Friars Weekly Newsletter friday 16th may 2025

Coming up in this edition of the newsletter...

• SATs are over!
• Reminders about Nursery and Reception's sports events

And… the Year 6 SATs are over… A huge well done to all of our Year 6 students who have worked hard all year in preparation. Of course, their learning does not finish there… we still have more than half a term to go… Lots more lessons in English, maths, science, humanities, PE, music etc., etc. to go 😊. Attentions particularly turn to writing as in June, Mrs. Bailey and Mr. Leggett will be assessing everyone’s quality and accuracy in their writing across the whole curriculum. Possibly more excitingly though… The Year 6 children have either the Ilam Hall residential or Southend Week… next week! I will be with the children in the Peak District so you won’t see me around the school next week. Of course, the school will be in Mrs. Halls’ safe hands.

Today, we had a lovely non-uniform day to raise more funds for Havens Hospices. This is all part of our involvement in the Waddle-on-Sea art trail this summer. We can’t wait to see our penguin join all of the others around Southend. Thank you for all of your donations.

Thank you to everyone who popped in to write a message in our book of condolence for Mrs. Hodgson. We’ll now add the comments of the children and staff before we share the book with Mrs. Hodgson’s family.

It looks like another sunny weekend… do try to enjoy it and Year 6 try to get some rest. You will need your energy for next week!

Have a lovely weekend.

Mr. McClay, Principal

PE Kit Reminder

• Black shorts or plain black tracksuit bottoms. Please make sure that shorts are of a reasonable length
• Purple round-necked t-shirt
• Plimsolls or trainers​ (trainers should ideally be black – if not black - a plain colour please)
• Plain black tracksuit tops with no/minimal logos may be worn during colder months (no hoodies or tops with hoods)

Naming Clothing (We still have lots of unnamed clothing!)

It is that time of the year again where the weather is warming and children are removing their jumpers and cardigans! Please can we request that all clothing worn to school is named. The lost property pile is growing and it is incredibly difficult to return items to their owners if things are not named.

Nursery

Another busy week in nursery. The children have been learning the rhyme ‘5 Little Peas’ during our group sessions, along with the new phoneme j. In provision, we continue exploring water play and have set up a new water wall. Some children made their own boats and tried to make them move through the guttering from one place to another. Each day we have also introduced one new physical activity in preparation for next weeks family fun sports day. The children have loved this and will be able to show you what each piece of equipment does.

REMINDER: Please remember next Wednesday is Nursery's Family Fun Sports Afternoon. Gates open at 1.20pm and will close sharply at 1.30pm.

Reception

It has been a wonderful week! The children have been learning about moving and rotating shapes to create patterns.

Throughout the week, we have been writing captions related to our gardening theme. Some children made observational drawings of plants in our garden.

Our phonics sessions continue to revise the digraphs taught in Phase 3 whilst introducing the children to longer words – including words ending in ‘ing’ and some compound words, such as ‘farmyard’ and ’popcorn’.

REMINDER: It is our sports afternoon next Thursday. Please be at the school gate by 1:25pm so that you can support your child in the events.

Letters sent home this week (via ParentPay)

• Whole School - Summer Events - 15.05.2025

Year 1

What a fantastic week we have had in Year 1. We have read and re-enacted the story of Handa’s Surprise. At the the end of the week we re-wrote the original story. Next week we will try to make our own versions. In maths we have begun to look at fractions by finding halves of shapes and quantities. Great job everyone. Our science this week was all about properties of materials and the children learnt the difference between opaque and transparent. We explored the style of art created by the artist Edward Tingatinga and attempted to recreate some section of his work in preparation for our final piece.

Letters sent home this week (via ParentPay)

• Whole School - Summer Events - 15.05.2025

Year 2

In Year 2 this week we have arrived at the end of our fraction topic in maths. The children have applied what they have learnt by solving problems and have also completed an assessment task to check their understanding.

In English our book focus until half term is ‘Geronimo’ written by David Walliams, which we are using to develop the children’s understanding of story structure. The children have used adjectives and verbs to describe the character and also attempted to find alternative words using a thesaurus to enhance their vocabulary.

In art this week we have continued with our printing theme and have created our own mono-prints using acrylic paint with some super results.

Letters sent home this week (via ParentPay)

• Whole School - Summer Events - 15.05.2025

Year 3

What a wonderfully sunny week we have had!

As the sun is making our days warmer, it is great to see the children bringing in hats and water bottles.

This week we have described a setting ready for when we write our own dragon story next week. The children came up with some fantastic descriptions.

In maths we started a new topic on time and started the week by looking at Roman numerals. It was a little tricky, but we got there in the end. We then started to tell the time to 5 minutes and then into telling the time to the nearest minute.

