Whitkirk News! 14th November 2024

A message from Miss Quarmby

Hello, I hope you’re all well. It’s been a short but busy week with our Learning Together sessions happening for Years 1-6. We’ve loved hearing your feedback, and we’re glad you enjoyed visiting our classrooms and seeing the learning in action. We heard that Year 3 even gave a French lesson—c’est magnifique! You may have heard too that our Young Interpretters have given us the challenge of greeting one another in Mandarin this week; we've been answering our registers by saying 'ni hao', which means 'hello'.

We’ve put a lot of effort into making our wider curriculum just as engaging, challenging, and valuable as our core lessons in reading, writing, and maths over the last couple of years. If your child is in Upper Key Stage 2, you may have noticed our new Art Gallery, showcasing last year’s creative work. Mrs. Walker and Miss Sanderson worked together to showcase the seven disciplines of Art we explore throughout the year. We hope you enjoyed looking through your child’s art sketchbook during Parents’ Evening; we’re very proud of their creativity and progress! You can see our Art Gallery below.

Please remember that tomorrow is a teacher training day so school is closed for all pupils. All of our teachers are heading to Harrogate for a day of professional development focused on Science.

In other exciting news, Mr. Sadler entered our school into a fundraising competition organised by Cash for Kids! Five local schools were selected to participate in a four-week challenge, from 6pm on Friday 15th November to 12pm on Monday 16th December, where each school keeps every penny raised. Additionally, Cash for Kids will award prizes and top-up grants for projects that benefit our pupils directly. Here’s how it works:

• The top three schools that raise the most will receive additional matched funding up to £5,000, £3,000, and £2,000, respectively.
• All finalist schools will receive an extra £1,000 if they raise at least £2,000.

Mr. Sadler will be sharing more about our fundraising efforts soon, and we’d love for as many of you as possible to join us in reaching our goals! If you have any fundraising ideas, please speak to Mr Sadler as we'd love to hear them. Have a great weekend!

Autumn 2 dates

• 15th November - Training Day - school closed for all children
• 25th November - Christmas Panto (during school time)
• 12th December - EYFS Nativity @ 9:30am and 2:15pm (2 seats per child, parents to pick one performance only)
• 17th December - KS2 Church Service - 10am
• 18th December - KS1 Nativity @ 9:30am (Parents of 2KD and 1LBR) and 2:00pm (Parents of 2CH and 1JL) - 2 seats available per child

Attendance

This week, finishing in first place with 98.31% are 4JF. In second place are 3RD, with 97.85% and in third place are, 5/6AR with 97.78%. A shout out also goes to 1LR, 2CH, 6NT AND 3JC, who have also finished the week above our school target of 96.5%. The whole school attendance this week is 93.85%: can we beat this next week? The only way to do that is if we all come to school as often as we can.

Let's take a look AT WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON THIS WEEK

EYFS

This week the children in Reception took part in their first Welly Wednesday. They learned the rules of our Forest School site, how to look after it and enjoyed exploring the site. The children practised taking turns, sharing, and listening to their friends. We cannot wait to take part in Welly Wednesday every week!

Key Stage 1

This week, Year 1 adored inviting our parents and carers into the classroom to show off just how amazing they are at retelling stories and writing sentences using their phonics knowledge! We can't wait to continue using 'The Lonely Beast' by Chris Judge to invent our own creative stories next week. In Computing, we have enjoyed exploring and having 'tinker time' on our new coding app 'Daisy the Dinosaur'. We can't wait to start creating our own program based on algorithms.

In Year 2, we have had an amazing week launching our new topic of Materials in Science and learning more about Victorian schools in History. In English, we have worked hard with our grown to create imaginative new story maps inspired by Jack and the Beanstalk.

Lower Key Stage 2

We have had a wonderful week in Year 3! From practising our times tables in Maths, to carrying out more Science experiments to look at how Friction affects a 'spinning top' on various surfaces! Well done Year 3!

Year 4 have been wowing everyone with their times tables this week. We've been challenging each other to see who can remember them fastest! We already have some masterminds who know all their times tables up to 12 x 12!

Upper Key Stage 2

This week in Year 5, we have begun to look at prime, composite, square and cube numbers and enjoyed solving a range of problems with our grown ups at our learning together session (thank you everyone who could join us!). As scientists, we have become property surveyors by analysing and explaining why certain materials were chosen when building Whitkirk Primary School. We then used our new knowledge to design a school for the future - we were SO impressed with your creations!