Friday 7th October

​Good afternoon everybody - Happy Friday!
 Another really busy week. Hazel class have been working hard and have produced some super creative writing, inventing their own fairy tale based on the story of the Princess' Blankets, with some great results so far. (One of the extension activities was to write a prologue to the story, as Carol Ann Duffy never did explain why the Princess was cold in the first place. See examples in the picture gallery.) We have worked hard in Maths, looking at partitioning, ordering and comparing numbers to 1,000,000. In Science, we explored the differences in states of matter and how one state changes to another.
The children have had their Music session with Miss Boyce and their R.E. session with Miss Penny and once again, we have been active every morning, which I think is having a real impact on the children's physical and mental wellbeing. As Mrs Edwards was attending the Football Tournament in Okehampton with teams from the school, we had a very active fitness based session - eat your heart out Joe Wicks!

We also have an exciting challenge to look forward to, linked to the upcoming London Marathon.  As you know the London Marathon is run over 26 miles. To celebrate this, all of Key Stage 2, will take place in a mini marathon, which is a tenth of the size at 2.6 miles.  We will be running this before half term - hopefully, it will be a bit drier!

Spellings are out, the paper copy was sent home 3 weeks ago and the digital copy is on Dojo.   There is a digital copy of this half term's Wider Curriculum Home Learning on Dojo to go with the paper copy sent home this week..  For this, there is a choice of activities, I would like to see 1 completed activity by Monday 31st October, which is the first Monday back after half term. Although this is our optional home learning, the activities are creative and fun and there is lots of time to complete this so I would be delighted to see some really good quality pieces.
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  In terms of home learning, can I remind everybody that the expectation is that children read for at least 10 minutes at home everyday, this can be magazines, newspapers, manuals, cookery books, as well as their reading books, as it is all reading. This is to promote reading for pleasure as there is nothing better than a good book. Remember, that you are your child’s greatest role model, so if they see you enjoying a good book, it really promotes good learning habits.
  I would also like children to spend time working on their times tables, which are vital in so many areas of the Maths curriculum.  They can do this through Times Tables Rock Stars, I will be posting a list of great websites to practise on later this half term. (If children can't remember their password to log on, ask them to tell me and we will record it in their Reading Record for them.)  From this week, I have asked the children to spend 25 minutes a week on TTRS. this could be 5 minutes a day, or a couple of blocks of time, maybe 10 minutes and 15 minutes in a week.
 
Next week, the children will be completing their assessment on Place Value in Maths, completing our invent writing based on our text in English The Princess' Blankets by Carol Ann Duffy, in Science, we will continue to look at Separating Mixtures and in Computing, we will work on Digital Networks.

On Friday next week, we will be dressing as scarecrows for 'Dingle Dangle Scarecrow Day.'  This is also our Harvest Festival Day. Miss Penny and Reverend Spence will be leading a celebration in St Peter's Church and you are most welcome to join us. The service will take place at 9.30 and will be approximately an hour long
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Also, there will be a Parent Sharing assembly on Friday 21st September at 2.30 in the hall, when you can get a flavour of the learning that has been happening in each class over the last half term.
 
Have a great weekend whatever you are doing, get outside and enjoy yourselves.
 
See you on Monday
 
Mr F