George Spicer Primary School Parent Portal - George Spicer Newsletter

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George Spicer Newsletter - 28th February 2025

Welcome back to the second half of the Spring Term, I hope you and your families had a LOVEly half-term break. It is hard to believe that term-wise we are over half-way through the academic year and I spoke to the children about the goals they set themselves at the start of the year and to think about how far they are towards achieving them and to think about what they need to do next. Our value for this half-term is Respect and assemblies looked at the idea of what self-respect and mutual respect are. I talked about honesty and integrity with the children and, to fit in with the national traditional tale telling day, used the story of the boy who cried wolf, but perhaps try asking your children what the twist was.

Not only will this term see lighter mornings and evenings and all the spring flowers adding colour to our lives, but it is a very spiritual time for many of our world religions. This weekend we offer support to our families observing the holy month of Ramadan and next week our Christian families begin their period of Lent. No matter what you believe in, I hope this period brings our school community together and we are more respectful towards one another.

There are lots of opportunities for you to come into school this term and I hope to see as many of you as possible at the singing or strings concerts; parent consultation day or the class assemblies. Many thanks for your continued support.

Mr Spong

Important Information

Parent's Consultations Day - Taking place on Thursday 13th March. The school will be closed to all children, and you and they, will only attend for your appointment. Booking will be going live on Arbor on Monday 10th February at 4pm. Please follow this link for a guide on how to book this. These meetings will be held face-to-face with your child's teacher.

Welfare - Please could we have donations of larger tracksuit bottoms, trousers socks for Sketty Road and smaller size underwear/socks, tracksuit bottom for Kimberley Gardens.

Ramadan Fasting form - as per Mr Spong's letter, if you wish your child to fast during Ramadan we require the consent form to be completed and returned. Please click the following link for copy of the form - Ramadan Fasting Request Form.

Important Dates for Diary

Tuesday 4th March - Nevis & Fuji Gudwara trip - Morning only

Thursday 6th March - Snowdon & Everest Gudwara trip - Morning only

Thursday 6th March - Fuji assembly - 2.45pm

Tuesday 18th March - Elm George Spicer Sings - 2.30pm

Thursday 20th March - Ash George Spicer Sings - 2.30pm

Friday 21st March - Oak George Spicer Sings - 2.30pm

Y6 SATs Parent Information Evening – Wednesday 19^th March 6-6.45pm at Sketty Road

Quote of the week

“Honesty, truth and decency all link together- by loving all of these, we can improve our families, communities and our society.” - Estella Eliot

Attendance week ending 28/02/25

Overall school = 94.36% Lates = 85

Best attendance: 1st Owl 98.89% 2nd Daffodil 98.85% 3rd Arctic 97.85%

Punctuality: Well done to Poppy, Owl, Mediterranean, Kingston with 100% for punctuality.

Image, World Book Day 2025 – Ideas and Activities | National ... Image, World Book and Copyright Day

World Book Day will be celebrated on Friday 7^th March to allow all year groups to take part in the activities. We will not be dressing up and the theme will be poetry. There will be a variety of activities taking place throughout the day. We have spoken to a small number of families about why we aren't dressing up, mainly because of the unsustainability of single-use costumes, how it doesn't really enhance or encourage more reading and a lot of children just come dressed in their own clothes as 'children' from various books. We also have to consider the large number of children who have emotional or sensory needs that dressing up days causes added anxiety and dysregulation. We are still promoting and endorsing World Book Day and your children will be having lots of fun.

Please bring in any books that your child would like to swap on Thursday 6^th March. These books will not be returned to your child so ensure that they are books that they do not want. On Friday 7^th March, your child will be given the opportunity to bring home a book that another child has bought in to school for the swap. If your child would like to bring in more than one book to swap, they are very welcome to. However, they will only be able to take one book in exchange on Friday 7^th March.

We are looking forward to a day of fun activities and your child will bring home a book token. Please check their book bags for the token.

Reception

From tiny seeds grow big trees! This week the children have been planting seeds and thinking about what plants need to help them grow. They planted tiny cress seeds, medium sunflower seeds and big bean seeds, and made predictions about which seed will grow the tallest.

