Friars Weekly Newsletter friday 28th february 2025

Coming up in this edition of the newsletter...

• Careers Week... next week
• Book Week and World Book Day Reminder
• Red Nose Day
• OPAL news and playground photographs

It has been lovely to be back together this week and for the days to seem that bit longer with lighter mornings and afternoons. Although we had some wet weather in the middle of the week, for the most part we have felt that we are seeing the glimmer of spring on the horizon.

On Monday, we had a staff training event with teachers from across our Trust descending on Friars. It was an incredibly useful day together and it will support us in making our children’s learning opportunities the best they can be. What was really great on Monday was the number of compliments we received about our school. Some of the teachers from West Leigh, Hamstel Infants and Juniors and Porters Grange had never visited before. They were blown away with our lovely environment and we had some even say they would love to work here! The training day meant that we only had four days with the children but lots was packed in. Next week looks especially busy…

Last year we had a fantastic Careers Week and next week sees its return. We have people visiting from Ford and BMW, a paramedic, an aircraft dispatcher, a musician, a project manager and someone who works in commercial finance… plus others. We also have Little City in for Early Years and Key Stage 1. This will see the children role playing different jobs. We can’t wait.

Thursday sees us celebrating World Book Day. Please see the reminder below for more information, especially if you missed this information in the past two newsletters. We hope to see all the children and staff wearing their pyjamas or cosy clothes…

Have a lovely weekend and see you on Monday.

Mr. McClay, Principal

Snacks

Friars has Healthy Schools status and we value children having healthy snacks at break time.

KS1: Children in Nursery, Reception and KS1 are offered a free snack during the morning.

KS2: During morning break time, children in KS2 can bring in a healthy snack if they wish.

Healthy tuck options are also available to purchase daily from our school tuck shop. If you are intending to send in snacks with your child, please limit them to the list below:

• fresh or dried fruit or vegetables
• plain rice cakes
• bread sticks/pitta bread/oat cakes/crackers
• plain popcorn
• cheese
• yoghurt

No chocolate, sweets, cereal bars, biscuits, cake bars/cakes, pastries or crisps. All snacks sent to school must be nut free. If a child has a snack that is not appropriate, they will be asked to put it in their lunch box or in their bag for after school. Also, please do only send children with water in their classroom water bottles. Thank you for your support.

Book Week

Reminder: For this year’s Book Week, we are hoping to run the ‘Great Friars Book Swap’ so if you’re decluttering over the next few weeks, we would love it if you could send in any good quality children’s books to Mrs. Astrella in Year 3. More details will follow about the rest of our Book Week plans, but please note that instead of fancy dress this year, we are encouraging all children to come to school in pyjamas / comfy clothes with their favourite book. This will be on World Book Day which is Thursday 6th March.

Extra information: This year we are having a break from dressing-up as book characters. Instead we will be trying to create that cosy bedtime reading feel around the school. There might even be some hot chocolate and marshmallows... Exciting!

Red Nose Day

Red Nose Day is on Friday 21st March. Children are welcome to wear red noses. Red noses can only be bought online now - at places like Amazon or the Comic Relief Shop We will have a small number of red noses to sell in school and will let you know when these are available. Noses cost £2.50.

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

Nursery

It has been a lovely first week back. The returning children came back with smiles on their faces and we have pleasantly welcomed a few new children to the afternoon sessions. In group time this week, we introduced a new poem from our Poetry Basket list called Popcorn. The children were very good at learning the repeating phrases and joining in with the poem. They especially enjoyed making popcorn for snack in the popcorn machine. They listened to it whirl around the machine and its popping, before the popcorn spilt out into the bowl. The eating was probably the best bit. In provision children love to be creative; this week we have been encouraging them to think about what they want to make or paint before doing so because of this we have had some lovely pictures painted and models made.

REMINDER: Next Thursday is World Book Day, remember it is pyjamas or cosy clothes dress-up.

Reception

It has been a wonderful first week back. The children have been happy and motivated to learn. We have encouraged the children to write about something they did during the half-term break. Throughout the week we have taught the children about height – using the terms tall and short providing lots of opportunities for them to explore this concept both inside the classroom and outside in our garden.

Our phonics sessions have introduced the children to the trigraph ‘air’ and the digraph ‘er’. Our tricky words this week were ‘are’ and ‘sure’ Please continue to practise the reading word list inside your child’s reading diary.

We have been really impressed with the various buildings that the children made this week using a range of equipment.

Year 1

Welcome back to our lovely Year 1 children. What a fabulous start to this half term we have had!

In English, we have started reading a story called “The Secret Sky Garden”. The children used drama to get to know the story really well before creating some setting descriptions using some imaginative vocabulary. In history, we are starting a new topic, where the children are learning about The Great Fire of London. The children are already hooked with interest and had many questions to ask. In maths, we have been looking at numbers to 50, grouping numbers when counting and partitioning the numbers into tens and ones. A busy week for Year 1!

REMINDER: We are in need of spare underwear as our supply is running low. If you have any that you wish to donate to us, we would be most grateful! Thank you 😊

Year 2

Welcome back to everyone in Year 2! We have really enjoyed having the children back and are looking forward to a new half-term filled with lots of learning.

This week in English, we have been investigating Florence Nightingale by gathering information from non-chronological reports. We used our interesting facts to write our own non-chronological reports about Nightingale’s early life.

