November Newsletter

Dear parents and carers,

What an amazing month we have had so far! This week, we celebrated Diwali...

...took part in Anti-Bullying week 2023...

...and raised money for Children in Need!

All in one week, while still doing all our learning in other subjects too. Phew! We will announce the total raised from today in next month's newsletter.

Today hasn't been the only fundraising happening in school either! Eagles house planned an amazing spooky disco to raise money for their house charity, which they have decided will be the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust as they wanted to help local animals with their donation. We will keep you posted on how much that raised in total once the children have counted the money and worked out their profit. We also raised £150 for C&W Mind on "Hats off for mental health day", £46.25 at our Macmillan cake sale and we have some very heavy donation pots waiting to be collected and counted by the Royal British Legion from our poppy sales last week. A huge thank you to you all for supporting these different events in school and to the staff and children that were involved in the planning/organising/delivering of these events to our whole AFJS community.

For Harvest this year, we learnt about Harvest festivals around the world, found out about how the Rugby Foodbank helps local residents in need, sang our favourite Harvest songs and welcomed the local Vicar, Revd Steve Gold, into school to lead an assembly. A huge thank you to everyone that supported our Harvest appeal too and helped up to collect a huge 132.1kg of donations for the Foodbank. Another great community effort for AFJS that really helped teach the children about being kind, responsible citizens of the world.

In the last couple of weeks of November, pupils will be completing assessments in class to allow teachers to see how much progress they have made so far this term and also to identify any areas for the year group to focus on as teachers look at their planning for the Spring term. These will be done as informally as possible to support pupils in not feeling anxious about them. If your child shares that they are worried, please reassure them that they are just to help teachers in their planning for next term and they just need to do their best.

And last but not least, if you haven't done so already, please give us a follow on Facebook/Instagram to help you keep up with everything going on in school. If you are not on social media, you can also see our feeds on the homepage of our website.

Have a great weekend, from Mrs Webb :)

Learning around school

Year 3

In maths, year 3 have been working on using all 4 operations, which are the underpinning skills for most maths that they will tackle as they move through the school. They have developed their written calculation methods for addition and subtraction and have used arrays to investigate the relationship between multiplication and division. They have been developing their stamina and resilience for writing in English, being reflective with their editing skills to ensure they have used capital letters and full stops accurately as well as writing some super firework poems with ambitious vocabulary choices. Year 3's science topic of rocks and soils this term has linked in perfectly with their history learning about the Stone Age, Iron Age and Bronze Age and they have enjoyed learning about how fossils are formed.

Year 3 have really been enjoying their forest school sessions this term too, learning to work as a team, be more resilient and to solve problems while also developing their Healthy Bodies and Minds.

Year 4

In year 4 maths lessons, the children have been refining their written methods for addition and subtraction and have been ambitious when trying their skills out with bigger numbers and calculations that require multiple exchanges. They have also learnt how to round numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000. Year 4 enjoyed reading the book Storm in English lessons, then wrote poems using ambitious vocabulary choices before moving on to writing their own stories and developing their reflective editing skills. In the studio with Miss Trainer, the children have been developing their art skills in their sketchbooks, practising careful observation drawings and learning to paint with different thicknesses of brushes for different effects and purposes. They have created some beautiful illuminated letters putting all their new skills to the test.

Year 5

In their English lessons recently, Year 5 have been reading The Highwayman and using it to inspire some great writing. I was very excited to be invited down to hear the children reading out some of their work and was very impressed with the ambitious vocabulary and attention to the impact their writing was having on the reader. In maths, after working on their written methods to begin with, the children then learnt about factors and multiples, which they are now putting to good use in their fractions learning too. This has needed plenty of resilience to keep going when things are tricky, but has resulted in lots of proud faces when they finally 'got it' and felt successful.

Just before half term, Y5 were lucky enough to go on a trip to the Macready Theatre at Rugby School to meet the author Ross Montgomery. They really enjoyed hearing about his books and having a go at creating some exciting stories of their own too. It inspired lots of them to read more and also sparked some super imaginative writing.

Year 6

Year 6 have continued their work linked to the story of Beowulf over the past few weeks and have been writing their own battle scenes between Beowulf and Grendel, focusing on ambitious vocabulary to hook in the reader and careful reflection and editing to ensure their punctuation and spelling is the best it can be. In maths, they have built on their year 5 learning about factors and multiples to be able to identify common factors and multiples as well as prime and square numbers. The science topic for year 6 last half term was 'Light' and children enjoyed learning about how light travels and also how the eye works to enable us to see. They have now moved on to learning about adaptation and inheritance, which links in perfectly with their Geography learning about Hawaii.

The brass lessons that pupils have been having with specialist staff from Rugby School this term have been a brilliant addition to the AFJS music curriculum. Not only have the chidlren enjoyed themselves and learnt a new skill, but the staff from Rugby School have enjoyed themselves too and always comment on the wonderful enthusaism and behaviour that our pupils show in these lessons.