Friars Weekly Newsletter friday 10th january 2025

Coming up in this edition of the newsletter...

• Ofsted report hopefully being published next week
• Havens Hospices fundraising and 'Waddle-on-Sea'
• Careers Week 2025 - can you help?
• After-School Book Look in two weeks' time
• INSET Days for 2025-26

The first week of 2025 has been excellent and it has been wonderful to see all of the children again after the Christmas break. Opening the gates on Monday morning and seeing all of their happy faces was very warming… despite the very cold temperatures! It has been a cold week and it continues into the weekend. Please wrap up warm. Next week does look a little better.

Most weeks are busy at Friars and this week was no exception. There has been a lot to fit into the five days. The week has ended with Sportshall Athletics competitions for Years 3/4 and Years 5/6. I was the bus driver for the competitions so managed to sneak into the sports hall at Garons to see a little bit of the action! Both teams performed very well. More information will follow in next week’s newsletter. We have more sport next week with a home football match against Thorpedene on Monday and a Year 3/4 football tournament at Len Forge on Friday.

Today we collected in the last of the Havens Hospices ‘Waddle-on-Sea’ design entries. Next week, we will ask the School Council to select the top ten before we go to a whole school vote for a winner. The winning design will adorn our own penguin. How exciting! We are aiming to raise at least £1000 for Havens this year and will be hosting two non-uniform days to support this. The first non-uniform day for Havens will on Friday 7th February. We will be asking for a suggested donation of £1. Thank you for helping to support this great cause.

Lastly, today we received our Ofsted report! It will hopefully be published by the end of next week and we will let you know when it is available. It makes for a very lovely read 😊.

Have a great weekend and see you on Monday.

Mr. Chris McClay, Principal

Careers Week 2025

Careers Week will be Monday 3rd March to Friday 7th March. If you would like to come into school to talk to children about your career, or you know someone who would be happy to visit, please email the school office and let us know. Visitors from last year are welcome again. Mrs. Halls will be putting together the timetable for the week and would love to hear from you. Thank you in advance.

After School 'Book Look'

A reminder that on Wednesday 22nd January there will be an opportunity to visit your child's classroom and look at their books and other learning.

The school will be open between 3:30pm and 5:00pm so please feel free to pop along later if you wish. The children will no doubt love telling you all about their work.

Please enter the school through the Main Reception from 3:30pm.

INSET Days 2025-26

We have published out INSET dates for next academic year. These can be found on our school website at:

INSET Days on the school website

Nursery

Welcome back to a very cold and fresh spring term. We have lots of exciting things planned for the children throughout the term. It has been lovely seeing the children all returned happily and settled straight back into their familiar routines. They have enjoyed sharing the fun they all had during the holiday and were keen to tell us what Santa had brought.

Our returning children are very excited about our new friends joining us full time next week and have loved meeting them all for a couple of welcoming stay and plays this week.

REMINDER: Stay and Play dates for this term are currently being confirmed and will be sent out as soon as possible.

Reception

We hope that you have all had a happy Christmas and New Year. We are very grateful for all the lovely gifts we received; we really appreciate them. The children have come back happy and engaged in their work. We have read the book ‘Blue Penguin’ about a blue coloured penguin who lives Antarctica. The children have looked at the landscape and weather in Antarctica and spoken about how it is different to the UK. We have also encouraged the children to think of adjectives to describe what the penguin looks like and how they feel throughout the book. In maths, we have introduced zero and continued focusing on numbers up to 5 in various formats

Year 1

Happy New Year!

It was lovely to see the children's happy faces on Monday and hear about their Christmas holidays.

This week, we have started our new book in English called 'Claude in the City.' The children have been doing lots of writing and we have been focusing on capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. In maths, we have been thinking about numbers to 20 including recognising them in different representations and completing missing number problems. Please check your child's reading record book for log in details for Numbots. This is a maths app that your children can access at home and school. If you have any problems, please let us know.

