Newsletters

George Spicer Newsletter - 10th May 2024

GSPS Ambassadors - Children in years 1-5 have been very excited this week, eager to apply for the role of GSPS Ambassador for their class. The time and effort spent preparing their speeches has shown how committed they are to the school and the role.  Speeches were heard in each class and the children voted for who they felt would be a good representative for their voice.  Well done to everyone who prepared and presented this week. 

The three children with the most votes will be invited to attend a group interview on Thursday 16th May. Successful candidates will be informed on Monday 13^th May - no further preparation is needed for this stage of the selection process.  They just need to be themselves.

A final decision will be made by the end of next week.

SATs Week Monday 13th May-Thursday 16th May - Good luck to all of Year 6 next week with your SATS.

Donations - Please could we have donations of chalk, crayons, pens for our lunchtime colouring club at Kimberley Gardens.

Important Dates for Diary

Monday 13th May-Thursday 16th May - Year 6 SATs Week

Wednesday 15th May - Obi the clown circus skills for Reception

Thursday 16th May - Census Day (see lunch menu below)

Monday 20th May-Friday 24th May - Year 6 School Journey

Thursday 23rd May - Anubis and Osiris Trip to the London Alevi Cultural Centre and Cem-Evi in Turnpike Lane

Friday 24th May - Thoth and Ra Trip to the London Alevi Cultural Centre and Cem-Evi in Turnpike Lane

Friday 24th May - Reception Family Reading Sessions

Monday 27th May-Friday 31st May - Half term

Friday 7th June - Non-uniform day FOGS Donations

Maths Workshops:

Tuesday 21st May - Apache class 9:15am-9:45am

Wednesday 22nd May - Navajo class 9:15am-9:45am

Thursday 23rd May - Sioux class 9:15am-9:45am

Friday 24th May - Cheyenne class 9:15am-9:45am

Year 4 class assemblies at 2:45pm Sketty Road

Thursday 23rd May 2024 - Heracles class

Thursday 6^th June – Achilles class

Thursday 13^th June 2024 – Odysseus class

Our Value - Equality

Our Value focus this week shared with the children the difference between Equality – everyone being treated or given the same; and Fairness (Equity) – everyone being given what they need. Not only was this designed with making the children more aware of Global Goal 10 and Article 2 but hopefully to reduce the ‘It’s not fair!’ strops from your children at home.

At Sketty Road, after last week’s 89 year old completing the 5K run, I showed the children another inspiring example of why they shouldn’t be saying ‘I can’t do it’ – ask them what the person was doing this week.

Census Day - Thursday 16th May

Our school is taking part in Walk to School Week. The nationwide event is to help pupils experience first-hand the importance of active travel to school.

By walking, scootering or cycling to school, children will be well on their way to reaching their recommended minimum 60 minutes of physical activity per day before even reaching the school gates! Not only will it set them up for a positive day in the classroom, but it will also help create healthy habits for life.

This year’s challenge, The Magic of Walking, encourages children to travel actively to school every day of the week. If you live far away from school and need to drive or take public transport, try parking the car in one of our convenient park and stride locations, or hopping off the bus/train ten minutes away and walking the rest of the journey.

Start thinking now about what you can do to join in the Magic of Walking challenge.

Please see link to our park and stride leaflet. Park and stride

Reception

This week Reception has continued exploring the story ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’. We have been tasting the different types of foods seen in the story and linked this learning to creating tally charts and pictograms of their favourite foods. 

Some children furthered their learning by creating their own tally charts to find results. 

“Most of the children have brown hair” said Victoria

Once we had finished the food tasting, they all agreed caterpillars should only eat leafs. 

“Pickles are my favourite, they’re are spicy” Fraser said 

“Caterpillars can’t eat chocolate cake and fruit, they’ll get a stomach ache” Leah said  

Year 1

This week, the children at George Spicer got the opportunity to vote for their class representatives to be GSPS Ambassadors.  The children in Year 1 were eager to either give speeches canvassing for votes or listen attentively to their peers as they stated how they could improve, empower and inspire their classmates.  They gave impassioned speeches, advocating why their fellow classmates should vote for them.  L said “You should vote for me because I will follow the ‘Four B’s and listen to all ideas!” P said “I would be kind and make sure that everyone is safe” and M said “I would like everybody to be happy and proud of themselves at George Spicer Primary School!” We were all very impressed and privileged to witness future leaders in the making.

Year 2

In Year 2, we have been exploring the wonderful world of George’s Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl for writing. We have enjoyed hearing the descriptions and even did some ‘hot seating’ to pretend to be some of the main characters! We are working towards writing a diary entry as George, so we have looked at the past tense, commas and descriptive language to make sure our diary is very effective.

We have also been learning about the Stone Age and are working towards creating a Stone Age axe in Design and Technology. In our last session, we wrapped cardboard in newspaper which will then be covered in paper mâché. We have enjoyed learning about what the axe would look like and how we can transform our materials into great axe replicas!

Year 3 

Year 3 are enjoying reading Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl. They have been using their retrieval and inference skills to answer a range of questions. In order to give detailed responses, they have also been justifying their answers by providing evidence from the text. In addition, they have developed their understanding of new words and phrases - such as, quirky, lavished, lolloping gait and prowling. They also linked the UNCRC rights to events that took place in the story.

Year 5 

This week year five have been enjoying the sunshine whilst doing some outdoor learning. Earlier last week the children were researching that geography of Egypt and historical information about the great pyramid at Giza for a documentary. This week we took the opportunity to get outside to use the outdoor space to record our documentaries. As you can see from the photos the children took their assignments seriously some editing them in movie maker on their iPads to make them look more professional.  We were really pleased with the results.

Year 6 

Blitz art

Inspired by our WW2 learning, we looked at what the London skyline looked during the second world war. We used watercolour paints to create a fiery backdrop and paper to create the silhouette of London. The cutting of the skyline was tricky so we had to focus throughout. 

We wish all of our Year 6 a lovely and relaxing weekend. We know they will do brilliantly next week when our SATs commence.