Friday 20th May

​Good afternoon everybody - Happy Friday!
It's been another busy week, less Sun than last week but still lots of great learning opportunities.

This week, we have been working hard on our English unit, really thinking about innovating the text. Our text is the short story anthology How the Whale Became, by local author Ted Hughes and fits in nicely with our Science topic of Humans and other Animals over Time, there have been some really good innovated stories, ranging from How the Sea Slug got into the Sea, to Why Turtle has a Shell.  In Maths we have been working on Properties of Shape, particularly angles, triangles and quadrilaterals. In Science we discovered why fossils are so important to scientists studying evolution and in History, we thought about who was responsible for the death of Thomas Beckett, was it Henry II, the Knights or was he partly responsible for his own demise? 

On Tuesday, we had another game of rounders, it has been really good to see the children's improvements in batting and fielding, as well as tactically. We enjoyed a super French session on Monday with Madame Jordan, thinking about writing Pen Friend letters to our partner school in France.   We have continued with our Art, looking at our School building in detail.(see photos)  Finally this week, we finished with a cricket based session with our Saints Southwest Coach - Mrs Edwards.
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Thank you for the recommended read sheets, I have all but 4, which I know will be in on Monday. lots of reading going on and a wide variety of different choices to share with each other. We are currently enjoying Street Child by Berlie Doherty, it is the tale of Jim Jarvis, an orphan in Victorian London. It is based on a true story, no plot spoiler but the ending is fabulous and the events from the story still impact on life today. 
 
Spellings are now on Dojo for the groups, next week, it's the 6th column, a paper copy was sent home, I have spares, if you've misplaced it.  I have been impressed by how many people are reading every night, keep it up!  The Wider Curriculum home learning for this half term is out, I have given the children a paper copy.  The links and resources for some of the activities are on Dojo - this is due in by next Thursday at the latest. 

As the Sun is starting to get hotter, could I please ask, that children now have a hat and a drinks bottle and sun cream is applied, prior to them coming in to school, so that they are protected. We are lucky enough to be out on the field at the moment, if your child has hay-fever, please make sure that they are medicated, as the tree pollen has been high recently and when the grass is cut, the sneezes start!

Next week, we will be completing our work on How the Whale Became in English, we will continue our unit on Properties of Shapes in Maths; continue our work on Medieval Monarchs in History and look at Charles Darwin in Science.  We will have Forest School on Tuesday afternoon and P.E. on Friday afternoon as usual next week.   Don't forget as well, that next Friday, in honour of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, we will be dressing up in the patriotic colours of red, white and blue and maybe wearing a crown or tiara. 

Have a great weekend everyone, see you on Monday

Mr F