Friars Weekly Newsletter friday 7TH mARCH 2025

Coming up in this edition of the newsletter...

• Red Nose Day information
• Portico Photography Competition
• Southend Makes Music news story
• Careers Week news story

A later newsletter than usual due to our incredibly busy time last week... I hope everyone had a super weekend.

Firstly, an excellent Careers Week was had by all, from children in Early Years experiencing Little City through to children in Key Stage 2 learning about BMW and even sitting in a brand new car. We had visits from the police, the fire service and much, much more. There is a write-up about Careers Week later on and we will be sharing lots more photos next week.

On Wednesday night, we had an excellent time at Southend Makes Music at the Palace Theatre. The children were well rehearsed and they all performed brilliantly on the evening. Thank you to Mrs. Bemister who has worked with the choir before school on a Wednesday since the beginning of the year. Thank you also to Mrs. Astrella who helped organise everything with Mrs. Bemister. Both teachers obviously gave up their evening too to make it all happen. There is more about Southend Makes Music later on…

And of course… we also had World Book Day on Thursday. It was great seeing everyone in their pyjamas or cosy clothes. We did lots of reading and drank hot chocolate too!

Please make sure that you have booked your child’s Learning Conversation appointment if you have not already. We really value being able to talk about the children’s progress and we hope to see as many parents and carers as possible on Wednesday 19th and Thursday 20th March.

Have a fantastic week!

Mr. McClay, Principal

Red Nose Day

A reminder that Red Nose Day is on Friday 21st March. Children are welcome to wear red noses and/or other Red Nose Day merchandise with their school uniform. Red noses can only be bought online now - at places like Amazon or the Comic Relief Shop but we do have a small number of red noses to sell in school and will let you know when these are available. Noses cost £2.50 and will be sold on a first come, first served basis from today. Class teachers will send the children down to the office with their money. Where possible, please provide the correct change. Thank you.

On the day we will accept any donations for the charity. Donations should be handed in to class adults.

Nursery

Nursery have had such a fun week this week. To support Careers Week, there has been lots of discussion around jobs that are familiar to us, people that help us in the community and discussions about what we want to be when we grow up (we had lots of superheroes). The children also had the opportunity to join ‘Little City’, where there got to experience and role play real jobs in the community such as vets, postal workers, supermarket cashiers, cafe waiters, beauticians and mechanics. This was great fun.

We also enjoyed World Book Day, and as always, the children loved dressing in their favourite pyjamas for the bedtime story theme. We shared our favourite books and listened to our own bedtime story, which we enjoyed with blankets laid out on the floor, our teddies and a cup of hot chocolate.

REMINDER: Our next stay and play is Thursday 13th March.

Reception

The children loved exploring Little City this week; it was wonderful seeing them interact with each other and role playing. We encouraged the children to think about what job they might like to have when they are older. Our maths sessions have focused on numbers 9 and 10; sorting out quantities, matching numbers to items and finding pairs of numbers that make 10.

Throughout the week, we have looked at reading ‘longer’ words, e.g. toffee, kitten, puppet. We encourage the children to chunk words, splitting them into syllables when reading them. Our tricky words have been ‘sure’ and ‘pure’. It was wonderful to see the children creating and acting out their own short stories during World Book Day.

REMINDER: Reading books, reading diaries and library books are collected in every Thursday.

Year 1

This week has been very busy! At the start of the week, we continued learning about plants by finding out what each part of a flowering plant is called and what job it has. We have learnt what “estimating “ is and had opportunities to estimate the amounts of various objects in a pot. Some of us were very close each time!

We have been lucky to have a play in the Little City – it was so much fun pretending to be hairdressers, the police and vets amongst other things.

On Thursday, we celebrated World Book Day by wearing our pyjamas to school. We were treated to a visit by an author called Connor Black. He shared his story “The Lonely Dragon” with us and we created our own dragon pictures. The book swap was very successful, and all children went home with a swapped book to share with you, happy bedtime reading!

Starlings were happy to find that they had achieved the highest attendance across Key Stage 1 again and so were able to spin the wheel. We won 30minutes extra art time and had such fun getting the paints out. Well done Starlings!

Year 2

This week has been a very exciting week in Year 2 - we have been busy. As part of Careers Week, we have been exploring different career paths and thinking about what job we might like to do when we grow up. We heard from an engineer from New Holland who is involved in the construction of combine harvesters and tractors, an aircraft dispatcher and a nurse! Thank you to the adults for coming in and sharing your interesting careers with us. Lots of us took inspiration from Little City where we got to try out different jobs. The children really enjoyed this experience and we were very grateful for the amazing opportunity to get some work experience!

This week in English, we shared our favourite books for World Book Day and created book sleeves. This included writing an informative and exciting blurb for our story. Doing this in our pyjamas and with our hot chocolates made this learning extra fun.

In maths this week, we have continued our work with times tables, moving on to learning the x5 table facts. We used these facts to divide numbers by 5 as well as multiplying them.

Year 3

What an amazing week!

We had the best day on Thursday with celebrating World Book Day. We were all extremely comfortable in wearing our PJs and even the teachers looked super comfy!

We did so much, we had a hot chocolate with marshmallows, watched Masked Reader (where our teachers read a story with a mask, and we had to guess who they were). We did a 'Drop and Read' at various points throughout the day, had an author come in to visit us, we asked lots of great questions and shared a book with children in Year 6.