Year 2

Happy New Year to our Year 2 families. We hope that you enjoyed a lovely Christmas break together. It has been wonderful to welcome the children back to school this week.

We began our topic about transport by researching the inventor George Stephenson, who created the first passenger railway almost two hundred years ago!

We have used a short film called ‘Taking Flight’ to stimulate our writing this week. The children have used adjectives to create expanded noun phrases to describe pictures from the story.

We continue to explore the concept of shape in maths and the children have enjoyed the challenge of drawing symmetrical shapes.

It has been a busy week, and we look forward to working with you all in 2025.

We continue to have PE on Monday and Tuesday each week. Please make sure your child has the correct PE t shirt and plain black joggers for these lessons. Earrings must be removed on these days too.

REMINDER: Please help to support your child’s reading development by hearing them read and sharing their library book with them. Library books can be changed whenever they have been read as we have a wide selection of books.

Year 3

It was great to see the children back after a lovely Christmas break!

In English, we have started a new book called ‘Leon and the Place Between,’ it is all about a boy who believes in magic and ends up in a magical place.

We have written descriptive sentences around it and will be continuing with this next week.

During maths, we have continued to look at multiplication and related facts. We finished the week off by multiplying a 2-digit number by a 1-digit number.

We have also begun our new topic in geography this term based all around volcanoes and earthquakes. This has really piqued our interest and cannot wait to find out more! This entwines with science which is finding out all about rocks and soils.

Next week, Year 3 will have some exciting digital music workshops on Monday and Tuesday – make sure you are bright and early so as not to miss out!

REMINDER: Please ensure the children are wrapped up warm for school – we will still be going out to play even if the weather is cold!

3A will have outdoor learning from 20th January and 3B from 27th January.

Year 4

Welcome back! What a fantastic beginning to the new year we have had in Year 4! We dived straight into our new topic of World War II in English by learning about the outbreak of the war. On Thursday, we fully immersed ourselves into this topic with our WW2 Hook Day too. We started the day learning about air raids, when all of a sudden the air raid siren went off in class! We were sent to the KS2 hall where we gathered in a ‘mass bomb shelter’ and discussed what we could see, hear, smell, feel and taste using the five senses. We then went on to look at evacuation, and packed our own evacuee suitcases with what we’d need.

In English, we also brushed up on our grammar skills by practicing how to use conjunctions to join sentences together and subordinate clauses to add more detail to our sentences.

In maths, we continued to develop our skills around the times tables and learnt about factor pairs. We also looked at how we can quickly multiply a number by 10 and 100 by using place value charts.

In the afternoons, 4S has been busy looking at how World War II actually started in history and began to research the “make-do and mend” initiative during the Second World War ready to create their own toys in design & technology. In science, the children learnt about animals and their habitats and how different animals have adapted to live in certain conditions successfully. The learning in PSHE involved looking at how big companies advertise their products to us and in RE we learnt how Christians use the bible as guidance on how to live their lives.

4G thoroughly enjoyed their outdoor learning sessions with Mr Brady with a focus on forestry skills. The children explored the garden and learnt about different types of trees and leaves and how to identify them in the wild. They also had great fun using forestry tools (safely of course!).

REMINDER: It will be 4S’s turn for outdoor learning next week so please remember to dress in appropriate clothing! School uniform on the top and older trousers/joggers.

Please start off the new year with enthusiasm around your reading – continue to access Reading Eggs at home.

Please also continue to practise your times tables on TTRockstars.

Year 5

It has been lovely to see our wonderful Year 5 students back after Christmas! We hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

This week, the children have been busy practising their skill of written methods for multiplication. It has been great to see their perseverance with these methods. The children have been estimating and checking their answers.

Within our English, we have been looking at the genre of biographies. This week the children have looked at the features and started to elaborate notes within the topic of 'Protests' for Great Thunberg. They will look at this genre further next week when they write a biography about Sir David Attenborough. They also go on to writing their own autobiography.

