Friday 27th November

Exploring Multiplication Games on Maths Frame using Multiplication Tile Crash and Multiplication Miner….the children used their knowledge of their times tables and other tools to assist them.

   

This week, the children have focussed on starting their story plans based on ‘The Magic Coin’ story as well as developing their understanding of dialogue and ensuring they can use the correct punctuation for this in their work.

We have been reading our class book on Half Magic and the children have immersed themselves in this story which is about a girl called Jane who finds a strange coin.  It turns out that the coin grants wishes but only by half!  Ask your child to tell you about this exciting book! Alfie and Ti took the opportunity to show the class their coin collection which the children really enjoyed.

In Maths, the children have been creating and regrouping arrays for multiplication (using the distribution law) and learning multiplication facts through building arrays.  The children have been encouraged to learn the facts for the 2 – 12 times tables as this will  develop their understanding of this solving problems involving multiplying.

Over the last two weeks, the children have been finding out about how scientists have made a difference to our society.  They learnt about George Washington Carver , a world-renowned American Botanist, who devoted his life’s work to helping farmers successfully grow their crops and they have learnt about Dr Ayanna Howard who designed the Safe Navigation Rover to assess the terrain on Mars using human-based logic and choose safe paths accordingly.

In design and technology, the children continued to develop their understanding of mechanics and levers, creating a waving hand mechanism and a moving dragon.  We were delighted to see some of the children try their skills at home too.

Wishing you and your family a lovely weekend.

Mrs McNamara and Ms Varga

 

Homework for this week:

The Suffix – ous

mountainous
obvious
outrageous
poisonous
serious
spontaneous
tremendous
various
vigorous

Science Homework – Create your own musical instrument.

Home learning for this week is also whole-school focus as this Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent. Click here for details.

Additionally, we are providing you with an electronic version of the Wednesday Word, so that each week you can focus with your family on the Advent Gospel readings.

Click here for this Sunday’s copy.

Please continue your child to read daily and record in their reading diaries.

Reception Week Beginning 23.11.20

The children started the week learning about the Jewish Festival of Light- Hanukkah. The word ‘Hanukkah’ means ‘Dedication’ in Hebrew. It celebrates a miracle that happened in Jerusalem over 2,000 years ago and is celebrated in November or December every year, lasting for eight days.

Reception learnt that it is celebrated by playing games, eating food, lighting candles on a menorah, giving gifts to loved one and praying. The children had the opportunity to play the Jewish game ‘Dreidel’, make their own menorahs, create ancient Jewish temples from a range of media and make their own Star of David.

Later on in the week, the class continued to think about the theme of light and dark by reading the story, ‘Can’t You Sleep Little Bear?’ Inspired by this, they made their own paper lanterns and other light sources such as torches and candles from junk modelling materials. The children also learnt about bears and even made their own bear caves, fit for a bear to live in.

Rehearsals for the class Nativity are well under way now and lots of our time this week has been spent learning lines and working out stage directions. We are looking forward to sharing this with you all on the school website on the 9th December.

Wishing you a lovely weekend,

The Reception Team

 

Whole School Home Learning Advent 2020 Friday 27th November 2020

Advent  is the period leading up to Christmas. It starts on the Sunday nearest to 30 November which this year is Sunday 29th November and ends on Christmas Eve. The word ‘advent‘ comes from the Latin word ‘adventus’ meaning ‘coming’ which is a translation of the Greek word ‘parousia’. It is a time of waiting and preparation rather than a joyful celebration like Christmas.

Advent reminds us to remember and prepare for the birth of Jesus.

To help us prepare for Christ’s coming during Advent we invite you to take part in a creative home learning opportunity.

Make an Advent Wreath

One of our Advent traditions is to pray around an Advent Wreath.

Create an Advent Wreath or Advent Candles from card and paper and display in your home as an Advent focus. Here are some ideas for making a craft display.

 

 

Taking part in this activity will help us to prepare and focus for the birth of Jesus at Christmas.

Mrs Joyce

RE Co-ordinator

Autumn 2 Week 4

Another week has flown by in Year 5. Our maths learning has focused on mental multiplication strategies and the children have been able to use their facts well. Remember to keep practising those times tables at home- fast recall of these will support the children enormously. Next week we will look at some division strategies.
In RE, Year 5 have been learning about a prayer form called Lectio Divina. I was pleased to see how much they concentrated and learned from Scripture in today’s act of worship.
We have continued with hockey this week and the children’s skills are improving. Their passing is becoming more accurate and they are beginning to tackle.
Home learning will be a whole school activity this week. Please see the details below. Due to this, there will be no other home learning other than spellings, which will continue as normal. Please also find below the link to the Wednesday Word, which can only be viewed digitally at this time.
Wednesday Word Link:
https://www.paperturn-view.com/uk/wednesday-word/advent?pid=MTA101634&v=11.2

Friday 27th November 2020

Dear Parents,

Please share in our virtual assembly on Advent and the presentation of this week’s Head Teacher and Gold Awards.

