A message from Miss Quarmby
Hello everyone! I hope you’re all well and settling back into the new term. It’s been a slightly different week for me, as I spent two days in Harrogate at the Trust central offices for training—so I’ve really missed being in school as usual! That said, I know there’s been a real buzz in classrooms as the children dive into their new topics. Mary Anning is always a big hit in Year 2, and our Reception children have been having a wonderful time baking gingerbread and planting runner beans during their Welly Wednesday sessions at Forest School, all as part of their ‘Was it really a happily ever after?’ topic. A huge thank you to everyone who joined Mr Stout and Mr Fayers for Year 4’s Learning Together session on Wednesday morning—it was lovely to hear that some of you enjoyed it so much you didn’t want to leave!
We are incredibly proud of how well the children have settled back into school, and attendance has been brilliant! On Wednesday, we achieved the highest attendance across the whole Trust—98.45%! Let’s keep this up as much as we can, as good attendance (missing no more than 7 days across the school year) is vital for our children to reach their full potential and be fully prepared for the next stage of their learning.
Our February half-term holiday club was another huge success, and we’re so proud to be able to offer this fantastic provision each school holiday. Mrs Mackintosh and the wraparound team put so much effort into making it a fun, action-packed week—I’m not sure who enjoys it more, the staff or the children! We’ll be sharing details of our Easter holiday club in the next couple of weeks, but if you’d like to reserve a place for your child, please email wpswraparound@wps.rklt.co.uk. We’ll be open from Monday 7th – Thursday 10th April.
I hope you all have a fantastic weekend—I can't believe that March is here! I’ll see you on Monday!
Attendance
This week, our overall attendance was 97.33% (above our whole school target!), with 3RD achieving the highest attendance (99.19%): well done! A little reminder that if you’re unable to schedule medical appointments outside of the school day, it’s always best to arrange them for the end of the day rather than the morning whenever possible. We placed 3rd in the Trust for attendance this week—let’s see if we can take the top spot next week!
Let's take a look AT WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON THIS WEEK
EYFS
This week in Reception the children found out that their new big Idea is 'Was it a Happily Ever After?' On Monday, the children followed a set of instructions using the words first, next, after that and finally to bake gingerbread! As we baked, the children retold the story using the repeated phrase 'Run, run as fast as you can, you can't catch me I'm the Gingerbread Man! We are looking forward to reading many more traditional tales throughout this term and using story maps to retell the texts.
Key Stage 1
What a 'blazing' start to the term we have had with our topic launch of 'Why did the Great Fire of London spread?'. We have enjoyed learning all about the fire in our writing lessons, exploring a diary entry from 'Vlad and the Great Fire of London'. In maths, we started learning all about fractions this week and have worked superbly to recognise and find a half of shapes, objects and quantities. Our fantastic balances and shapes in gymnastics wowed Miss Lynch and Miss Richardson this week!
Year 2 have had a fantastic first week back! In Science, we explored habitats by hunting for things that are living, dead, and never been alive. In History, we launched our Mary Anning topic, digging for fossils and dinosaur bones, and orally rehearsed a non-fiction text about her life.
Lower Key Stage 2
We have had a wonderful week in Year 3 - from measuring objects in metres and centimetres, to enjoying our new text 'The Egyptian Cinderella', which we will be using as a stimulus to write our narratives this half term. We finished the week in DT by building desk organisers in Year 3 to help Miss Cook and Miss Dougall stay tidy! We used saws and hot glue guns to assemble our structures.
We've kicked started our new writing unit in Year 4 on Theseus and Minotaur with lots of drama. The children have pretended to be Theseus and his father, acted as sports commentators retelling the battle between Theseus and the Minotaur and even offered reasons why Theseus should marry or pie Adriane! There's been lots of memorable learning: the children now know more about the story and about the character's motivations too. In Science, we learned that electricity is a follow of electrons, and we even made a human circuit with a ' Circuit Maker Breaker'.
Upper Key Stage 2
It has been lovely to welcome our Year 5 and 6 children back to school after half term. They have returned to school with such a positive attitude towards their learning which has been a true pleasure to see. We have really started the half term off with a bang! On Tuesday, we launched our new big idea, 'How has our attitude the Crime and Punishment changed over the ages?' We can't wait to learn all about how things changed from the Ancient Roman to the Vikings to the Medieval Times! We will also be learning about when the first police force was introduced in the UK! We also had a fantastic day on Thursday when we completed our Music day! We loved creating our own stringed instruments and exploring how different sounds can be created! We put all our knowledge together to create our very own orchestra! Well done UKS2 on such a great first week back!