Newsletters

George Spicer Newsletter - 27th September 2024

Today is national Teaching Assistants’ Day, this is an awareness day celebrated on Friday 27th September. Schools across the UK celebrate their own TAs and nominate their favourites for our Teaching Assistant of the Year award.  I’m sure you will agree that we have an awesome TA Team, who support your children in their learning but also help our teachers to teach.  We gave them some yummy treats and gifts to let them know how grateful and lucky we are to have them here.

Harvest Festival

The Harvest Festival is taking place on Monday 30th September. Donations of non-perishable items, e.g. tins, pasta, will be greatly appreciated and donated to a local food bank. Please only bring in your donations on Monday 30th September, not before. 

House Points

This week we have launched our new House Point reward system to the children.  They will get these rewards for displaying our 4Be’s for behaviour (Kind, Safe, Sensible, Respectful) in and around school.  These are then collected in class by the Reps and taken to the main tubes, where they are counted half-termly by the Captains – rewards will then be given to the highest achieving House.  There will also be more House competitions throughout the year as we look to develop a sense of pride and belonging in the children.

  

Important Dates for Diary

Monday 30^th September – Harvest Festival 

Wednesday 2nd October - Reception Curriculum Meeting for parents 5:30-6:30pm

Thursday 3rd October - Census Day 

Upcoming Workshops:

Tuesday 1^st October – Elm Phonics Workshop 9:15am

Wednesday 2^nd October – Ash Phonics Workshop 9:15am

Thursday 3^rd October – Oak Phonics Workshop 9:15am

Monday 7th October - Miss Ahmed's Maths Workshop 9:15am

Tuesday 8th October - Mr McGwinn's Maths Workshop 9:15am

Wednesday 9th October - Mr Demczuk's Maths Workshop 9:15am

Thursday 10th October - Ms Jackson's Maths Workshop 9:15am

School Tours - Reception 2025 - 2026 Starters

Attendance week ending 27/09/2024

Overall school =  95.57%   Lates = 116

Best attendance: 1st  Sparrow 99.39% 2nd Kingston 98.75% 3rd Everest 98.43%

Punctuality: Well done to Daffodil with 100% for punctuality.

Year 1

In P.S.H.E. this week, the children played a game to reinforce the idea of belonging and being part of a class team.  They then examined visuals of children making either right or wrong choices and discussed what part they could play in making our class a safe place for everybody to learn.  Some ideas included “use kind hands and kind feet”, “we should help our friends” and "my teacher helps me learn."

   

Year 2

In Year 2 this week we went to the woodland area to see what animals live in a woodland habitat. 

We saw lots of woodlouse, spiders, ants and bettles.

"The woodland area is a good habitat because it is dark and very quiet."

Year 3 

In Writing, Year 3 have been exploring the story: The Heart and The Bottle by Oliver Jeffers.

This story is about a little girl who puts her heart into a bottle to keep it safe from pain but in doing so, she removes all the creativity and wonder about the world from herself. 

We wrote a diary entry as the woman wishing to get her heart back. We used present perfect tense in our entries to show what she had tried to do already that hadn't worked.  

After this, we wrote poems, explaining to the woman what she could do to help her. Our focus was on abstract nouns (such as joy, freedom, curiosity), repetition and imperative verbs (bossy verbs that tell us what to do).

Year 5 

In Year 5 this week, we have been role-playing as journalists; reporting on the amazing high-wire acrobatics of Philippe Petit. We composed questions as reporters and used inspiration from the illustrations in the book to conjure up quotes from the astonished crowd below. 

We have also been emulating Philippe Petit, by improving our balance, poise and movement within gymnastic lessons. We have been empowered to use the same daredevil mindset by stretching ourselves (literally and metaphorically) to develop our sequences within the theme of 'Flight'. 

The children continue to work hard in all subjects and are now settled into the routines and expectations of Year 5. All of the adults in Year 5 are incredibly proud of each and every one of them!

Year 6 

Year 6 are a few weeks into their gymnastics work in PE. The aim is to build a sequence of 10 different balances showing inventive ways of travelling between each of the balances. The balances should show a range of high and low balances, counter balances, tension balances, and 4, 3, 2 and 1-point balances. They are now going to practice the range of techniques for travelling between balances, such as roles, jumps, skips and cartwheels.  These are some of the balances they have already perfected and they are working hard on improving and expanding their range. Well done Year 6!

  

In Science, Year 6 are learning about taxonomy. Taxonomy is the science of naming, describing and classifying organisms and includes all plants, animals and microorganisms of the world. The children are learning how we use the classification system to accurately sort and identify different species of plants and animals. This week they had a go at seeing what characteristics they could use to sort the different plants and animals on their cards. The main focus for sorting in this lesson was to sort our cards into vertebrates and invertebrates. Ask the children if they can explain to you what each of these terms means. 

Boys' football

Well done to the boys' football team who had an excellent start to their league campaign this week. Coming in as defending champions is always difficult, however, the team dealt with the pressure well and managed to secure two convincing victories out of their three games with excellent goals from Rio and Deniz. 

PE

As part of our commitment to teaching high-quality PE, Year 6 are going to Ellenborough Table Tennis centre for the Autumn Term.  The children have really enjoyed using the elite level facilities and have worked really hard to develop their basic shots.

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