This week in maths, we have been focusing on dividing and multiplying by 2. Children have been practising their 2 times table facts and using this to identify whether a number is odd or even. Keep practising those times table facts Year 2!

We had very excited classrooms this week as we introduced our new D&T unit. Over the next half-term, we will be making moving toy cars! Children had the opportunity to explore different types of toy cars and investigate how they move. We identified the four key parts of a toy car: wheels, axle, chassis and body. We are looking forward to seeing the toy car designs that Year 2 creates.

REMINDER: Please read regularly with your child at home and ensure that they bring in their phonics reading books on a Thursday so the books can be swapped.

Year 3

We hope everyone had a fantastic week off and it has been great to see all the children back again and eager to go in their learning!

In English, we have started a new book called, “Escape from Pompeii.” We made some predications at the beginning of the week about what we thought the text would be about. We then created a bank of verb phrases and finished off by putting our verb phrases into interesting, full sentences.

In maths, we have continued with our new topic of fractions and looked at what unit and non-unit fractions are. We also decided how much of a shape was shaded and write the corresponding fractions for them.

During our afternoons, we learnt about how to stay healthy for PSHE, we used some religious words to explain what symbols are and what they stand for in different religions in our RE lessons.

In science, we looked at natural and artificial light and sorted objects into whether there are a light source or not. We learnt that light travels in straight lines and that is how we get the formation of shadows.

REMINDER: Remember that it is World Book Day next Thursday. The children can come dressed in their pyjamas or cosy clothes and bring in their favourite books to share.

It would be great if we could have some more book donations, so we could do a book swap for World Book Day.

Year 4

A wonderful week back for Year 4 and all of the children have really hit the ground running with their learning! In English, we’ve begun looking at non-chronological reports. We read about The Blitz and carried out research, practising our note-taking in order to write our own notes next week. We focused on the structure, using subheadings to organise our work and technical vocabulary. In maths, we revised and completed our learning on lengths and calculating perimeter. We looked at regular and irregular polygons which allowed us to revise 2-D shapes too. As always, times tables is a huge focus in Year 4 and we practised our 3 and 6 times tables again. We will be focusing on our 9x and 12x next week for our test on Friday. Some of the children’s pace at answering questions on their TT Rockstars is really improving.

In other areas, we are continuing to look at living things and their habitats this half-term but with a focus on conservation. We looked at seasons and how they change across the world in different areas, and carried out research. We compared these different countries to our seasons in the UK. In art, we launched our topic on Lowry. We turned our classroom into an art gallery and analysed 10 of his famous paintings. We enjoyed looking at the composition and colours in these. We also practised our drawing skills by using viewfinders to draw a little snippet of his famous VE Day painting. In PSHE, we looked at feelings and emotions, what they might look like on different people and who we might speak to about these. In music, we practised singing in tune with a focus on evoking emotion through song too.

Year 5

Year 5 students have started the new half-term with great enthusiasm. In maths, they have continued their work on decimals, deepening their understanding of place value. In English, they have been researching and planning persuasive writing on the impact of the palm oil industry on nature. The children have also begun studying Giuseppe Arcimboldo, a unique portrait artist known for his unusual portraits made from flowers, fruits, vegetables, and other natural objects. They have researched his life and attempted to sketch some of his works. In geography, we have been exploring the Amazon rainforest, learning about what makes it such a unique and fascinating place.

Year 6

This week, we have been using decimal notation; finding the value of different digits, rounding numbers to given decimal places and calculating with decimals.

In English, we have been writing a non-chronological report showing the features required. In Science, we have started to look at ‘The Human Body’; we started with the circulatory system by making a model of the heart and labelling it.

In PE, we have started learning handball, which was a great sport to take part in.

Through our RE, we explored the story of ‘Peter at Joppa’; we were able to link the story to our previous learning about racism and fairness.

Computing

This week all of the children across the school started their new unit, creating media. Each year group is focusing on a different elements of media, including digital writing, creating music, desktop publishing, photo editing, creating video and some website design. It is going to be an exciting term for everyone.

Year 1 were given their personal log-in details this week and were independently logging into the computers, following this they were able to open a word processor and began to type sentences about themselves which we will revisit each week to build upon our learning and development.

Year 4 have started a new unit on editing digital photos. After reviewing some altered photos and discussing the ethics of altering photos, Year 4 then learnt how to alter digital photos by rotating and cropping.

Year 5 are learning about video production this half-term and this week we started to ‘unpick’ what videos comprise of including content, background effects and music before moving on to think about planning their own videos for later in the term.

Year 3 children are working on their desktop publishing skills and this is going to involve using their basic skills of PowerPoint to enhance their understanding of how text and images convey meaning to others.

In Coding Club, a number of students are having a go at the UK Bebras challenges. These are national coding challenges for children aged 10-19. There are plenty of challenges online from previous years to have a go at, if your child would like to try a challenge at home.

Online Safety

Marvel Rivals is a highly popular multiplayer shooter that pits iconic superheroes against formidable villains. The game is free –to play on PC and current-generation consoles but does feature microtransactions that allow players to spend real money on cosmetic items for their characters.

While Marvel Rivals has been deemed suitable for children aged 12 and over, there are several risks associated with the title that parents and educators should be aware of. This free guide offers more information on these safety concerns and lets you know how to ensure that children playing the game can have a fun and age-appropriate experience.

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.