Good evening evrybody - Happy Friday. 
We are at the end of another week, and after the Prime Minister's announcement on Monday, now nearing the end of Lockdown, so we will be back on Monday March 8th. This week I have been very impressed with the work coming in, the Maths has been superb, as has the creativity I have seen from people undertaking our cross curricular afternoon choices, where amongst other things, I have seen a French family tree! 
  We have had a good end to the week with the weather and I hope that people have been able to get out and about, we certainly made the most of the sun this afternoon at school with an orienteering afternoon, out in our fabulous school grounds. The children had great fun.

Next week, for the last week of lockdown, we will continue with Maths as we have been, but English will be based on the theme of World Book Day (which is on Thursday) - Share a Story. So we will be working on various story themed activities for English, with more on Thursday for World Book Day itself. Even though we won't all be at school, we are celebrating World Book Day in the traditional fashion by dressing up as a story character - I know people can't go out and get things, so see how inventive you can be with your costume for Thursday - I will look forward to seeing all of you dressed up, I will have to get my thinking cap on now for a costume idea!

If you could start thinking about getting ready to return, we will be working in a very similar way to the one in which we were in September. Therefore, we will be asking people to bring their own stationery in and getting used to routine hand washing and sanitizing.   Also it would be worth getting into a good routine of getting up at the time you would normally for school and regulating your sleep pattern. 

It looks like the Sun is going to be with us for a few days now, certainly over the weekend, so please get out and enjoy it - don't forget to log any activity that you do on Get Set Tokyo, so that we can reach our 47,000km target, we are currently at 26,000, so a great start to the challenge this term, let's keep it up and get to Sydney, which is our next destination.

I have posted some highlights of the week below as a photo gallery.  I hope that you all have a great weekend, enjoy whatever it is that you are up to.
Mr F

We've reached the Spring half term already, I can't believe it. Can you believe that our year 5s are now halfway through the year!   This week we had a great week of story writing and telling, basing our own legends on Dartmoor. I have had some great stories so far and a few retellings via video or mp3, which have been great, keep them coming in. In Maths, we completed our unit on Multiplication and Division and have moved on to fractions, we started this week with a recap to see what the children have remembered from their previous learning in fractions. 
Today we had a great Zoom session with our coach Mr Stronge (see photos) and revisited all of the exercises and challenges that we have covered this half term - there were some red faces in the hall - including mine (under the mask obviously).
Many of you have been really active and have sent some pictures in showing your activities, well done for logging this as we have now reached Rio and are on our way to Sydney next in our Travel to Tokyo Challenge. (So far we have travelled over17,000 km in total as a school.)

Then our afternoon sessions have been choice based and the variety of activities have been well received.  We will continue in this way for our period of home learning after half term and wait to see what the Prime Minister has to say on 22nd February, regarding return to schools. 

We had a few nice examples of Perfect Earth's for Miss Radbourne's challenge, look out for the winners in the newsletter. 

Don't forget, if you require a device as you are struggling to access the remote learning, contact Miss C directly, as she still has a few devices which can be allocated. 

There is no home learning for half term, all I ask is that people pick up a book and read it, or share it with an adult, or sibling. Just for fun, there will be a quiz challenge on the School News page of the website: it is quite tricky but see if you can guess who The Masked Adults are!
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Have a great half term everyone
​Mr F

We've reached the end of another week, that's felt like it's passed by very quickly. A huge thank you and well done for your continued efforts at home with the remote learning, there have been some excellent pieces coming in.  I have really enjoyed talking to you via Google Meet or Zoom and being able to teach some of you virtaully via video link when there are things that you need guidance with. I have also enjoyed having the children in for CWC at school, as it feels like a very tight knit group. This week, you have been looking at Multiplication and Division, this unit will come to an end on Wednesday next week with our end of block assessment. We have also nearly reached the end of our work on The Lost Words, our English text and I have had some fabulaous poetry coming in. Monday will be the last day to send in your completed work, as I would like to create our class book from your work. We will then be moving on to a short, but creative 4 day English block on Tuesday - more details then...
This week has been Children's Mental Health Week and I know that people enjoyed the assembly for this. I loved the onesies that people were wearing for PE today, although you must have been very hot! We had a great afternoon at school expressing ourselves through art, model making and outdoor play, I hope your afternoon was as good. Please send your photos/videos or pieces of writing/art in, so that I can see how you expressed yourself this afternoon.

As of next week, the afternoon sessions will be different and a bit more fluid. After the results of our Parents Survey, we will keep the expectation that Maths and English is handed in daily but there will be no due date on the afternoon sessions - although still an expectation that people do the activities - the activities will be there for you to choose from, so if you are running short on time, pick one that you can fit in and complete. There are a lot of exciting and fun activities for the week next week and I hope that you will enjoy them.  Among them is a Geography Challenge, set by Miss Radbourne - this is a competition, so you will need to return it earlier in the week if you want to be entered. 

Well done to those of you who are getting out and about, logging this for our school team has meant that so far as a school we have travelled 16,000 km and have 31,000 remaining before we get to Tokyo.  Our next stop is Rio and we have just under 4000 km to go before we get there. Please remember to log your activity - every kilometre counts!  I know some people have ordered and had their skipping ropes delivered for the skipping challenge, have you ordered yours yet? There's still time, have a look at the link on Whole School Story for more information. 

Finally, one of the struggles that we have had during lockdown is access to good reliable devices. If you are struggling with your access to the remote learning because your device is slow or old, Miss C still has a few devices that are available for parents to support with learning at home. Should you require one, please contact Miss Chauhan directly and she will endeavour to make a device available to you.

I hope that you have a great weekend whatever you are up to.

Mr F

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