A message from Miss Quarmby
Hello everyone! Even though January has felt long with its dark mornings and nights, this half-term seems to have flown by! A huge thank you to everyone who joined our Learning Together mornings this week—we hope you enjoyed them and got a glimpse of the incredible learning that takes place at Whitkirk each day. Miss Lynch and Miss Richardson even said they wished you could join every art lesson—the children’s collages were fantastic!
For those of you who have met Mr Shooter, you’ll know that he is one of the kindest, most generous people, with the biggest heart. As a teaching assistant in KS2 for over seven years, his impact has been nothing short of phenomenal. From supporting in the classroom to running Lexia breakfast club, attending residentials, supporting at countless rugby tournaments, running gardening club, and being Mr Stout’s right-hand man on Sports Day—he has been such an important part of the heartbeat of our school. Today marks his last official day at Whitkirk, but we hope to still see him around! On behalf of the whole Whitkirk community, I want to thank Mr Shooter for his incredible dedication and care and wish him all the very best in his well-earned retirement.
With spring just around the corner, let’s hope we can leave behind some of these winter colds and bugs! A reminder that expected attendance means children have no more than seven days off across the school year. This ensures they don’t miss out on valuable learning or the chance to strengthen friendships and social connections. Please continue to work with us to achieve this target—we want every single child to achieve our school vision, 'to be the best we can be!'
And huge congratulations to Polar Bears, who enjoyed our House Award treat this half-term for achieving the most Dojo points! Well done for all your hard work—keep it up! Wishing you all a wonderful half-term break! We look forward to welcoming everyone back on Monday 24th February for a jam-packed Spring 2. As always, thank you for your ongoing support. Take care and see you soon!
Attendance
It's been a fantastic week for Y1LBR, who have achieved an incredible 100% attendance—well done! A big shoutout to Y2KD, Y2CH, Y4AS, Y1JL, Y5/6AR, and Y5AH, who all surpassed our 96.5% target too!
We’re excited to welcome everyone back after the holidays and see all children in school every day. Attendance is key to their success and achievement. Just a reminder—expected attendance is 96%, which equates to around 7 days absent per year. If your child has missed more than this, it will inevitably impact their learning and progress. Spring is on the way, and hopefully, with it comes some warmer weather to chase away those lingering bugs!
Let's take a look AT WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON THIS WEEK
EYFS
This week in Reception, the children had a special visit from our local police officers, Lisa and Gemma. They learned all about the important role police officers play in keeping our community safe and impressed the officers with their knowledge of how to contact them and what to say on a 999 call. The children were excited to explore their uniforms, including hats, badges, and equipment. The highlights was wearing the police uniforms and getting to sit inside a real police car, where they saw all the buttons, lights, and sirens used during emergencies. Well done reception! We are very excited to welcome Gemma and Lisa back to school soon to deliver more sessions to the children on how to keep safe.
Key Stage 1
It has been wonderful to bring all of our learning from this half term together in Year 1 this week. We loved welcoming grown ups in to our art lesson to help us create our collage masterpieces! The children have become extremely confident in talking about our artist Arcimboldo, and skilfully using techniques such as tearing and cutting to create collages. We hope everyone has a fabulous half-term break!
What an incredible week we’ve had in Year 2! We loved showcasing our Kenya learning during our Learn Together session and were so proud of how much knowledge the children have retained. A highlight of the week was a special visitor who shared what life is like on an island in Kenya, and we ended the term on a high with our fantastic performance of Hound Dog by Elvis Presley for Music Day!
Lower Key Stage 2
We have had a lovely week in Year 3! From, publishing our non-chronological reports about volcanoes, to learning about rhythm in Brit-Pop in Music, we are so proud of what the children have achieved this half term. We especially loved inviting our parents and carers in for our Learning Together session, to showcase what we have been learning throughout our Multiplication and Division unit in Maths!
It's been a lovely end to the half term in Year 4. In art, we completed our mosaic pictures and were quite rightly very pleased with our efforts. In D.T we are well on the way to finishing our bird boxes which we hope to hang in the school grounds for our feathered friends.
Upper Key Stage 2
Year five have had a fabulous last week of this half term! We have been super impressed with the beautiful, published non-chronological reports written about Sikhism. We have also had a lovely Music day this week where we learnt about pop music and Rag'n'Bone Man. As a class, we discussed what we liked and disliked about his music before we used our percussion instruments to perform Rag'n'Bone Man's song Human. Well done Year 5!
Throughout this half term, Year 6 have been studying the artist 'Beatriz Milhazes' and looking at and evaluating her collage art work. They have then learnt how to create and use visual qualities to plan and create their own collages in the style of the artist. Miss Appleyard, Mrs Gale and Mrs Mackintosh were very impressed with the finished results and I am sure you will be too! Well done Year 6 on an incredible half term!