A message from Miss quarmBY
Hello everybody, I hope you're all well and welcome back to Autumn 2! We’ve already mentioned the C word with our Cauliflower Christmas Cards, but there’s still a little time before the glitter takes over completely! This week, children have been learning about fire safety, especially in relation to Bonfire Night and fireworks. Today, our PSCO visited school to deliver an assembly on staying safe around bonfires, ahead of many organised events happening this weekend. Our Art Ambassadors have launched a Remembrance Challenge, inviting us to create our very own Poppy Path. If your child attends Wake Up and Wind Down, they’ll have the chance to decorate pebbles kindly donated by Myres - thank you to Mrs Mackintosh and baby Max for organising this and collecting them! Year 6 pupils also visited Leeds City Centre today to lay a Whitkirk wreath in honour of Remembrance. As autumn settles in, we know it brings with it a fair share of bugs. We’re working hard to support good attendance and help children be in school every day. Hopefully, the image below will help clarify when it’s appropriate to keep your child off school. Have a lovely weekend and I'll see you on Monday.
Attendance
This week, finishing in first place with 98.51% are 2CH. In second place are 6NT, with 97.96% and in third place are 4AB, with 97.38%. A shout out also goes to RJS, 2KD, 5AS and 5AK who have also finished the week above our school target of 96.5%. The whole school attendance this week is 95.96%: can we beat this next week? The only way to do that is if we all come to school as often as we can. Please remember look at the NHS guide Is my child too ill for school? - NHS (www.nhs.uk) This is used to determine which reasons for absence will be authorised or unauthorised.
let's take a look at what each year group has been up to this week!
EYFS
This week in Pre-school we have launched a new Big Idea, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star!” We are focusing on special events and celebrations. We’ve had a fantastic first week back, exploring the crackling sounds and bright colours of fireworks, hunting for pumpkins at Forest School and decorating for a birthday party in our home corner!
Reception were excited to explore our new Big Idea – 'How do we celebrate?'. The children shared birthday memories and talked about special celebrations such as Diwali, Christmas, and christenings, learning how different families celebrate in their own ways. They were then delighted to discover it was Tim the Travelling Turtle’s 5th birthday! To celebrate, everyone decorated biscuits, counting and arranging five chocolate chips in different ways to show “5” for Tim’s special day, and decorated the role-play house with birthday cards and invitations to join the fun.
LOWER school
We have made a wonderful start to the half term in Year 1! The children have loved diving into our new key text, The Lonely Beast, using lots of interesting adjectives to describe the main character and bring their writing to life. In Maths, we have been exploring fact families and learning how numbers are linked together in different ways. Our Science lesson focused on the human body, with the children labelling and naming different body parts. We have also enjoyed making beautiful poppies for Remembrance Day, taking time to reflect on why this day is so important.
This week, Year 2 travelled back in time and experienced what it was like to go to school during the Victorian era. The children dressed up, took part in traditional lessons, and learned how strict Victorian classrooms could be. In English, we have started our new writing unit based on Jack and the Beanstalk.
We have had a lovely first week back in Year 3. In Maths, we have started our multiplication unit by finding equal groups and making arrays. In English, we have been writing bonfire poems using onomatopoeia and similes! In Science, we will be looking at forces, friction and magnets. This week, we explored the forces 'push' and 'pull' by exploring ways we could move a tennis ball!
UPPER school
What a great start to the half term for Year 4! On Monday, we welcomed Hermione from the British Library, who led an engaging drama workshop that everyone really enjoyed. Later in the week, we began our new History topic on Roman inventions. The children explored how Roman ideas have influenced modern life, then put their learning into practice by building model aqueducts and designing their own mosaics.
It's been a great start back after half term in Year 5. In maths this week, we've been finding out about factors, prime numbers, and composite numbers. The children relished trying to find all the prime numbers up to 100! In science, we have started learning about the properties of different materials. In this week's science lesson, we used Venn Diagrams to group materials by their properties.
We've had a fantastic start to the half term in Year 6! In preparation for our visit to the Cenotaph, we have been analysing the Wilfred Own poem - Dulce et Decorum Est. Breaking down the meaning of the words and phrases within the poem has helped us to show key emotions when we read it out loud at the Cenotaph. In PE, we have continued with our unit in gymnastics, specifically focusing on using synchronisation and canon within our sequences.