West Leigh Juniors Weekly News 13th december 2024

Dear Parents and Carers,

Thank you to everyone who attended the carol service on Tuesday. It was a wonderful evening with stellar performances from our choirs, musicians and readers. Preparations for the carol service have been ongoing for months and their hard work and commitment really paid off. Thank you for ensuring that your children attended the many rehearsals and for bringing them on the night. We hope that you enjoyed the service.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mr Aggus

Year 3

It has been a joyous week in Year 3 this week. The children have been very busy publishing their Stone Age stories and creating illustrations and themed borders. The stories are not only very well-written but they also look very attractive.

The children have continued learning about measure in their maths lessons including comparing and converting measures then moving onto finding the perimeter of shapes. Some festive maths has seen the children enjoy measuring and comparing Santa’s reindeer and drawing presents with perimeters.

In science, the children worked together to investigate which type of rock would be most suitable to resurface the playground. Using their knowledge of the properties of different rocks, the children were able to make an informed choice after weighing up all the advantages and disadvantages of each option.

In Connected Curriculum lessons, the children became travel agents, advertising a once in a lifetime trip to visit the Stone Age. They created attractive and persuasive adverts including many of the highlights you would encounter. This was a great opportunity for the children to apply the knowledge they have gained this term and draw on their experience from their trip to Barleylands.

Year 4

We have, once again, reached the end of a very busy, festive week in Year 4.

In English, we have continued our work on information texts. Using the questions we devised last week, we researched Cleopatra. From these notes, the children created factual sentences using a range of conjunctions. They have begun to write their information text about Cleopatra and have included key features, including subheadings and paragraphs.

The focus in maths has been on statistics. We have studied a range of ways that data is represented, including pictograms, tables, bar charts and line graphs. The children have interpreted and represented the data in a variety of ways.

Using the knowledge from our Lego WeDo lessons, the children applied what they had found out to design a new robot. They considered what features it would need as well as the functions it would require in order to perform.

Year 5

Our final full week of this term has been full of hard work (but also a lot of fun) as the children have learnt and developed new skills.

The children have finally finished Phillip Pulman’s modern fairy tale, The Firework Maker’s Daughter,  which they have thoroughly enjoyed reading and studying. Their final task was to find evidence regarding how it is similar to traditional fairy tales. They also looked at other books by Pulman, discussing the language he uses and how it enhances the storytelling. In some classes, by looking at the openings and endings of his stories, the children considered if other texts could be classified as fairy tales.

In maths lessons this week, we have reviewed the children’s understanding of geometry. They have considered the wide range of different angles and found these within polygons, considering the types of lines that are needed to construct them. Position and direction have also been a theme in some classes, making links with angles. 3D shapes were also reviewed in more detail, focusing on the shapes of faces and the number of vertices and edges.

During our Connected Curriculum lessons, visitors could have thought they had stumbled into an episode of The Repair Shop with all of the sawing and sticking that was occurring! Having whole classes engaged in sawing wood was a challenge but as always, the children rose to the challenge and demonstrated a level of maturity and responsibility that belied their young years. In one class, Mr Queenborough popped in to offer some advice and provided a helping hand which the children received enthusiastically. The children are excited to complete their structures and move onto the creative decorating part.

Year 6

Building upon their reading and learning from last week, the pupils applied many of the narrative techniques used by Michael Morpurgo in the engaging short story, The Giant’s Necklace, as the inspiration for an epilogue. They were able to incorporate many highly emotive elements to great effect. Following this, they read the powerful and emotive short story The Long Walk. They considered the contrasting thoughts that would have been experienced by the central characters, both before and after their trip, by writing highly personalised diary entries.

In Connected Curriculum, the children have continued to apply their improving sewing skills to refine and develop their puppets, adding some of the more imaginative details to their work. Additionally, they have learned more about how Britain was rebuilt in the postwar years, and, in particular, how the development of new towns was carefully planned and implemented following the findings of the Bevan report. Using their own creativity and understanding of human and physical geography, they subsequently designed their own new towns.

As mathematicians, Year 6 worked with great enthusiasm at the end of the week when they experienced the challenges and risks associated with The Great Elf Game, which required them to make strategic decisions in order to maximise profits for their Christmas tree business. Sadly, many elves were tragically lost due to blizzards!

Key Notices this Week

Are you having a pre-Christmas clear out? We are in need of these items for our playground provision. If you are able to spare anything from the list below, please leave at the school office for the attention of Mrs London. Thank you in advance.

• Jenga pieces (doesn't need to be a complete set)
• toy hairdressing items / doll hair brushes
• toy microphones
• puppets
• percussion
• toy instruments

Golden Thank Yous

This week, we awarded a golden thank-you to 22 children who demonstrated empathy, responsibility or integrity in some way.

House Points

Messages from FOWLS

Just a quick but VERY BIG thank you to everyone who came and supported our Christmas Fayre on Saturday 30th November.

To everyone who spent months preparing for the Fayre, to the volunteers who helped collect the donations and helped set up on the Friday and Saturday, to everyone who ran a stall, to the volunteers counting all the money throughout the day, to everyone who donated a bottle or chocolates for the Tombola, bought raffle tickets, helped pack the Fayre away, to the caretakers Tony and Steve and to the Schools for all the help pre and post the Fayre. To Ami from Quackers and Father Christmas for helping to entertain our children and lastly to all the businesses who kindly donated prizes for our raffle.

We can't do it without everyone's support and I'm sure you will agree it was a cracking day and enjoyed by all. We are still totting up the final numbers and finalising the amount raised, if you volunteered on the day and your firm fund matches, please get in touch as this will increase the amount we have raised. For more details, please speak to your class rep.

(We still don't have a class rep for 3M. If you'd like to help contact Natasha at FriendsofWLS@outlook.com

Thank you also to everyone who supported the Gift sale this week, it's one of our favourite events watching the children choose gifts for the special people in their life.

Thank you for supporting Friends of West Leigh Schools over the year and we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Do you know about Friends of West Leigh Lotto? The draw takes place every month with CASH prizes whilst also raising funds for the schools. It’s super easy to sign up so if you fancy a chance to win a cash prize or would like to find out more contact Oanh Ly who runs our Lotto:  fowlslott@gmail.com

ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT ANY OF THE ABOVE, PLEASE EMAIL simontaylor7472@gmail.com

The full list of councillors, along with their email addresses if you wish to contact them, can be found on our school website. The minutes from our meetings are also published on this page, which can be found using the following link: https://www.westleighjunior.co.uk/parent-council

A reminder that answers to many of the previously discussed items at parent council can be found on the 'hot topics' section of our website: https://www.westleighjunior.co.uk/hot-topics

This includes subjects such as lost property, lunchtime arrangements, clubs and much more.

We still have vacancies in 4E, 4C and 6P - if you are able to spare an evening each term to represent your class, it would be of great benefit to the school. Our meetings are held at 4.30pm and councillors are able to use our After School Club, free of charge to assist with child care during the meeting. Please contact Mrs London if you are able to volunteer.

Community News