Friars Weekly Newsletter friday 6th June 2025

Coming up in this edition of the newsletter...

• Welcome back to Summer 2!
• Science Week
• Travelling Book Fair
• Father's Day Sales on Monday (in-school) and Tuesday (after-school) - please see the poster towards the end of the newsletter

The first week back of what is the final half-term of the academic year... wowzers... where has the year gone?! I hope everyone managed to have a good holiday - it certainly seems that Summer 2 has started well!

I say it every year but the summer term is always very busy and even this week, despite it only being 4 days, has been just that. A big event this week was the Year 1 educational visit to Wat Tyler Country Park. The trip was very successful and the staff were very proud of the children's interest and behaviour across the day.

In Year 4, the children sat the Multiplication Tables Check. This is a national assessment that looks at the children's recall of tables facts. Well done everyone for doing your very best!

Next week is super, super busy. We have the Junior Music Festival at the Cliffs Pavilion on Monday, Father's Day sales on both Monday (in-school) and Tuesday (after-school), the Key Stage 2 Borough Sports on Tuesday morning and the Year 5 Thriftwood Residential across Wednesday to Friday. In addition to all of this, it is the Phonics Screening Check Week for Year 1. We best get some rest this weekend!

Have a restful Saturday and Sunday and see you next week.

Mr. McClay, Principal

Science Week

This week the children have been taking part in our annual science week. This year our theme was ‘CHANGE and ADAPT’ and the children have taken part in various activities during the week. These have included individual class investigations and also a Buddy Class investigation in which children from KS1 and KS2 classes work together to carry out a science activity.

Home Activity - Cross Cross Curricular Science and Art Competition.

The children have been challenged to create their own animal which is adapted for a particular habitat such as jungle, desert, forest, ocean etc. The animal should be labelled, describing how it is adapted for its habitat. There will be prizes for the best pieces of work in each year group. Competition entries must be handed into class teachers by Monday 16th June. Please ensure your child’s name and class are clearly written on their entry.

Winners will be announced during the Assembly on Friday 20th June.

Travelling Book Fair Competition

We are excited to announce that from Monday 30th June – Friday 4th July, we will have our very own Travelling Books book fair and we are giving away vouchers! 5 children have the chance of winning a £5 voucher to go towards a book of their choice.

All entries need to be handed in to the class teacher by Monday 23rd June and the winners of the £5 book vouchers will be announced during our celebration assembly.

EYFS/KS1 - Children need to design a book cover for a story of their choice. They can adapt a book cover from a known story or they can create a book cover for their own story. Book covers need to be bright and inviting and make the reader want to pick the book up. Happy designing!

KS2 - Children need to create a book cover and blurb for a story of their choice. They can use a previously read story or they can let their imaginations run wild and come up with their own their own design. Book covers need to be bright and inviting and blurbs need to be informative but not give too much of the story away. Try to use a ‘show, don’t tell’ approach when writing your blurb. Happy creating!

If your child would like to take part in this competition, please tell them to speak to their class teacher who can provide them with a design template.

Nursery

Welcome back to our last half-term in nursery for this academic year. This week, we have taken part in Science Week with the theme 'change and adaptation'. With the help of the story ‘The Mixed-up Chameleon’ by Eric Carle, we have focused on camouflage and how animals use this in their environments. We investigated how colours change using food colouring and cartridge paper, and the children made predictions of what colours they would make. The children decorated their own bird template in a selected colour then we hid them around the nursery garden to see which were camouflaged the best. We had some great discussions around this topic and introduced lots of new vocabulary which the children were using when explaining their ideas to us.

Reception

It has been a wonderful first week back. The children have learnt about the lifecycle of butterflies as part of Science Week as well as working with the children in Year 4 to camouflage a bird. We shared all the photos that were sent in, discussion how we change as we grow – but also that some features do not change much. In maths we have been exploring doubling and halving through a range of practical activities. In our phonics sessions we have introduced the children to some trickier word endings – such as mp (in jump) ft (in gift) and st (in loft) our new tricky words have been so, said and have.

Year 1

It’s been a really lovely first week back for Year 1. On Wednesday we had a wonderful trip to Wat Tyler Park. Our children were a real credit to the school, as they always are. They had lots of fun pond dipping, mini-beast hunting and adventuring through the different areas of the park. We learned about how different animals adapt to their habitats. This hooked in really nicely with our Science Week activities this week. The children buddied up with other classes and their task was to create the most camouflaged Mollie bird puppet within our outdoor area. In English, we have been writing about our trip, in particular the pond dipping experience. In maths, we have been solving word problems involving addition and subtraction.

Letters sent home this week

Year 1 - 6 - Sports Day Information - 06.06.2025

Year 2

We had a very busy first week back in Year 2. As part of our Science Week learning, we have been exploring how animals change and adapt to suit their habitats. We created gliders and investigated whether the size of the wing affected how far our gliders could travel. Both classes paired up with a Year 5 class to camouflage our Mollie birds into the environmental garden. We discussed how this would help our Mollie birds to evade predators.

