Newsletter- week ending 24th October

Dear parents/carers,

The children have had a very successful Yellow Book Week, they’ve worked incredibly hard and I’m really proud of their achievements. I’ll be finishing the marking and sorting out all of the data over half term as well as working out what exactly I need to do to move the children on, so that I’m ready to talk to you about it during our parent/teacher meetings.

The Thursdays are completely full for parent/teacher interviews. If you haven’t yet returned your form please do as soon as possible.

After half term we have the opportunity to work with a group of student teachers from Oxford Brookes on a communication, language and literacy project. The students will be with us for two weeks in November, working with small groups on a variety of projects, hopefully including the use of drama and ICT.

If you are looking for something to do to keep the children occupied over half term, I can heartily recommend the Big Draw activities which are taking place across Oxfordshire. The children have done some work this week on observational drawing and I’m very keen for them to increase their confidence and ability in art. There are events taking place all over the county, including the Ashmolean, Cogges Manor Farm, Modern Art Oxford, the Museum of the History of Science, the Northmoor Trust and Harcourt Arboretum. You can find out more information here: http://www.thebigdraw.org.uk/

Please do have a look at our blog for photographs of our recent environmental art lesson. The children excelled themselves, producing some wonderful artwork using only what they could find in on the school field.

I hope that you and your children have a wonderful half term break, and I’ll see you all back in school on the 3^rd of November.

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week…

1: How can we welcome a new child to our class?

2: How can we make art from what we find on the ground?

3: What would you like to be better at next term?

Environmental Art

As Autumn is in full swing, the astroturf and school field have been awash with colourful leaves this week. The children started arranging the leaves into patterns yesterday during playtime and were really excited about their creations. Inspired by this, today we had a look at some of Andy Goldworthy’s art, including a video of a large installation he made in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. We talked about how he used natural materials to create patterns and that his art fades away over time. After that we went out onto the school field to create our own environmental art. The children worked either independently or in peer groups of their own choice. They were all completely engrossed in the task (in fact they had to be dragged away from it!) and produced some wonderful artwork. Here are a few photographs of my favourites.

Quick note

Just to let you all know that I am already fully booked for the evening parent/teacher meetings on both Thursday evenings. There are still some spare slots on both Mondays.

Parent/Teacher Meetings

A letter has gone home today about the parent/teacher meetings, which will be taking place on the 10th, 13th, 17th and 20th of November. I’ll be booking the meetings on a first come, first served basis, so check in those bookbags and rucksacks for the reply slip! The meetings will be strictly limited to 10 minutes each, so if you think you’ll need longer than that as there’s something you want to discuss in detail, please let me know so that we can arrange a suitable time to chat.

Newsletter- week ending 17th October

Dear parents/carers,

Our trip to the Oxford Synagogue on Thursday was a great success! The children learned many interesting things about Jewish beliefs, worship and festivals. We’d all like to say “thank you” to our parent helpers who came with us, your help was much appreciated.

In English this week the children have been exploring the structure and information contained in newspaper reports. They have also been writing some Autumn poems, concentrating on using exciting descriptive words.

In maths we’ve been looking at measuring length in cm and m. Some children have also been working on halving whole numbers and measurements using practical apparatus.

In science we have completed our tooth decay experiment, with dramatic results. The state of the tooth which had been left in Coca Cola for a week was awful! The children have produced posters containing advice about keeping teeth healthy and helping to prevent tooth decay.

Next week is our “Yellow Book Week”, when I will be looking at what the children can do already so that I can work out exactly what they need to do to move forwards in maths, reading, writing and spelling. Our normal timetable will be suspended, apart from tennis which will be taking place as planned on Friday afternoon. That means that we will not be doing the usual spelling checks.

There’s been a little bit of confusion over homework. The homework project is for all children in both year groups to complete. There are spare homework sheets on the noticeboard if anyone needs another one. I’ll be running another homework club next Wednesday lunchtime (the 22^nd) for any children who have questions or want to show me their ideas or what they’ve done so far before half term. Also, I’m happy to help out with resources/equipment, so if your child needs something for their project they should ask and I’ll try and sort it out.

