The results are in for our first Interhouse Competition of the year which was Football Skills. Children in Years 1-6 completed the challenges to earn points for their House Team. Click here to see the results: football_skills_results.pdf

​This week we have been looking at the story ‘What the Ladybird Heard’  by Julia Donaldson. We made our own salt dough ladybirds and painted them.

​We also made our own small world farm by creating our own animals. We used pegs as legs and these helped the animals to stand. We had great fun acting using these to act out the story.

A highlight this week was in reading where we were able to send home physical books. It has been great to have been able to send home reading books with the children this week and I hope that this had helped to give an exciting focus to reading at home. 

In phonics this week we have continued to practise the Set 2 sounds ar, or, air and read real/ nonsense words featuring these sounds. 

In Computing, we have continued our work on E-Safety and how to stay safe when using technology. We focused particularly on personal information and who we should share this information with. For further resources on staying safe online take a look at the Thinkuknow website: www.thinkuknow.co.uk/ 

In Maths we have continued our work on addition and focused on number bonds to 10, comparing number bonds and adding together two groups/ numbers.  

 I am extremely proud of the class and how they have returned to school in such a positive manner after the lockdown period. It has been a great first term together in Year 1. The children have worked so hard and I hope that you all have a lovely half term break. 

In English this week we have been focusing on the language and techniques we can use in poetry. We finished the week by writing an Autumn acrostic poem. The children thought of lots of lovely descriptions about the leaves, weather and celebrations, as well as some great similes to describe the colours we see during Autumn.

We had another great music lesson this week! Mrs Davies challenged the class to play 8 songs before the end of the lesson; the children completed the challenge successfully and we really enjoyed playing a variety of different pieces!

In our Art lesson this week we finished off and evaluated our Stonehenge silhouettes. The class have worked hard on their preparations and practise for this final piece over the last few, learning how to use water colours and thinking about the shape and size of the silhouettes. The final pieces look brilliant!
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Have a great half-term!

Dear parents and carers,

We made it to half term- yay! It has been a very long and tiring half term, and your children have worked exceptionally hard. They have coped so well returning to school and with the changes that making us more covid-secure have brought. I was lovely to talk to most of you over the past couple of weeks about your wonderful children and how much progress they are making. If you didn't make an appointment to talk to me, please contact the office and I'll do my best to squeeze you in next half term :)

In English this week we have continued with our independent writing, this time learning how to edit and revise the first draft. We'll continue with this for the first week back after half term, as it's not quite finished yet. We'll do our final redraft and share our finished stories then.

In maths this week we have mainly focused on subtraction, including looking at the column method for subtraction when you need to exchange (or as we called it when I was at school- "borrowing"). Some children were shaky at first but have really been Steadfast Squirrels and Must Do Moles, and I am really pleased to see how much improvement they've made in it over the week. After half term we'll be finishing off our work on addition and subtraction, including looking at estimating answers and using the inverse relationship.

We really enjoyed our interhouse football skills competition this week. Watch this space for the results early next half term!

When we return to school we will be creating some artwork for our Remembrance Day installation, and also carrying out some work based around Children in Need.

I hope that you and your children all get some time to rest and recuperate over this half term break, and I'm looking forward to seeing your children when we return to school for the autumn 2 term.

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week:

1. How do you do column subtraction?
2. How do you play a ukulele? (HINT- the answer isn't "badly"!)
3. What's been the best thing about this half term at school for you?

This week in Thames Class we have been celebrating Black History Month. We started off the week by looking at Vashti Harrision's book Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History. We looked at the illustrations of Angela Davis, Harriet Tubman, Alma Woodsey Thomas and Tessa Sanderson. We thought about how Vashti had represented them as being 'bold' thinking about the colours, shapes and actions of the characters. We then imagined we had been included in the book and drew ourselves along with two things that would symbolise how bold we are.

We then looked at four illustrations from Vashti Harrison's Little Leaders: Exceptional Men in Black History. This time we thought about how Frederick Douglas, Louis Armstrong, Charles R Drew and Thurgood Marshall had been portrayed as 'exceptional' in each illustration.

​Next in pairs we each researched a significant black person and produced some fantastic poster to share what we had learned about them. 

Despite being a four day week for the children it has been an action-packed end to the half term in Glyme Class. In English we have been sentence stacking for our animation 'Feast'; yesterday the children did a fantastic job of thinking about Winston's thoughts and feelings, using short sentences for impact, thinking of powerful verbs to describe the action of eating and using the passive voice. 

In maths we have begun our work on addition and subtraction. This week we have focussed on adding and subtracting 1s, 10s, 100s and 1000s, adding two 3-digit numbers with crossing 10 and 100 and adding two 4-digit numbers (without exchange). We have also been introduced to using KenKen puzzles which are fantastic for helping the children to develop their mental arithmetic and fluency. I will put the link on our Google Classroom pages so that children can practise if they get a spare few minutes over half term.

In Science, the children impressed us with their debating skills arguing for and against  preserving our backfield for wildlife. 

There is no official homework for half term other than to continue with your reading. It looks like it might be a rainy week so the perfect excuse to curl up with a good book! 

Sadly on Thursday we had to say goodbye to our beloved Mrs Williams. We will all miss her cheeriness and kindness but are very grateful for everything she has done for us in her ten years at Appleton. We wish her all the very best for her new adventures and look forward to hearing all about her travels. 

 In Phonics this week we have been recapping some of the Set 2 sounds that we have learnt so far. We also practised reading real/ nonsense words using these sounds. We really enjoyed playing the games on the Phonics Play website. Take a look if you would like to have a go at home too: www.phonicsplay.co.uk/ 

In English this week, we have been doing our first independent piece of writing. We planned and wrote our own Train Ride story. Everyone was a Steadfast Squirrel for showing good perseverance with writing down their ideas and using their phonics to write their words. 

​This week Cherwell class have been very busy inside and out. We have been looking at numbers 1-10 and drawing and playing hopscotch. The children were very interested in drawing their own hopscotch boards.

​We have been exploring the story ‘Funny bones’ this week, and we have made our own scenes using the characters from the story. We then created our own speech bubble ideas.

​To finish off the week we decorated gingerbread men in the style of skeletons.

​We have had lots of fun with our learning in Windrush Class this week!
In English, we have now finished writing our own traditional tales with a twist, based on The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. The children have worked so hard on their independent writing and have thought of lots of fantastic ideas. Next week, we will be having a go at editing our writing.
We had our third music lesson on Thursday; the class are becoming experts in safely holding their instruments and preparing their bows. This week we focused on rhythm and pulse; we enjoyed learning about the different notes we can play and used the D and G strings to play three different songs. We also learnt that pizzicato means that we pluck the strings; in one song we had to really concentrate as had to swap between pizzicato and using a bow!