Friars Weekly Newsletter friday 6th December 2024

Coming up in this edition of the newsletter...

• Waddle-on-Sea design competition... coming out on Monday
• Parent Council Appeal - Reminder
• Christmas lunch reminder

What a lovely week… and a week that has been exceptionally Christmassy! We have enjoyed Winter Wonderland sessions for Year 3 on Monday, Year 5 on Tuesday, Year 4 on Thursday and Year 6 today. As well as this decoration-making fun, we held our Reception nativity performances and there was the PTA Christmas Fayre! What a lot to pack into just one week. Thank you if you came along to any of these Christmas events. A huge thank you from me for such a huge amount of support and for the money that was raised which will come straight back to the children.

Of course, there have been lots of other things happening in the school in addition to our usual great learning. This has included more sport with two teams taking part in separate competitions at Garons today, those being for boccia and new age kurling. News on the teams’ performances will follow next week.

Our Christmas events with parents and carers continue next week with Reception’s Winter Wonderland on Monday, the Year 1 Christmas performances on Tuesday, Nursery’s Winter Wonderland on Wednesday, the Year 2 Christmas performances on Thursday, and the week finishing with Father Christmas on Friday.

I am off for a lie-down to recover from this week and to re-energise for next week. I hope you can do the same. Have a lovely weekend and see you all on Monday.

Mr. Chris McClay, Principal

Waddle-on-Sea

Once again, we will be supporting Havens Hospices this school year. After 'Hares about Town' and 'Herd in the City', 2025 sees 'Waddle-on-Sea'. Penguins will be appearing all over Southend in the summer and we will be proudly contributing our own penguin to the colony.

Like we have in previous years, we are asking the children to design our penguin. The winning entry, as chosen by the children will be painted onto the penguin. We would like as many children as possible to take part in the design competition and the design template will come home with the children on Monday. Designs need to be returned to school by Friday 10th January. This means the children can create their design over the Christmas holidays.

For our penguin, we would like it to have a theme of ‘The love of play.’ We really love and value play at Friars and we very much want the penguin to celebrate this.

The design could be inspired by:

• favourite play activities
• favourite play equipment
• friends
• OPAL
• a mixture of these things
• or something else…

Good luck everyone!

Parent Council

Just a reminder that we are looking to restart our Parent Council. The council would meet every half-term term to discuss school matters and it is a real way of helping to shape what we do as a school. Meetings will typically be about one-hour long with the agenda sent in advance.

Ideally, we would like to have representation from every year group. If you are interested, please complete this short survey and we will be in touch. Thank you.

Mr. McClay and Mrs. Halls

Form Link

Christmas Lunch Reminder

Please help us by booking Christmas lunches by today. The cost is £2.55. There is no charge for children in Reception, Year 1 or Year 2.

The Christmas lunch day is also our Christmas jumper day. If your child does not have a Christmas jumper, they can wear a Christmas t-shirt or have a Christmas accessory with them to wear at lunchtime.

Nursery

The children had a lovely surprise when they came in on Monday and the Nursery had been decorated in a winter wonderland theme. Our Christmas tree was up, which the children have enjoyed dressing each day, the fairy lights were twinkling in the book corner and the advent calendar was hanging on the staircase to count down to the special day. We have enjoyed sharing lots of festive stories and are learning lots of new songs, which I’m sure they are humming along at home.

In group time we carried out an activity based on positional language, 'in front of' and 'behind'. This is something you could do with the children at home to reinforce positional understanding. For example, the teddy is in front of the box....where is the teddy? The car is behind the truck....where is the car?

REMINDER: Please remember to label all new hats, scarves and gloves that are coming into nursery.

The last stay and play (Thursday 12th Dec) will be replaced with Nursery's Winter Wonderland on Wednesday 11th December.

Reception

Thank you to everyone who came to our nativity shows this week – the children did a wonderful job; we are very proud of them.

In phonics we have learnt the digraphs ‘ng’ and ‘nk’ in words such as ring, sing, pink and think. Our tricky words have been 'of' and 'go'.

Lots of children are now reading the pink set of words to us; these are in the front of your child’s reading diary. Once your child can read them, please let us know.

REMINDER: It is our Winter Wonderland (decoration afternoon) on Monday 9th December at 1:45pm – we look forward to seeing you all there.