Autumn 2 Week 4

This week we read The day the Crayons quit by Drew Daywalt and explored the different emotions of each character using freeze frames. We have also made predictions about what some of the Crayons might enjoy if they were to quit and created some colourful crayon art. Next week,  we are going to look at persuasive language and begin writing our own persuasive letters.

In maths we have used different mental strategies for addition and subtraction. Next week we will be exploring fact families and inverse for example:

15 + 15 = 30  and 30 -15 = 15

100 +3 = 103 and 103 – 3 = 100

In science we have investigated the function of our muscles; creating models and labelling the muscles and predicting and identifying which muscles we use when running.

We have begun our Advent preparation by creating Advent angels and promises. Each day through Advent we shall be sharing our promises and reading an Advent prayer together. Look out for your child’s Advent angel on the window in the playground.

Home learning 

Reading and spelling 

Please record your reading in your reading record and learn this word list;

crayon

colour

tired

quit

Dear

friend

change

Advent

Whole School Home Learning Advent 2020 Friday 27th November 2020 – see the Newsletter for examples.

Advent  is the period leading up to Christmas. It starts on the Sunday nearest to 30 November which this year is Sunday 29th November and ends on Christmas Eve. The word ‘advent‘ comes from the Latin word ‘adventus’ meaning ‘coming’ which is a translation of the Greek word ‘parousia’. It is a time of waiting and preparation rather than a joyful celebration like Christmas.

Advent reminds us to remember and prepare for the birth of Jesus.

To help us prepare for Christ’s coming during Advent we invite you to take part in a creative home learning opportunity. 

  1. Make an Advent wreath 

One of our Advent traditions is to pray around an Advent Wreath.

Create an Advent Wreath or Advent Candles from card and paper and display in your home as an Advent focus. Here are some ideas for making a craft display.

  1. Write an Advent prayer to say with your family every day of Advent. Here are some examples to help you.

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, king of the universe.

You sent your Son to be the Light of the world and to spread his light of love to all.

As we light the candles of this wreath

May its growing brightness remind us of the approaching nearness of your Son

So that the day of His coming may find us prepared and filled with joy.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Amen

Taking part in these activities will help us to prepare and focus for the birth of Jesus at Christmas.

Mrs Joyce

RE Co-ordinator

 

 

 

Year 2 Blog – 27-11-2020

This week we have been thinking about how during Advent we are preparing for the coming of God. Year 2 created a beautiful Advent display for our sacred space in our classroom and thought very carefully about their Advent promises.

In Geography, we have been learning all about the white continent – Antarctica. Year 2 have identified the key geographical features of the Antarctic environment and have learnt how the Emperor Penguin has adapted to live in this harsh environment.

Please bring in a pair of wellington boots or old shoes on Monday 30th November as we will be planting bulbs in our class garden.

Whole School Religion Home Learning:

Home Learning:

Spellings week 4. Spelling test on Wednesday 2nd December

Nativity: Learn your lines for the Nativity play.

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Davey

Week 4

Another fun and busy week! In Maths we have been solving problems involving addition and subtraction. The children have been looking for key words that tell them what operation to use.

In Phonics, we learnt the diagraphs ou, ie, ay and ea and our spellings this week were words with the diagraph er.

We had fun preparing our class garden to plant bulbs for our Garden of Hope.

In Science we had a big question. Does the tallest person have the biggest feet? The children decided we should stand in a line from the tallest to the shortest to test this. We found out that the tallest child in Year 1 did have the biggest feet but the second tallest child had smaller feet than some shorter children.

Then we learnt about a scientist called Mae Jemison. The children wrote questions they would ask her.

In Art we looked at the artist Paul Klee. We used some primary colours and mixed paint to make other colours and printed a picture using different shape blocks.

In Religion the children wrote Advent promises on stars and decorated them for our class display. Then each child wrote a prayer for our class Advent calendar to tell God something good that we will try to do every day in Advent. The children also made advent wreaths.

Please can you send in Christmas costumes by Thursday 3rd December.

Wednesday Word https://www.paperturn-view.com/uk/wednesday-word/advent?pid=MTA101634&v=11.2

Home Learning

Phonics sheet sent home in their folder. Please return in their folder by Wednesday 2nd December.