The children with their geography work have been investigating the significance of key lines of latitude, including the equator. They labelled these and discussed what the Earth would be like if shaped like a cube?

Banksy has been the topic of our art where the children have enjoyed studying this artist. Year 5 have also explored the theme of spirituality in RE. They discussed what it means to them and their lives personally. On Monday afternoon Year 5 had the first session of gymnastics. They explored front rolls, cartwheels and balances.

Please look out for new spellings coming home and a book for the children to keep. The book is called: Like a Charm by Elle McNicoll. This book is ahead of our virtual author visit with the author next week.

The books have been provided by Booktrust Represents. Please do share these with your children and encourage discussion around the main character.

Year 6

This week, in Year 6, we have started looking at metric measurements and converting between different units. Our writing has focused on issues of racial inequality and the history of racial segregation. It is linked with our RE where we have been looking at discrimination and racism.

In history, we have started our topic on Ancient Maya; finding out about the location of the ancient civilisation.

Our science this term is looking at living things and how they are classified into different groups. We started this by making our own classification charts for a selection of sweets with different physical properties.

Computing

Year 6 have returned to an old favourite – programming using Scratch. They have begun to look at variables and recognised that variables can be used as scores in games.

In Year 2 this week, we revisited Scratch Jr. we spent some time reminding ourselves of the different features of the platform and explored the different sprites and backdrops available.

Year 1 had their first lesson of programming this week, learning about commands and sequences. They were then asked to ‘tinker’ (experiment) with the code and go mouse. This involved them identifying different directions and movements in order to get the mouse to move in a specific way.

Year 4 have progressed onto Logo to program a turtle forwards, backwards, left and right. This is the first time they have used text-based coding (as opposed to blocks) so they need to learn the code first. The children created shapes that includes right angles by turning the turtle by 90 degrees, then moving it forward.

In Year 5, students had their first lesson using the crumble controllers. They were asked to create a circuit using the sparkle LED’s and then once they had connected the circuit correctly they then used the programming platform to try and get the LED flashing different colours.

Over in Year 3, the children had their first attempt using Scratch on the desktop computers. They were tasked with adding additional sprites and backdrops and began to experiment with the movement blocks. This platform is very different in comparison to Scratch Jr. and there are many more options for them to explore. They were very keen to continue their learning and can explore Scratch further by clicking on the link:

Scratch - Imagine, Program, Share

Online Safety

JusTalk Kids is an alternative version of the JusTalk app, aimed at an audience aged 13 and under. As that upper age limit suggests, this social networking platform is intended to be suitable for youngsters, providing them with a space of their own to interact with a community their own age.

Unfortunately, there are still risks associated with JusTalk Kids, so it’s vitally important for parents and educators to understand the potential dangers for those who use the app. Our free guide delves into the most prominent online safety concerns of JusTalk Kids, while also letting you know how to ensure that children can be protected, should they wish to create an account.

PE & Sports

This week we have seen a start to a new term of PE and sporting activities. Classes have started their new units of learning covering a range of indoor and outdoor sports.

We have attended two sport shall tournaments with teams of children competing against other schools, which has been great to do. We will share more in next week's newsletter.

Next week, our school football team will be playing against Thorpedene and our Year 3 and 4 boys team will be attending a tournament. Good luck.

REMINDER: If children wear jogging bottoms for PE, they must be plain black. Please do not send the children in with other colours. We also ask that if the children bring in a tracksuit top for the lesson that it is plain black. Tracksuit tops must not have hoods.

Outdoor Learning

This half-term's outdoor learning timetable is as follows:

• Week Commencing - 13th January - 4S
• Week Commencing - 20th January - 3A
• Week Commencing - 27th January - 3B
• Week Commencing - 3rd February - 6B
• Week Commencing - 10th February - 6L

Music and Singing Assembly

Signing assembly was back this week and Year 1 joined the assembly for the first time. The more voices the merrier! More will follow about our singing assemblies next week.