NEWSLETTER - Eastwick Junior School
Transcription
NEWSLETTER - Eastwick Junior School
NEWSLETTER SUMMER TERM (1) 2015 MESSAGE FROM MRS O’BRIEN Dear Parents and Carers, I hope you had a wonderful Easter break with your families and that you are ready for the term ahead. We have already enjoyed a wonderful Grandparents Day across both schools and have received many enthusiastic and positive comments. It was wonderful to welcome so many grandparents and the Y6 prefects did a fantastic job meeting and greeting them in the junior school. The infant children gave a great performance including songs and poems as part of their day. Well done to the children and a huge thankyou to the many grandparents who travelled far and wide to come along! Looking ahead, the Summer term is always a busy and enjoyable time with the Summer Fair, sports days, school trips, celebration evening, transition programmes for all children to get them prepared for their next steps, and much more to look forward to. In addition, the Eastwick staff will be taking part in a training day on Monday 1st June (Inset day) looking at a new approach to assessment; I will share feedback from this training and our future plans in the Newsletter next half term. Value of the month is Honesty and Trust As you will see within this newsletter, the staff have carefully planned another series of lessons which are fun and engaging for your children to enjoy whilst promoting as much progress as possible. As you know, every day at school counts for your children both socially and academically and I would like to take this opportunity to thank many of you for booking your holidays outside of the school term. Currently our whole school attendance is: 95.5% for the infant school and 95.7% for the junior school. I hope you have a wonderful term and look forward to catching up with you over the next few weeks. Please remember that we promote an ‘open door’ policy at Eastwick Schools. If you have any questions or concerns you would like to discuss with myself or another member of staff, please do not hesitate to contact us. Best wishes, Kareen O’Brien YEAR GROUP NEWS YEAR R Spring is here and in Reception it heralds the beginning of our new topic “What a Wonderful World!” Our outdoor learning environment provides us with fantastic opportunities to watch the changes that happen in springtime and we will care for the new plants and trees which have been planted in our developing Reflective Garden. We will be learning about life cycles and new life by watching tadpoles and caterpillars develop and an annual highlight is the arrival of our Living Eggs where children can watch chicks hatch. In May we will visit the Surrey Wildlife Trust’s educational reserve at Bay Pond, where we will join in with activities to explore the natural environment. We look forward to parents and carers joining us in May for our class assemblies when you will be able to find out what we have discovered about our wonderful world! YEAR 1 The Circus has come to town in year 1! We have already taken part in a Circus Skills workshop where the children had lots of fun learning how to balance plates, juggle and spin hoops. We will be using this together with Julia Donaldson's book The Singing Mermaid to write our own chapter books. In maths we are continuing to learn about place value and the different equipment we can use to help to add and takeaway and applying these skills to problem solving and maths investigations. We will be using money in practical situations and learning how to accurately describe the properties of 3d shapes. Year 1 are looking forward to sharing their learning with you at the year 1 assembly at the end of this half term. YEAR 2 This half term we have a history based topic as we are learning about the plague of 1665 and the great fire of London. This is always an excellent topic and the children become very involved producing some excellent writing in their literacy and history lessons. Each class will take part in a drama workshop run by the excellent Open Box theatre company which really brings the whole thing to life! In maths we will be focusing on choosing the best method to solve problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Children will be reminded of methods involving partition as well as the use of a blank number line if appropriate. In practical areas of maths we will be learning about capacity and how to tell the time so now is the moment to practice these skills at home! The focus of our RE lessons this half term is to ask the very challenging question ‘Is the world a safe place?’ We will be discussing what is not fair in the world and producing a piece of artwork inspired by fair and unfair trade. In music lessons we will continue to learn to play the recorder but we will also be watching film clips and listening to professional musicians playing classical music including James Galway playing his golden flute. Science this half term is all about plants. The children will be encouraged to learn the names of the plant parts, each child will plan then keep a record of a sunflower growing and we will all learn to identify the best growing conditions for plants. We have a busy half term ahead but will be ensuring that we keep talking about important issues such as making and keeping friends, using our values of trust and honesty and ensuring we all know how to keep safe in the sun. YEAR GROUP NEWS (continued) YEAR 3 Unbelievably, the final term of Year 3 is upon us! The spring term seemed to fly by and the children were totally immersed in our topic ‘Up in the Air, Down on the Ground and Under the Sea.’ Throughout the term, all of the children worked incredibly hard to produce some fantastic pieces of work, which hopefully you had the chance to see at our recent parents evenings. The weekend homework that the children completed was absolutely brilliant, and we were blown away with the quality of work produced! The children are enjoying our new topic this term about ‘Community’. As part of our immersion afternoon, the children worked together to start to build their own class community using Lego (something which they were incredibly excited about!) They then decided on a name for their community before thinking about the values that they want to promote so that all people can live together successfully. In literacy, we have been using our new cross-curricular topic ‘Community’ as a tool to develop our skills in writing. After learning all about the features of persuasive writing, we have been using some lovely texts that have stimulated roleplay and extended our writing about a new resident who moved in to the community we have created and is causing mayhem. In art, we have been learning all about the famous artist L.S. Lowry. We have started to look closely at some of Lowry’s masterpieces, his exploration of community and the balance between life and work. This week, we are going to work collaboratively to explore and develop the techniques Lowry used to create his works, thinking carefully about what is happening in the communities around us today. Finally, we will apply what we have learnt to create our own artistic masterpieces in the style of Lowry. YEAR 4 We can’t believe we are starting our last term! Last term we found out about the Romans and this half-term we are looking at ‘Survival’. We have already explored the woodlands in the school ground for animals that live there as well as creating a map. We will continue to observe changes that are happening in our environment, for example the leaves on the trees, flowers growing and butterflies fluttering! We will be imagining what it would be like on a deserted island and will write about our adventures as well as instructions of what we would need to take with us. We will create symmetrical pictures combining maths and art. A reminder that we have a meeting on Tuesday 28 th April at 2.30pm in the school hall about the residential visit to Hatfield House on Thursday 18th to Friday 19th June. YEAR 5 This term we have dived straight into our exciting new topic 'Roaming in the Rainforest' and have been busy gathering exciting information about the rainforests from the informative displays in our classrooms. Using this knowledge, the children will be investigating the layers of the rainforest and how the animals survive there. We have been 'reading all about it' in our thrilling unit of work in literacy on newspaper reports about sugar consumption and have been applying the features of newspaper reports to our own writing. Inspired by Henri Rousseau, we will become creative artists and create layered art work based on the vibrant colours of the rainforest during this term. YEAR 6 Building on the amazing success of our production ‘Ye Ha!’ Year 6 will be getting involved in a number of exciting activities while studiously preparing for the SATs in May. The first Friday back saw our children's grandparents getting stuck in assisting in the construction of the children's water powered rocket cars, there were some great successes as well as some spectacular crashes! We will soon be welcoming The Cat's Grin Theatre Company to school to kick off our unit of work on Macbeth. There will be both a performance as well as theatre workshops for every class. The group come with some great reviews and we are sure it will really peak the children's interest. Obviously it wouldn't be the summer term without preparation for the SATs and the children are working incredibly hard in preparation! JOINT SCHOOL INFORMATION UPDATES September 2015 Inset Dates Governors have confirmed that Wednesday 2 nd and Thursday 3rd September 2015 will be Inset days. Therefore, children will be expected back in school for the start of the new academic year on Friday 4 th September 2015. Dates for the remaining three Inset days will be confirmed shortly. Term Dates Surrey County Council have now published the school term dates for the academic year 2016-2017 which parents may find useful. The link for term dates is http://new.surreycc.gov.uk/schools-andlearning/schools/school-term-dates. Please note that there will be 5 INSET days over the academic year 2016/17 with dates to be confirmed. REMINDERS Email Addresses May we please remind parents that the main school email addresses are as follows: Infant school: [email protected] Junior school: [email protected] Please ensure your email address book is up to date as the previous school addresses are no longer in use. Thank you. Diary Dates We have provided overleaf key dates for the rest of this academic year which include the dates for a number of year group and class assemblies to which parents are invited. Please take time to ensure the dates are in your diary! Parking Unfortunately, we have