Friars Weekly Newsletter friday 19th April 2024

Coming up in this edition of the newsletter...

• Reminder about the Year 6 Isle of Wight Meeting on Tuesday 23rd April at 3:15pm

The summer term has begun and we have got off to an excellent start. The children have settled into school exceptionally well after the long Easter break. New topics have started and there has been lots of great learning. It was lovely to share this learning in this morning's celebration assemblies.

This week we had an invited visit from the local authority's Inclusion Team. We had nine visitors who spent the morning with us, popping into classrooms in KS2 as well as looking at our break and lunch times. They were very impressed with our school and were incredibly complimentary about what they saw. We felt very proud. We feel it is very important to work with colleagues from outside the school to make our practice the very best it can be. Partnership work is a big feature of what we do.

As you know, the summer term is always a really busy time with many things happening... the Key Stage 2 SATs, Year 1 Phonics Screening Check, Year 4 Multiplication Tables Check, educational visitors and visitors, residentials for Years 5 and 6, Father's Day sales, sports competitions, an Open Evening, our own Sports Days and Picnics and the PTA Summer Fayre to mention just a few things... Please do add everything to your diaries!

Have a really super weekend and see you all next week.

Mr. McClay, Principal

Nursery

The children had some special visitors in the Nursery this week – tadpoles! After being mesmerised by them swimming around in the container, they learnt how they will form their legs soon, then eventually turn into frogs. On Wednesday, the children took them over to the environmental garden with Mrs. Wheatley to release them into the pond. Great fun was had by all.

This week Mrs. Glen has been busy out and about meeting our new friends that will be starting with us next week. They have joined us for two very successful stay and plays and nursery staff were all very impressed with our current children who were all very welcoming.

REMINDER: Watch out for new stay and play dates for the summer term, these will be sent out soon.

Reception

It was lovely to welcome the children back after the Easter break. We hope you all had a lovely couple of weeks.

This week we have introduced our new Power of Reading book. The children were shown gardening tools and had to guess what our book was about. It is called Errol’s Garden and we are going to be thinking about it over the next few weeks.

In maths we have been talking about different ways of sorting. Also, we have been learning about odd and even numbers.

On Tuesday, the children enjoyed their first ever P.E. lesson in the hall. We focused on spatial awareness and balancing.

We have all enjoyed outdoor learning... please read below to find out about what we did.

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Karate Club - 15.04.2024

Year 1

It has been wonderful to welcome the children back into the summer term. In their English work, the children have looked at features of non-fiction books and started to write their own non-fiction booklets about the seasons. Our maths work has focused on counting in twos, fives and tens as well as solving simple multiplication puzzles. In our science lessons, we have started to learn about the properties of different materials.

Next week we will start our Relationships and Sex education sessions in PSHE lesson. We will share the NSPCC video of ‘Pantosaurus’ who explains that your private parts are private. All content is age appropriate and rest assured that we will not be talking to the children about reproduction. A letter was sent home to you about this. The link is below if you missed it...

REMINDER: Our Year 1 trip to Wat Tyler takes place on Wednesday 1st May. The children must be in school on time.

1B start their swimming on Thursday 2nd May. Please help your child to be confident with changing their clothing.

Letters sent home this week

• Year 1 - RSE Letter - 19.04.2024
• Whole School - Karate Club - 15.04.2024

Year 2

Sorry to 2G who had their swimming lesson cancelled this week. We are talking with Hamstel Junior School about a time they can give us to make up the lost session. Watch this space.

REMINDER:

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Karate Club - 15.04.2024

Year 3

In English, this week we have been looking at persuasive letters and trying to persuade Mr McClay to let us grow our own dragon fruit tree in the enviromental garden, thus allowing us to grow our very own dragons! We had some very compelling reasons as to why we need to grow one and we hope he allows us to! In maths we have gone back to learning fractions. This time around, we have been adding and subtracting fractions, as well as partitioning a whole fraction into two or more parts. We have started our new topic for this half term, looking at Romans and how the city of Rome began. It has been interesting to read about the factual events and the mythological ideas of Rome's creation. We have also started a new layered reading book, which we have been looking forward to for a while – The Boy Who Few with Dragons! We are already enthralled and can’t wait to carry on reading!

REMINDER: 3A have outdoor learning starting on Tuesday next week – 23rd April and 3B will be the following week – 30th April. Please ensure the children have suitable outdoor clothing, especially with the way our weather has been surprising us this week!

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Karate Club - 15.04.2024

Year 4

Welcome Back! We hope that you had a good break. We have hit the ground running. Over the next few weeks, the children are going to be continuing to embed their learning on the times tables ready for the forthcoming National Multiplication test that will be taking place during the first week of June.

We have already started another Battle of Bands between 4D and 4S. There are great prizes up for grabs for the highest scoring class and the highest scoring child. Please encourage your children to use, ‘TT RockStars,’ at home to practise their tables and to earn points for themselves and for their class. This will also help to boost their confidence whilst we are doing regular practice tests as well as a variety of other activities to encourage and strengthen their times table knowledge. Please also encourage your children to learn the times tables that they find the hardest, specifically the x7, x8, x9 and x12.