We started reading the story ‘The Tiny Seed’ by Eric Carle. The children have been thinking about what happened to the seeds in the story and why they didn’t grow.

In Maths, we have been using the vocabulary of height to talk about how tall different items are. We have been comparing the heights of objects using the language: tall, taller, tallest, short, shorter and shortest.

Year 1

This week Year 1 have been looking at the difference between being healthy and unhealthy. The children have been sharing ideas on how we can make healthier choices independently. We all played a game called 'What Is Healthy?'. This involved reading a variety of choices and moving to the 'healthy' side or 'unhealthy' side of our classroom. The children used this game to start discussing their thoughts and choices. They then started giving one another advice and learning how to keep a balance between these choices.

Year 2

Year 2 have had a great start to the new half term. On our first day back we discovered a pond in our classroom! There were lily pads in the pond with promises written on them. Our new Literacy Tree book is Tadpole's Promise by Jeanne Willis which is a story all about relationships and change. We thought about our own promises and added them to our class pond; Mrs Fitzpatrick's promise was to always help the children with their learning. We also discussed change and thought of as many things as we could that change, for example a caterpillar, a chameleon, traffic lights, the weather, seeds and an egg. Year 2 are looking forward to getting stuck into their new book and creating some great pieces of writing inspired by it.

Year 3

In Maths, the children have been securing their knowledge around addition and subtraction. They have worked really well at solving missing numbers by using the column method.

In Reading, the children are enjoying their new text - The boy who grew dragons by Andy Shepherd and are continuing to develop on a range of comprehension skills from retrieval to inference to summarising a text.

Year 3 also start their writing journey this term with inspiration from a new text - The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Michael Morpurgo. Apologies in advance if your child comes home wanting to talk to you all about their sudden knowledge of rats!

Year 4

The children in Year 4 have been busy using their skills and knowledge from our History and Art lessons to create sculptures out of clay. In History, we learnt that archaeologists who studied the life of the Indus People discovered a statue of a 'dancing girl' and used this in addition to other evidence to understand that the people of the Indus Valley enjoyed dancing and music. The children then used this as inspiration to design, sketch and then sculpt their own personal sculptures. They thought about what would represent their culture, identity or hobbies just as the 'dancing girl' represents how the Indus people liked dancing and music. The children across the whole year group worked very hard on this and we are so impressed with their ideas and creations!

Year 5

The start of term has been a busy one in Year 5. We have begun our new Literacy Tree Writing Topic, 'The Island' by Armin Greder. This has afforded us the opportunity to explore the UNCRC in greater detail. We have been linking Article 2 (No Discrimination) , Article 19 (Protection from Violence) and Article 22 (Refugee Children) to how the 'newcomer' to the island was initially viewed and treated within the story. We have also been linking key themes of the narrative to our Global Goals: 2. Zero Hunger and 5. Gender Equality. Furthermore, we looked deeply into key vocabulary such as: hostility and hospitality and created some rhetorical questions based on how the islanders reacted to the newcomer washing up on 'their' shores.

portada the island

Year 6

As we begin the new term, Year 6 have a new writing focus. This term all their writing will be based on a fictionalised news report regarding The Three Little Pigs and The Big Bad Wolf. This week the children were shown footage of one of the pigs being arrested after the wolf was found boiled alive in a large pot. The children have been discussing how bias might be shown in headlines and in news articles. They then wrote an introduction to a news article, telling viewers of the breaking news as the pig was taken into custody. These are some of the headlines they came up with and some examples of their news articles. Can you spot which words and phrases show bias?

KS2 Ambassadors

Our KS2 ambassadors have been busy improving the look of our playground, as well as helping combat air pollution, at the same time. They planted pollution-trapping plants to enhance air quality and to improve our environment. As a Rights Respecting School, we linked this to our Article of the Month (Article 24) and to Global Goal 13.

FoGS News

For more information about FoGS (Friends of George Spicer), details of our upcoming events, information on how to join our meetings or to read our newsletter, please visit our website