already received complaints from residents this term regarding inconsiderate parking by parents at drop off and pick up time. Can we please remind parents that when parking to collect their children, to consider our neighbours and ensure that enough space is left to allow residents easy access in and out of their driveways. In particular, we would draw your attention to the small cul de sac that leads off Eastwick Park Avenue through to a footpath onto Park View. A number of cars have been parking on the grass verge and parallel parking along the small cul de sac which is causing difficulties for the residents to turn their cars sufficiently when exiting driveways. Within the next few weeks, we will be undertaking the Golden Boot Challenge across both schools, which encourages children to walk or ‘park and stride’ to school during June. We hope that, where possible, you are able to support this initiative to help to decrease the traffic around the school and to encourage children to have some fresh air and exercise before coming into school! Dogs on Site May we remind parents of the school policy regarding dogs on site: • Under no circumstances are dogs allowed to be taken into the Infant school playground; • Due to the number of parents and children waiting outside the Junior school, we ask parents with dogs who are collecting from the Juniors to wait by the green pedestrian gate halfway down the driveway or by the bike shed – dogs are not allowed in the area immediately outside the Junior school; • Dogs must not be left tied up and unattended; • Dogs must always be kept on a short lead and held by an adult, and must not be allowed to jump up or bark at children. INFANT SCHOOL INFORMATION INFANT SUMMER TERM DATES Thursday 23rd April All Day St George’s Day – Rainbow, Beavers, Cubs, Brownies, Scouts, Guides welcome to wear uniform Friday 24th April All Day Friends’ Sponsored Event (sports mufti in exchange for new children’s gift for Fair) Monday 27th April All Day Year 2 Openbox Theatre Tuesday 28th April All Day Class Photographs Wednesday 29th April All Day Class Photographs Friday 1st May All Day Mufti in exchange for adult’s new gift for Fair Tuesday 5th May All Day Year R trip to Bay Pond Wednesday 6th May All Day Year R trip to Bay Pond Friday 8th May All Day Mufti in exchange for bottles (unopened and in date for Fair) Tuesday 12th May 9.00am Red Class Assembly 9.00am Yellow Class Assembly Thursday 14th May 9.00am Orange Class Assembly 15th All Day NOT a mufti. Year R plant donations, Years 1 & 2 cake donations (nut free) for Fair Saturday 16th May 12.00pm – 4.00pm Joint Friends’ School Summer Fair Wednesday 20th May 9.00am and 2.15pm Year 1 Assembly Thursday 21st May 3.30pm and 4.45pm Friends’ School Discos Monday 25th – Friday 29th May All Week HALF TERM Monday 1st June All Day INSET day. School closed to children. Tuesday 2nd June 8.45am All Day Back to School Year 1 trip to Chessington Monday 15th June PM Sports Day (children to wear Sport Mufti) Saturday 20th June All Day 5pm Bookham Village Day Friends Summer Family BBQ Tuesday 23rd June All Day Year 2 trip to Nower Wood Wednesday 1st July All Day ‘Move Up’ Day – children visit their new class Thursday 9th July 9.00am & 2.00pm Year 2 Celebration Assembly Monday 13th July PM ‘Rain off’ Sports Day Thursday 16th July 5.00pm – 7.30pm Celebration of Work Evening Saturday 18th July TBC Joint Friends’ Summer Ball Tuesday 21st July 2.00pm End of Term Wednesday Friday 13th May May JUNIOR SCHOOL INFORMATION JUNIOR SUMMER TERM DATES Thursday 23rd April All Day St George’s Day – Rainbow, Beavers, Cubs, Brownies, Scouts, Guides welcome to wear uniform Friday 24th April All Day Mufti in exchange for new children’s gift for Fair Thursday 30th April 9.00am Wolves Class Assembly Friday 1st May All Day Mufti in exchange for adult’s new gift for Fair Thursday 7th May All Day Years 3, 4 & 5 Class Photographs Friday 8th May All Day Mufti in exchange for bottles (unopened and in date for Fair) Thursday 14th May 7.00pm Year 3/4 School Production Friday 15th May 9.15am All Day Year 3/4 School Production NOT mufti. Year 3 Plant donations, Years 4, 5 & 6 Cans and Cartons for Fair. Saturday 16th May 12.00pm – 4.00pm Joint Friends’ School Summer Fair Wednesday 20th May 7.00pm Junior Choir at Mid Surrey Primary Music Festival, Dorking Halls Monday 25th – Friday 29th May All Week HALF TERM Monday 1st June All Day INSET day. School closed to children. Tuesday 2nd June 8.45am Back to School Friday 5th June All Day Sports Day and Sport Mufti Thursday 18th June 9.00am All Day Dingoes Class Assembly Year 4 Residential trip to Hatfield House Friday 19th June All Day Year 4 Residential trip to Hatfield House Saturday 20th June All Day Bookham Village Day All Day Year 3 trip to High Ashurst All Day ‘Rain off’ Sports Day All Day ‘Move Up’ Day – children visit their new class Thursday 2nd July All Day Year 5 to Thames Young Mariners 3rd 9.00am All Day Year 6 Leavers Assembly (for Year 6 Parents) Year 5 to Thames Young Mariners Monday 6th July All week 5.00pm – 8.00pm Year 6 to PGL Friends’ School Discos – Years 3, 4 & 5 Thursday 16th July 5.00pm – 7.30pm Celebration of Work and Achievement Evening Saturday 18th July TBC Joint Friends’ Summer Ball Monday 20th July TBC Year 6 Leavers Disco Tuesday 21st July 2pm End of Term Thursday 25th June Friday 26th June Wednesday Friday 1st July July