Because of our times table work, we will not be sending English homework home, except for weekly spellings. This has changed as well. Spellings will now be sent home on a Thursday and will be tested on the following Thursday.

The Year 4 topic this term is geography based. The children will be studying mountains – where they are, how they are created and the different ways that mountains affect the land around them. It may be the final term but we’re not slowing down!

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Karate Club - 15.04.2024

Year 5

This week in Year 5, we finished our learning on area and perimeter in maths. The children persevered with the area of compound shapes and we will continue with this learning through the summer term.

In English, the students were introduced to Macbeth. They read scene 3 and performed it in small groups. We watched an animated version and took detailed notes. The children will use these next week to write a short section of it as a playscript. They really enjoyed the story and how it has many twists and turns.

History saw the children learning about the origin of the Tudor Rose. They sorted information linked to the House of Lancaster and the House of York.

Year 5 have started their music unit on recorders. They are learning the Motown tune, ‘Dancing in the Streets,’ in the note F.

We also started the PE unit on cricket. The wind was blowing wildly but the children remained focus on their batting skills and how to achieve the correct batting stance.

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Karate Club - 15.04.2024

Year 6

We have welcomed Year 6 back after their Easter holidays and have focused on reading comprehension, particularly the skills of information retrieval and understanding vocabulary within the context of different writing genres.

Our focus in maths has been fractions, percentages and decimals and the relationships and links between them. We have applied this to problem solving. Much of this work is heavily reliant on times tables and the application of this knowledge.

We have begun rounders in our second PE session, examining and understanding the rules, communicating, listening and developing teamwork through cooperation. Our Friday PE lessons will be based upon athletics.

In science, we are looking at inheritance and evolution. We started the first lesson looking at how different inherited and environmental factors have affected the offspring of dogs. Our geography this week has been using Ordnance Survey maps to understand the keys and symbols. In French, we are learning about different modes of transport.

Thank you to those of you who were able to attend the SATs meeting this week. A letter was sent out afterwards - please see the link below if you missed it.

Reminder: On Tuesday 23rd April at 3:15pm, we have our meeting about the Isle of Wight residential. If your child is attending the visit, please do try to come along. We will be sharing our final plans and information and will be on hand to answer any questions you may have.

Reminders: The first payment for Southend Week is due this Monday, 22nd April. The final payment for the IoW residential is due next Friday, 26th April.

Letters sent home this week

• Year 6 - SATs Information - 18.04.2024
• Whole School - Karate Club - 15.04.2024

Computing

This week in computing, Year 1 have begun to look at labelling groups of objects using different types of shells, as the introduction of the new unit on grouping data.

Year 2 have been recording and representing data in a tally chart, as their introduction to the new data unit.

Year 3 have been creating their own yes/no questions, as their introduction lesson to branching databases, separating groups of objects by one attribute.

Year 4 have used Excel to input and view data as part of their databases learning. They have used a range of charts to display findings of class surveys they have done in class. They also learnt about formatting cells better to see information they have inputted.

Year 5 have today completed their videos on playtimes and OPAL, after working for the last few weeks on creating and editing videos using I-Movie. They shot their videos in the playground, imported the clips to I-movies, added music, cropped, annotated, created introductions screens and end screens. Ms. Taylor-Brown was so impressed that she will be using one or two to be the official school OPAL video.

Year 6 have begun to learn about spreadsheets and how to collect data and enter it onto a spreadsheet.

Online Safety

Potentially addictive online games are nothing new, but the specifics of this kind of media can vary enormously – and, as a consequence, the risks in each individual game are just as diverse. The city-builder Township is no exception: providing its legions of devotees with accessible, satisfying fun … but exposing them to potential hazards at the same time.

However, any safeguarding issues that the game might have can (with a little knowhow) be neutralised – allowing young players to have some engrossing fun without adults needing to worry about children’s data, their money or their mental wellbeing. Our guide outlines how to help young gamers enjoy Township safely and responsibly.

PE and Sport

This week has started our summer term of sport. It is always good to be outside and using the wonderful space we have at Friars.

KS2 children will all be working on athletics skills alongside either tennis, rounders or cricket. KS1 and Reception children will be working on skills linked to running, jumping, throwing, catching and hitting.

Hopefully the weather will continue to improve, and more lessons will be outdoors. Please ensure children are suitably dressed on their PE days for their lessons.

Outdoor Learning

Owls class and Robin class have enjoyed their outdoor learning sessions this week. They have been colour matching natural objects and finding different shades and enjoying a scavenger hunt. The children drew their own garden and enjoyed collecting things to stick onto their pictures.

REMINDER: Next week it is back to Year 3! Starting with 3A from Tuesday to Friday and 3B the week after - please make sure they are dressed for whatever the weather!

Singing Assemblies

KS2 with Ms. Taylor-Brown

No singing assembly this week. Watch out (or maybe listen out) for more singing next week...

PTA

Some exciting developments and some summer fun is being planned! Watch. This. Space!