Year 1

This week, the children have been working hard to prepare for their fantastic nativity show next week. Just a reminder that if your child is a narrator, they can bring in party clothes to wear on the day. The other children will have costumes provided.

In maths this week, the children have been learning about subtraction using objects and the crossing out method to support them.

In geography we have been learning about hot and cold places, climate zones and the equator.

REMINDER: Our nativity performances are on Tuesday 10th December. Our morning performance is at 9:15am and our afternoon performance is at 2:15pm. We look forward to seeing you at one of the shows. There will be tea, coffee and biscuits available for a donation.

Year 2

This week has been an exciting week in Year 2. We have been rehearsing our nativity and have been very impressed with the children’s acting and singing skills. We hope that the children have been coming home singing some of our nativity songs! The children are looking forward to performing their nativity to an audience on the Thursday 12th of November.

In English this week, we have continued our work on non-chronological reports. The children have given us lots of hedgehog facts and are become more confident in identifying the features of a report. We then independently wrote our own non-chronological report using all the facts that we have learnt about hedgehogs over the last two weeks. All of the children in Year 2 are now hedgehog experts!

This week in maths, our addition and subtraction topic has drawn to a close. The children have finished the topic by revisiting some tricky concepts and completing lots of practise questions. Next week, we will be moving on to learning about 2-D and 3D shapes.

REMINDER: The children will be performing their nativity on the Thursday 12th of December at 9:15am and 2:15pm in the Key Stage 2 hall. We look forward to seeing you at one of the shows. There will be tea, coffee and biscuits available for a donation.

If your child is a narrator or a star, can their costumes be brought into school on Monday. Thank you.

Year 3

What a fantastic Monday afternoon we had with our Winter Wonderland! It was great to see so many of you attend and make a Christmas wreath with your children. It has never been so calm!

The rest of the week we looked at Boudicca’s revolt and why she decided she would not let the Romans take over her land. Unfortunately, she was outnumbered by a huge army that was one of the best in the world.

In PE, with have continued with hockey and the children have learnt how to take the ball from an opponent.

During science, we looked at the human skeleton, cut it out and labelled the different bones we have in our bodies.

We completed our medicine boxes in DT this week and will now be thinking about what went well and what we may do differently next time and having an overall evaluation of our pieces.

We have read a book in class ‘The Lonely Dragon’ that was written by Connor Black – our very own Mrs O’Donovan’s son-in-law! It was a great little book and can be purchased from Amazon. We would recommend you take a look!

We have finally completed pout NFER tests this week. Well done to all the children who tried really hard to showcase their learning!

REMINDER: We did really well on Reading Eggs, so please continue with this, TT Rockstars and spellings at home.

Year 4

This week in Year 4, we were excited to kick-start seasonal celebrations with the Christmas Fayre on Wednesday followed by our wonderful Winter Wonderland on Thursday afternoon – thank you to those of you who could join us.

In English this week, we had a strong grammar focus. We looked at and revised nouns and pronouns; learned about comparatives and superlatives and looked at the figurative device of alliteration. These are skills that we will be applying to our poetry writing next week. In maths, we continued working on all things multiplication and division related. We are becoming quicker at our times tables and division facts recall, and we are learning to use what we are confident with, to work out what we do not yet know.

In history, we had an excellent election campaign for the contenders for the throne in 1066. We researched sources of information on William of Normandy, Harold Godwinson, Harald Hardrada and Edgar Atheling and presented speeches to our fellow ‘witan,’ before casting our votes. Of course, Godwinson was the strongest contender... but after studying the Bayeux Tapestry and the Battle of Hastings, we know how that panned out!

REMINDER: Please continue with Reading Eggs and TT Rockstars at home.

Year 5

This week has been outdoor learning for 5L. They have been working on lots of arts and crafts to create their very own wintery decorations. 5SW are very much looking forward to their lessons next week.

We also had our Winter Wonderland afternoon on Tuesday. It was lovely to see so many of you attend and have fun with the children. Some wonderful penguin dreamcatchers were created.

5SW looked at Sikhism in RE this week, where they explored another religious story when God had been revealed to humans in a different way. They explored the Vaisakhi festival, which led to discussion on volunteering in and out of school.

