactive whiteboard game blending CVC sounds to make words. Sounding out CVC words is a great way to continue developing this skill at home. Next week, we’ll be moving on to the topic Fruit and Vegetables.     We have had a brilliant week in Year 1! On Thursday, we enjoyed an Autumn Walk in Carlisle Park, collecting lots of autumnal woodland treasures for a display in our classroom. We also were excited to be Detectives looking for signs of Autumn and nature within the park.  We listened carefully to an autumn story before heading back to school. The boys all walked so smartly on our first outing and listened very well – well done Year 1! [gallery ids="16181,16180,16179,16178,16177,16175,16174,16173,16172"] In English this week, we have focused our learning on Antoinette Portis’, Not a Stick. We have sequenced the story and imagined what we would do with a stick – there were some very creative suggestions, from surf boards, to mixing spoons, to magic sticks that make you invisible! We have been concentrating on remembering capital letters at the beginning of sentences and full stops at the end. During maths, we have continued to focus on 2D shapes, consolidating our knowledge of their properties (name, sides and corners). The children sorted a range of 2D shapes into different groups, and had a go at drawing some of them, using a ruler. We also had an exciting shape hunt around the school, using the tally method to record our findings. Next week, we will be securing our knowledge of number bonds within 10, recalling the addition and subtraction facts for numbers from 0-10, and working on doubles. The boys have been working extremely hard since returning to school and have collected all their marbles in their jar! They have voted to have ‘TV time and treat’ as their reward and on Thursday they enjoyed watching an episode of Peter Rabbit, noticing the different woodland animals they have been talking about in topic lessons, whilst enjoying a small sweet treat. We are so proud of them all!     Year 2 have been learning about 2D shapes this week in maths. The children have named shapes, described their properties including any vertical lines of symmetry, sorted them into groups and even had a go at drawing them! Next week, we will be practising our addition and subtraction skills with numbers up to 100. Our phonics focus for the week has been the /igh/ sound but spelt using the graphemes ‘i-e’, ‘y’ and ‘igh’. Yesterday the boys wrote fantastic openings for the book ‘Clown’ by Quentin Blake. We spent some time looking closely at the pictures and used these clues to help us think of creative ideas about who the characters were and why events were happening. On Tuesday, we completed an exciting experiment in science. We spoke about forces and the word ‘friction’ was introduced to the boys. As a class, we tested rolling cars down ramps covered in different materials. We timed how long the cars took to roll down the ramp and used these results to make conclusions about whether friction slows moving objects down or speeds them up. This afternoon, the boys have designed their own circus villages using a map and a key. They were fantastic!