Spellings – words with ir diagraph

Whole School Home Learning Advent 2020 Friday 27th November 2020 – see the Newsletter for examples.

Advent  is the period leading up to Christmas. It starts on the Sunday nearest to 30 November which this year is Sunday 29th November and ends on Christmas Eve. The word ‘advent‘ comes from the Latin word ‘adventus’ meaning ‘coming’ which is a translation of the Greek word ‘parousia’. It is a time of waiting and preparation rather than a joyful celebration like Christmas.

Advent reminds us to remember and prepare for the birth of Jesus.

To help us prepare for Christ’s coming during Advent we invite you to take part in a creative home learning opportunity. 

  1. Make an Advent wreath 

One of our Advent traditions is to pray around an Advent Wreath.

Create an Advent Wreath or Advent Candles from card and paper and display in your home as an Advent focus. Here are some ideas for making a craft display.

  1. Write an Advent prayer to say with your family every day of Advent. Here are some examples to help you.

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, king of the universe.

You sent your Son to be the Light of the world and to spread his light of love to all.

As we light the candles of this wreath

May its growing brightness remind us of the approaching nearness of your Son

So that the day of His coming may find us prepared and filled with joy.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Amen

Taking part in these activities will help us to prepare and focus for the birth of Jesus at Christmas.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Carey

Year 6 – 27/11/20

Another week has flown by in Year 6, with more fantastic learning from the class.

Maths has seen them solving lots of percentages problems, whilst in this week’s Science lesson, the children worked in groups to prove that light travels in straight lines:

In English, we started our new WW2 novel called The Children of the King which gave way to great discussion about evacuation. We looked at propaganda posters and explored their persuasive devices, then considered arguments for and against evacuation. Here is their Conscience Alley, in which one side is trying to convince Heather to evacuate her children, and the other side aims to dissuade her.

The children were excited to make a start on the KS2 Advent Service and Y6 Carol Service, the latter of which will be played on Potters Bar Radio in the lead-up to Christmas! The carols are sounding beautiful already and we are looking forward to recording all the parts over the next fortnight. (See further down for YouTube links to practise songs)

Home learning for this week is a whole-school focus as this Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent. Click here for details.

Spellings are the same as last week:

accommodate

aggressive

conscious

desperate

environment

equipment

especially

exaggerate

harass

hindrance

muscle

opportunity

physical

recommend

stomach

temperature

Additionally, we are providing you with an electronic version of the Wednesday Word, so that each week you can focus on the Advent Gospel readings. Here is this Sunday’s copy.

Advent & Carol Service links

O Holy Night – Click here

Silent Night – click here

Reception Class Week Beginning 16.11.20

The whole school focus this week has centered around National Anti-Bullying Week and in Reception, the children have been thinking a lot about what makes a good friend.

The class started off the week by listening to the story ‘The Rainbow Fish, a book well known for it’s message of selfishness, friendship and sharing. The children discussed what it feels like when you feel included, cared for and respected by others. They also discussed what to do if you are feeling left out, upset by someone’s behaviour towards you, or if you are ever physically hurt by someone. Reception also learnt about how to keep safe online and cyber-bullying.

The theme of how to be a good friend continued all week long.  Amongst many other things, the children made friendship bracelets for one another, decorated hearts and gave them out, made cards with messages of friendship inside and wrote about who their special friends are and why.

This week, the children got to choose their parts for the class Nativity; rehearsals will begin next week!

You will not need to provide any costumes, as we have our own, thank you.

Have a wonderful weekend,

The Reception Team

Year 2 Blog – 20th November 2020

What is a scientist?

scientist is a person who studies or has expertise in science. A scientist tries to understand the world around us. Scientists make observations, ask questions and do extensive research work in finding the answers to many questions others may not know about.

Year 2 have been learning about the type of work scientists do. In particular we have looked at the work of the food scientist, Dr. Charlotte Armah. Dr. Armah leads experiments involving human volunteers to learn whether eating particular foods, especially broccoli, can protect us from diseases!

In Maths, we have been looking at measures. The children have been estimating and measuring using different scales as well as using standard and non standard units of measure.

As part of our anti-bullying week, Year 2 learnt how to identify bullying and the children created some wonderful posters. We also looked at the issue of cyber-bullying and what to do if something happens online. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/35506689

On Sunday we celebrate The Feast of Christ the King. Year 2 made some beautiful crowns and thought very carefully about the type of King Jesus is.

Home Learning:

Spellings week 3

Mathletics: How full? Ordering lengths. Which measuring tool?

Nativity: Please start to learn your lines.

Have a lovely weekend,

Miss Davey