In art lesson, 5SW painted their canopic jars that they created from clay last week. The children referred to their plans and tried to include as much detail as possible.

We ended the maths block on fractions this week. Well done to all the children for their hard work and perseverance.

In English, we have had a fun week looking at performance poetry. The children wrote their own poem, inspired by Michael Rosen’s ‘Chocolate Cake.’ They then worked in groups to perform their food-based poetry.

11+

Southend High School for Girls have announced their 2025 Year 5 Launchpad programme. SHSG teachers and sixth form students would like to invite girls to attend the Launchpad sessions. The aim of the programme is for academically curious Year 5 pupils to come and experience the challenge and excitement of learning in a grammar school environment. The sessions will include both new and familiar subjects and are provided free for pupil premium students.

Full details can be found on the flyer. Should you have any further questions please contact schoolsupportteam@shsg.org.

Year 6

This week, swimming came to an end for Year 6. The children who took part all thoroughly enjoyed their lessons and their confidence improved.

We have had further assessments which aim to give the children greater confidence in managing their time and understanding the types of question they will be presented with.

We would like to thank all of the parents who joined us for our Winter Wonderland, a lovely time was had by all.

Computing

Year 2 continued their photography unit this week, taking photos around the computer suite before reviewing them. The children are now able to identify what makes a good photograph and can share ideas for how to improve them. This helped them edit their photos using the crop and brightness tools and they also experimented with filters. It was very exciting to see individuals explore some of the additional features which we will look at in more detail next week.

In Year 6, the children continued their learning on Tinkercad and designed a desk tidy. Once they had placed a cylinder onto the work plane, they had to then create another cylinder by duplicating the first one and slightly reducing the size to make a hole as the placeholder. The children had to take care that the hole was not too long or the pens would fall through!

Year 6 learnt lots about measuring exact sizes in mm to ensure their design would work.

Year 4 used Audacity to create their podcasts. The children imported their recordings that they have been creating over the previous weeks then after inserting them in the correct order added some interesting sound effects. These ranged from jingles, to a door knock and even an elephant trumpet.

The Year 1 children are working hard to discuss their choices for their digital painting creations and are beginning to become more familiar with the range of tools available using Paintz.app. This week they recreated the work of Wassily Kandinsky, who created abstract art to express his feelings and emotions. Children created their pictures using the shape and fill tool, before practising their typing at the end of the lesson.

On Wednesday, the Year 5 were shown how to add a background to their vector drawings; this allowed them to be able to create a nature scene using. They were challenged with creating a realistic vector drawing, whereby the drawing and background give the illusion of one image. Children chose whether to use a pre-selected background or were given the option to search for their own (this involved the need to conduct a safe search using a search engine).

On Thursday, the Year 3 worked on something slightly different, during their layered reading time they have completed the story George’s Marvellous Medicine and designed their own medicine boxes. They then used their designs to start designing the net of a box using PowerPoint. This week individuals focused on adding text boxes and inputting their information on their own nets. We will be working on these over the next few weeks to recreate their very own medicine box designs.

Online Safety

The rise in awareness of mental health issues has given way to several easily accessible services to help with such problems – for example, wellbeing apps promising to serve as an assistive tool for anyone in need of support. While these can be useful to some, there are a few risks which are important to consider – especially if a child or young person is using the app.

Of course, it can be tricky to know exactly where the safety concerns lie with a service intended to help and support its users – and it can be harder still to safeguard younger users. This guide breaks down the online safety risks of mental health and wellbeing apps, before letting you know how best to keep children and young people safe if they ever wish to use these services.

PE & Sports

This week we have had two teams of children compete against other schools; and have represented our school brilliantly. Our Year 5 and 6 team played new age kurling and our Year 3 and 4 team played boccia. These were both great tournaments.

Our pop-up swimming pool has now been removed, seeing the end of the lessons for this year. It has been so wonderful to see the development of swimmers across the school. The instructors were very complimentary about how well the children listened and developed their swimming skills.

Music and Singing Assembly

There was no singing assembly this week as Mrs. Bemister had to head off to another school. We will be back to normal next week.

PTA

A huge thank you for everyone's support with the Christmas Fayre. It was a huge success, we hope you will agree. We will share our final fundraising total next week once all of the money has been counted.