In maths, we finished our topic of time by exploring how many minutes there are in an hour and how many hours there are in a day. We discussed why we see the same time twice on the clockface during one day.

In English, we have been researching Australia. The children have enjoyed learning and sharing facts about Australia’s location, landmarks and animals. The children used their knowledge of Australia to write a non-chronological report about the continent.

REMINDER: As the cold weather is sometimes continuing, please remember to send your child to school with a coat.

Letters sent home this week

Year 1 - 6 - Sports Day Information - 06.06.2025

Year 3

It was lovely to see the children back in school on Tuesday this week.

We started the new term with a bang!

This week we have had Science Week, where we have carried out lots of research, investigations and working with other classes. The theme has been ‘change’. We started by looking at how heat changes bread and butter, recorded results and made great predictions and conclusions. We then looked at the adaptations of plants and created a fact-finding poster based on what we found out. Then we finished the week by working with a Year 6 class to camouflage a bird in our school environment, taking photos and trying to find where we had each camouflaged our birds. It has been an amazing week.

We planned and started to write our own story in English based on the book, 'The Boy Who Few with Dragons'.

In maths, we finally finished our topic of time and will be moving onto a new topic next week.

Letters sent home this week

Year 1 - 6 - Sports Day Information - 06.06.2025

Year 4

A warm welcome back after a busy half term for Year 4 – and what a week to be back! We have had great fun during our Science Week this week. We began the week by pairing up with Owls Class to create our camouflaged Mollie birds. These are birds that have adapted and changed to hide from predators in their environment. In class, we researched other animals that have adapted to their surroundings and created informative leaflets. Later in the week, we got our imaginations flowing and created our own animals that have adapted to survive in our chosen environments.

In other areas, we began our topic on time in maths. We revised years, months, weeks and days, before moving onto converting between hours, minutes and seconds.

In English, we wrote exciting and action-packed narratives all about a dilemma when exploring the jungle!

We also completed our Multiplication Checks this week – the children have worked so hard to progress in their times tables recall, which will really set them in good stead for their mathematics as they move up into Year 5 and Year 6.

Letters sent home this week

Year 1 - 6 - Sports Day Information - 06.06.2025

Year 5

This week has been a good welcome back for the children who have dived straight into Science Week. Learning about Darwin and what made him a radical but revolutionary scientist. The children have been busy creating bird callers as well as trying some hand calls too to explore sound. The theme of ‘change’ has led us to explore how birds and other animals have changed over time to adapt to the use of sound to survive and thrive. During English, the children have been creating non-chronological reports on the Tudors. Building on their knowledge learnt during History lessons. With maths, they have begun work on decimals and understanding them in greater detail and fluency.

Letters sent home this week

Year 1 - 6 - Sports Day Information - 06.06.2025

Year 6

In maths, we have been looking at recipes for making cupcakes. We have spent time working out the ingredients we would need to make different amounts of cakes and what these would cost to make. We started to look at the profit or loss which would be made when selling them at different costs. Our writing for the week has been focused on descriptive language. We have used a coral reef and the marathon to give us a starting point. Being Science Week, we have started to look at how things have evolved over time and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution be natural selection. We met with a ‘buddy class’ to evaluate an environment around the school and created a Mollie bird which we could design, camouflage and hide.

We have been reading the next part of ‘Holes’ and will be using the story more next week.

Letters sent home this week

Year 1 - 6 - Sports Day Information - 06.06.2025

Computing

It was great to see the children back in the computer suite this week to start our final computing topics of this school year.

On Tuesday, the Year 1 classes began looking at ‘programming’ using Scratch Jr. on the iPads. This week they were given time to explore the sprites (characters) and learned how to add a new sprite and delete the original. In addition, they also looked at the movement programming blocks and tried to get their sprites moving in different ways.

On Wednesday Year 5 explored Scratch on the desktop computers. They opened a maze style game and were then asked to make changes to make the game more interesting either by adding additional mazes, changing the size or colour of the sprites in preparation for creating their own game style quiz.

Year 4 began their unit on repetition in games, with the introduction lesson being to code shapes on Scratch using the repeat block so they don’t have to code the same things multiple times. They used their knowledge from FMS Logo to help them with the lesson.

Online Safety

Emojis aren’t just digital decoration — they’re often used as a coded language that young people use to express identity, humour and emotion. Without context, they can easily be misunderstood by adults, leading to confusion or missed signals. Some emojis may even mask risky behaviours or emotional struggles.

This guide helps decode this ever-evolving language, empowering parents and educators to have more open, informed conversations with the children in their care. It also highlights the meaning of some common emojis and offers practical tips for staying clued-in without snooping or suspicion.

PE & Sports

Lots of new topics have been started this week and we have the Key Stage 2 Borough Sports at Garons on Tuesday morning. Well done and good luck to those children who have been selected to represent Friars this year.

A full write-up about Borough Sports will follow in next week's newsletter.

PTA