In maths, we continued with our learning on fractions, and we will be starting a new topic of measurement soon. During the afternoons we learnt about the effects of UV rays and how we need to protect ourselves in science. We learnt about the effects of earthquakes in geography and in RE we discussed how actions can be symbolic.

REMINDER: A letter came out via ParentPay about the trip to Colchester.

Please ensure you have read the letter, as payment also acts as permission for your child to attend.

Year 4

We’ve thoroughly enjoyed this week in Year 4, with highlights being some of our visitors from Careers Week and of course, World Book Day on Thursday where we cosied up in our pyjamas for our learning!

On Monday, we had a visit from a paramedic, who told us all about his job and let us have a go in the back of an ambulance where we had our oxygen levels checked! We also had visits from a manager from BMW and Rochford Fire Station told us about their jobs and let us explore the fire engine.

In the classroom, we continued our non-chronological reports and finished writing them in full this week, with a focus on the structure and formal writing with technical vocabulary. We also looked at modal verbs and book reviews in English too.

In maths, we launched our new topic on fractions and have explored our understanding of a ‘whole,’ and counting beyond one in fractions. We looked at London’s surrounding counties in geography, continued our recorder playing in music and continued our learning on Lowry in art, where we practised drawing matchstick folk in different positions, depicting different movements.

REMINDER: Our school trip is on Tuesday 11th March. Please arrive at school for 7:40am. Please consider the children's breakfast choices carefully as it is a long drive to London. We recommend only a small drink before school as we are unlikely to have a toilet on board the coach.

The children will need to wear school uniform and comfortable shoes, as they will be on their feet for a large part of the day.

They will need to bring a packed lunch. If your child is eligible for free school meals and you would like them to have a school packed lunch, hopefully this has already been arranged as mentioned on the letter.

Year 5

This week, Year 5 students have been diligently working on persuasive letter writing, drawing on their research into palm oil. Their letters addressed critical issues such as extinction, responsible farming, and deforestation, topics they have also explored in geography lessons. In outdoor learning, the children have been honing their map-reading skills, using four and six-figure grid references, and navigating with non-electrical equipment.

Additionally, the children have started a new sports topic, focusing on badminton. They are building on their previous tennis lessons, learning the various aspects of this new sport.

Year 6

Year 6 have completed SATs assessment practice tests this week. This has taken place in order to assess where they are now and to reassure them and remind them of timings and styles of questions. The children have coped well with these.

We carried out practical science experiments timing the rate of liquid flow based upon different sized holes that represented the different types of blood vessels within the human body. The children found this fascinating and one or two of them got wetter than others.

We had some visitors come and speak to us about their career choices this week. A gentleman from Ford spoke about the car industry, the police and a ICT specialist, who spoke to them about 3D printing.

We had great fun on World Book Day, with all the children dressing up and participating in various events connected to the love of reading.

REMINDER: Next week, Year 6 PE with Mr Markham will be on Tuesday instead of Monday.

Computing

This week all year groups have continued creating media units across the school.

The week began with Year 2 learning about creating music, this included being given the opportunity to listen to various types of music and then explain how it makes them feel. This was eye opening for individuals to see how the same piece of music affects us in different ways. They were introduced to Chrome Music Lab (which can be accessed for free online) and experimented the Spectrogram tool.

Year 1 are continuing to work hard learning their log ins for the computer before then developing word processing skills to include opening a document saved from last week, editing a document and resaving it.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Year 5 children were introduced to James Rooke. A massive thank you for James for upgrading our 3D printer which was donated by him a few years ago. In addition to this, he spoke to us about the wonderful world of 3D printing, creating and maintaining a YouTube channel (Honey Badger 3D Print and Paint). The children asked some fantastic questions including favourite prints, the most difficult prints and were given chance to look at some of the prints as examples. It was a great afternoon and all of the children became excited and engaged and ready for the 3D modelling unit next year.

On Thursday, the Year 3 cohort continued to work on desktop publishing focusing on editing text on PowerPoint. They were tasked with creating a poster for World Book Day and the skills of adjusting the font, the size and the colour to make it stand out for its purpose.

Year 4 continued with editing photos, by changing the colour and brightness of selected nature photos. They were quite impressed with the enhancements they can make.

Year 6 began to create content for their web page, by gathering the information they want to include and adding some photos. This will continue for the next few weeks.

Online Safety

The way we engage with text has changed dramatically over the years. Whether reading captions on social media, instructions in a video game or an e-book on a digital device, technology plays a major role in modern literacy.

To help struggling readers, many digital platforms offer tools that enhance readability by making text more accessible and engaging. There’s also a broad range of accessibility features available, such as screen customisation and text-to-voice technology, which may help children and young people improve their literary confidence. This free guide offers ten top tips on how you can help young readers engage in text and foster a love for reading.

PE & Sports

With the weather greatly improving it has been great to see more sports taking place in the amazing outdoor space we have at Friars.

On Monday the boys’ football team played against Milton Hall in their only away fixture for the season. Unfortunately, we were unable to stamp our mark on the game with any goals, with the final score ending 5-0.

Mr. McClay drove the minibus, with Mr. Leggett coaching the team. The boys did really well but the ball didn't roll for us. On another day, the score would have certainly been closer. Although the game ended in defeat, everyone kept their heads up right up until the final whistle. A special mention to Harry in Year 3 who became the first Year 3 to take part in a league football match. He was not out of place, playing alongside the Year 5 and 6 boys.

Portico Photography Competition

PTA

Remember that the PTA are always looking to accept new members. If you are ever interested - even if just to volunteer on occasions - please do make contact.