Dear parents and carers,

What an brilliant week we've had in year 5! I have been so impressed with the children this week. they've all worked really hard and the standard of their work is improving really quickly.

In English the children have spent this week writing, editing and revising their short nature narratives. I've read them all today and they're super- they all have lovely details in about their settings as well as their character's senses. It was quite a short and simple piece in some ways, so this gave them room to work on their vocabulary choices. We also worked hard on avoiding the trap of starting lots of sentences with "I" when using the 1st person by using different fronted adverbials as sentence openers. The stories work really well so I'm really pleased with the outcome. Next week we're moving on a bit to delve in "The Lost Words" and to start exploring some poetry.

In maths this week we've continued to focus on fractions, and we've been working hard on finding equivalent fractions, changing improper fractions into mixed numbers (and vice versa) as well as comparing and ordering them. The children found this a bit tricky at first, but they were all real steadfast squirrels and they completed nailed it in today's lesson! Their confidence is continuing to build, so I'm really pleased to be able to continue with fractions next week. We'll mainly be looking at adding fractions next week, including within 1 and adding 3 or more fractions.

In our history lesson today we used a special educational version of a video game set in ancient Athens to explore the buildings and temples on the Acropolis. It worked brilliantly on the HUGE touchscreen that we are currently testing in the classroom (although my steering of the character was a bit wobbly!).  Some of the children were interested in downloading it themselves at home (it will work much better on a gaming PC than my old laptop!). You can find out more information about the game here: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/assassins-creed/discovery-tour
IMPORTANT: you need the Discovery Tour NOT the main game (which is PEGI 18 so not suitable for children!). The Discovery Tour is PEGI 7+ so suitable for KS2.  It's currently £17 but I got it on sale for £7, so it's worth keeping an eye on the website to see if another sale arises.

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week:

1. What was the best thing about the huge touchscreen that we had in the classroom this week?
2. What did you learn about ancient Athens in your history lesson?
3. What different clubs did you use in your tri-golf lesson?

​We have had another great week in Windrush Class!
In English we have finished our sentence stacking using Flood by Alvaro F Villa, and we are now planning our own disaster story based on extreme weathers. In maths, we have been working hard on measuring lengths in centimetres and millimetres, as well as converting between the different units. 
In PE we continued to practise our basketball dribbling; we learnt how to dribble under our leg and behind our back. We also learnt the main three passes used in basketball: the chest pass, the bounce pass and the overhead pass. I was so impressed with the focus and determination the children showed to master these skills!

​We enjoyed our music lesson with Mrs Davies again this week; we continued to revisit some of the pieces we had learnt in the Autumn, as well as developing our understanding of pulse. It was also very exciting to be able to take our instruments home!

​In Science, we started to think about the different ways that we could describe rocks. We thought about the size, shape, colour, texture, and then thought about how the rocks might have changed over time. We went on a rock hunt on the field and thought about how we could describe the rocks we found.

What a fabulous start to the term we've had. We have all been very impressed with the children's enthusiasm and creativity in our writing for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 

In maths we've been working hard on decimals - getting to grips with tenths and hundredths this week. What an amazing science experiment we did yesterday - modelling how our digestive system processes food and waste (photos below!).

We are few lessons in to our Topic work on the Anglo-Saxons and we have been impressed with the children's knowledge and thinking skills. In PSHE this term our topic is Changing Me so we have been thinking about our bodies and how babies are created. 

In PE we have been working on striking and fielding and developing our skills in cricket. 

This week's Spellings are on Spelling Shed and are homophones so the children need to learn the word meanings in context as well as their spelling. Keep up with your reading and TTT Rockstars too please. 

Hello Everyone,
We have had another very busy week in Foundation Stage. It has been fantastic to see the children really make use of the free flow activities in the classroom. We have seen lots of children in our supermarket and have a massive amount of crafting and creating going on at our 'creation station'. There has been lots of learning opportunities outside as the weather is improving too and the children have particularly enjoyed the water play and our minibeast garden. 
Our literacy work has seen us continue our work on Supertato by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet. We started the week by making some wonderful super hero vegetables of our own. Every one of them were very special and it was great to see the children's creativity shine through. Here are a selection below. 

 Following on from creating our vegetables the children had to write all about them independently. They gave each of their super hero vegetables a name and came up with a super power. I am sure you'll all agree we have some super writers in our class who have worked really hard to learn all about writing sentences. 

Our maths work has continued to look at money and the children had to find the right coins to make different amounts to buy ice creams. They were all very good and are beginning to understand this tricky concept.
The children have worked very hard on their PE this term already and it has been great to observe them improving their throwing and catching skills.
I hope you all enjoy a long bank holiday weekend and I look forward to welcoming you all back next Tuesday.
​Mrs Ballard. 

It was great to see everyone again after the Easter break and we have had a lovely first week back. 

There has been some excellent team work, sharing and creativity in our continuous provision this week. The Garden Centre role play area has been a real hit too! Take a look at some of the activities that we chose: 
​

In Maths this week we have been focusing on measuring mass. We have enjoyed using non-standard units such as blocks to measure and compare the mass of objects in the classroom. One object that we measured had a mass of over 100 blocks! We worked hard on using the key vocabulary heavier, lighter, equal and balanced.