We investigated different seed dispersal methods in science and created some interesting group posters. We worked well as a team and managed to do some great research!

Lastly, there were some more assembly practices, and it is really coming together, we can't wait until next week!

REMINDER: The Year 3 assembly will be presented to parents on Friday 23rd May. We look forward to seeing you all there!

Please could you remind the children that they need to walk into school in the mornings. We have had some near misses when they run in excitedly first thing in the morning.

Letters sent home this week (via ParentPay)

• Whole School - Summer Events - 15.05.2025

Year 4

What a fantastic week of learning in Year 4 this week!

In English, we used the story of Wallace & Gromit to create our very own crazy contraptions, thinking carefully about the features of our inventions and writing explanation texts to describe how they work. We used these skills to produce a great piece of writing to explain creative ways in which clouds could be formed!

In maths, we continued our learning about decimal numbers, finding out how to compare and order decimal numbers by looking carefully at the columns in which each digit is written in. Next week we will begin to focus our learning on money!

The afternoons have been packed with all sorts of fun learning, including creating electrical circuits in science, looking at the different features of a mountain range in geography and planning a piece of pop art in our art lessons. The children also enjoyed developing their skills and abilities in rounders during P.E.

After the half-term break, we will be starting a Design & Technology project to create an alarm system in a shoebox. As such, Mr. Smith is requesting two things for when we return to school – a shoebox and a battery powered appliance. The shoebox will be used to create a miniature room for our alarm system and the battery powered appliance will be used as part of our initial research. The Year 4 teachers will explain this to the children but if you could start searching for these items now that would be great!

Letters sent home this week (via ParentPay)

Whole School - Summer Events - 15.05.2025

Year 5

Year 5 have continued their fantastic work on shape. Finishing off with understanding the properties of regular and irregular polygons as well as understanding 3D shapes, identifying faces, edges and vertices.

During English, the pupils have been mini reporters. Using journalistic language, third person and past tense writing to make reports on the Battle of Bosworth. Recapping their learning from history lessons on the Tudors.

Science has seen the children expanding their knowledge of lifecycles and looking at the process of complete and incomplete metamorphosis seen in insects and amphibians.

REMINDER: Please remember to return Thriftwood medical forms. Snacks need to be healthy as we are seeing an increase in chocolate and crisps which are unsuitable.

Letters sent home this week (via ParentPay)

• Whole School - Summer Events - 15.05.2025

Year 6

This week has been SATs week; our Year 6 children have worked so hard to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in all of their papers. With tests out of the way we have concentrated on reading Holes – where the action is stepping up, Hokusai – looking at our own take on his pictures and creating a final piece for presentation, and outdoor activities – enjoying our fresh air and working together on sports and creative thinking.

Letters sent home this week (via ParentPay)

• Whole School - Summer Events - 15.05.2025

REMINDER: Ilam Hall children - make sure you are in school at 7:45am on Monday morning!

Computing

This week, Year 2 have been continuing their unit on data and had to combine their mathematical skills with computing skills to group together coloured cubes according to their colours (attribute). They then entered their data onto an electronic pictogram of their findings. The children are now getting very confident on creating digital pictograms, including accurate counting and labelling.

Year 1 have continued to learn how to create a pictogram using J2Data, we surveyed the class to determine individuals favourite colours.

Year 4 had a fun lesson as they collected data on themselves – how many steps they could do on the playground! They used the BBC Micro:bit and programmed it to count how many steps they took (which uses the sensor part of the Micro:bit that “adds 1” every time it sensed a shake). The competition was fierce to see who could do the most steps and some did over 500.

Year 5 students this week continued to work on flat file databases, using different search terms ‘and’ and ‘or’ to refine the information to answer questions about the Titanic. We quickly established that the terms enable the results to be refined in a more specific way.

Online Safety

With its limitless opportunities for building, exploring and collaborating, Minecraft remains a global gaming phenomenon. Its broad appeal lies in how open-ended it is – but this also means it’s not without risk. From chatting with strangers on public servers to the grief of having a beloved creation destroyed, young players can face challenges if left unsupervised. Minecraft can also become a time sink for enthusiastic players, with late nights spent crafting and constructing, potentially impacting school and social lives.

We’ve created this free guide to help parents and educators understand how to keep young gamers safe – from choosing age-appropriate game modes to setting boundaries around screen time and spending.

PE & Sports

With the weather continuing, it has been great to see children outdoors and using the amazing space we have at Friars. Many classes have been getting in some Sports Day training and ensuring children know what to do in different activities.

A huge well done to Southend United last night after making the semi-final of the National League playoffs. Go on the Seasiders!