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week…

1: What do you know about how Jewish people worship?

2: What can you do to keep your teeth healthy?

3: What job does a news report headline do?

Healthy Teeth

You need to keep your teeth healthy. This is how you can keep your teeth healthy:

• Don’t drink too much Coke or fizzy drinks because they are full of sugar
• Don’t drink drinks that have lots of acid in them like lemon squash
• Clean your teeth properly two times a day

Your teeth will rot and go black and might fall out if you don’t look after them.

This photograph is of a rotten tooth. We left it in Coca Cola for a week. The sugar in the coke made it go black and a bit fall off. If you drink too much this will happen to the teeth in your mouth.

By Martha and Mark

Animal Music

Class 3 have been making a marvellous music all about animals. We used different types of instruments to make music that sounded like owls and snails. It was exciting and fun. We recorded the pieces using VoiceThread so that we could share them with you.

Viking Story Writing

The children did a wonderful job of writing Viking stories in groups, so I thought we should celebrate their work with a new display. As well as their stories there’s also an example of the planning that took place prior to writing, from the concept stages to the completed storyboard. Each child has written and illustrated a section of the story, and had to work together to make sure that there weren’t gaps or overlaps in the stories.

Newsletter- week ending 10th October

Dear parents/carers,

We’ve had a very exciting week in maths. We’ve been exploring the properties of 2d and 3d shapes through practical activities. The children particularly enjoyed the challenges of making 3d shapes from Polydrons and the shapes quiz we held today. Next week we’ll begin our work on measures and data handling.

In English this week we’ve been looking at the type of information you can find in newspaper reports. The children have been looking at headline writing as well as writing their own reports about a class event. Next week we’ll be continuing this work by writing a newspaper report about a Viking invasion. I’ve been encouraging the children to write in the past tense, and we’ve also looked at modifying verbs by using adverbs.

Our Viking purses are finally finished, and I’m very pleased with the results. We’ll be evaluating our work next week, and we’ll post some photographs of the finished articles on the blog.

Most of the children did really well with their spellings this week. There were however some children who hadn’t practised them at home at all. Please check bookbags and lunchboxes for the slips of paper, as I think some didn’t make it home. It’s much more effective if the spellings are learnt a little at a time over the week, instead of in a block just before the spelling check. This way the children are much more likely to retain the spellings and use them in their work. In our phonics work next week we’re going to be looking at the spelling patterns for the /i/ sound, such as light, mite, pie, fly etc.

On Thursday next week it’s our visit to the Oxford synagogue, as part of our work on Judaism. Letters have gone home today with information about the trip. The children are very tolerate and respectful of all religions and faiths, but they do have some misconceptions about Judaism. This is a fantastic opportunity to find out what Judaism is really about and to speak to Jewish people about their faith.

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week…

1: How many vertices does a cube have?

2: How can we make someone new feel welcome?

3: Which liquid do you think will dissolve the eggshell first? Why?

The Great Tooth Decay Investigation

We have started a new science investigation, which will be running over the next week or so. Here is the children’s investigation planning and prediction.

Which liquids We want to find out which drink is most likely to make our teeth rotten.

We have Coca Cola, water and lemon squash. We are going to use egg shells to represent teeth.

We think that the Coca Cola will make teeth rotten the quickest. We think the water will be the best for our teeth and not rot them.

We decided to put the egg shells into a glass with some of the drinks and see which dissolves first.

To make our test fair, we will do it at the same time, use the same amount of drink, the same egg shells, keep them in the same place, keep the egg shells in for the same amount of time, and in the same type and shape of glass.

We’ll post again next week with the results.

We also were very lucky to have a real tooth, which fell out in class a couple of weeks ago (and I have saving in my drawer- the things I have to do for science!). We decided as we only had one real tooth we would put it into the Coca Cola and see what happened. Here’s a before shot:

Again, we’ll have more photos and an explanation of what’s happened to the intrepid tooth next week.