In Science this term we are continuing our learning about plants with a particular focus on growing plants. Our tomato plants have arrived and we are working as a team to help them to grow healthily. 

It was great to continue our outdoor learning at Forest School this week. The sun was shining and lots of fun was had. 

We have started our work on our topic for this term-The Great Fire of London. There has been lots of excitement about the new topic and we have started our Great Fire of London Dance in PE. It was great to see so much creativity and confidence as we started to choreograph and perform our routines. 

There was a big surprise in Year 1 Evenlode Class this week as the children received their Easter eggs from the Dunelm Oxford competition. The children thoroughly deserved a treat for working so hard and adapting so well to the changes that they have faced throughout the Covid 19 pandemic. A big thank you to Dunelm Oxford for making our children so happy, what a great way to support the local community. 

Please see the attached document to see the running total for the Interhouse Sports points so far this academic year. The scores are very close! 

This coming term's Interhouse will be Archery which will be part of each classes session with Danny Taylor. 

interhouse_points_2020-2021.xlsx

We have had brilliant first week back in Year 3!
In English we have started working on a new book called Flood. We have been focusing on sentence stacking, and we have been thinking about how we can build tension in a disaster story by using repetition and rhetorical questions. The deepening the moment that the children have written has really impressed me this week, we have had lots of Bold Badgers!
In maths we have just finished our work on Statistics; we have covered bar charts and tables this week. Next week, we will be moving onto measurement, with a particular focus on length.
This week we have started our PE unit on Basketball. We have started off by learning how to dribble with the basketballs, and we have been trying to use the right amount of pressure to keep the ball dribbling as we move about. I have been really impressed with how the children have improved over the two lessons and how much their confidence has grown already!
It was brilliant to be able to have Mrs Davies back for our violin and cello lesson on Thursday! We practised some of the pieces that we had learnt in the Autumn, as well as reminding ourselves of how to use the bow. Mrs Davies was really pleased with how much the class had remembered!

Dear parents and carers,

It has been fantastic to be back in school after the Easter break, and we have all had a brilliant week. The children have worked really hard and have produced some great work.

In English we've been working on some sentence stacking, based around a simple narrative about an encounter with a wild animal. Next week we'll be using this to help structure and inspire a piece of independent writing.

In maths we've worked on fractions, starting by recapping some fraction work from year 4 and also building on that with further developing the children's understanding of equivalent fractions. We'll be continuing with this fraction work next week.

I had a great time in the Easter holidays marking the children's science writing about their experiments. Below is a slideshow with a selection of some of their work.

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week:

1. What are your goals for the summer term?
2. When are where was ancient Greece?
3. 3: What is a fraction?

Hello everyone,
It was wonderful to welcome all of the children back this week after a well deserved break. We have had a wonderful first week back and it has been a busy one too.
Our maths work has focused on exploring money and learning about the different coins. The children have been real bounce- back bunnies this week as they have had to keep trying and practising this new area of our maths. We have used the till to help us count out different amounts up to 20p and thought about the different coins and how much they are worth. They were excited to learn that a £2 coin was 200p! 
We also started our new book this week for our literacy which is "Supertato" by Sue Hendra. We shared this story during our remote learning time and the children enjoyed it so much we decided to make it our topic. We began sentence stacking our story together and next week the children will write their own part of the story. We also had some vegetable ordering activities out to choose and the children were great at taking on the challenge independently. 
​

The children came back after Easter and were excited to see that our lovely sunflowers have really grown. We talked about what we had done over the past term to help them grow and  I have set the children the challenge to see who can grow their sunflower the tallest. I am looking forward to seeing how they all get on.
​

We have had a lovely week and I am already looking forward to next week.
Have a great weekend,
Mrs Ballard. 

It has been brilliant to see all of the children working so hard since we could all return to school and our classroom is most certainly a happier place when it is filled with our wonderful children. This was really clear during our Australia themed day this week. We had lots of fun bringing together the learning in our topic this term. A very big Appleton thank you goes to Rebekah who organised and resourced the activities for our day. Although it was not the same without having Rebekah on site with us, her awesome Aussie nature shone through in all that we did. It was great to see our children getting into the Aussie spirit, take a look at some of the awesome outfits:

We began our day by learning a song about Australian animals called 'Cuddly Koalas'. This was a song that Miss Leggett remembered singing from when she was a Rainbow and a Brownie! ​

We then did a collage activity where we used red, black and yellow/ gold paper to create an Aboriginal flag. We learnt that the colours represented different things: red=earth/ land, black=the people, yellow= the sun. It was great to see everyone being Steadfast Squirrels and really working hard to carefully put their flags together. We think that they look great!

We were very excited to be able to use our tapping sticks which we had decorated a couple of weeks ago. These are the links to the songs that we used so that you can have a try at home:
Tapping on my Sticks www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G6ax4AFKTY
Give me a Home Among the Gum Trees www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLWzPQmd5sc 

We had a big surprise when we listened to a story that Rebekah had written for us all about Evenlode Class Explorers Digging to Australia. We listened carefully and realised that the story included all of our names and had photos of us too. We were all super excited about this. Rebekah had very kindly printed a book for each of us to keep too, what a special memory of our bonza Australia Day!