The children have had a wonderful last week in school for 2018, the excitement has been building with the many events that have celebrated Christmas. The whole school came together for the Pantomime on Monday, the children joined in booing and cheering the different characters, it was lovely to hear them all laughing together. Although Father Tim was unable to join the children for their Christingle Service we still enjoyed listening to each year group sing their chosen song and to the meaning of the Christingle. This was closely followed by the ‘Carols on the Playground’ the staff and children had worked hard to prepare for this event and I am so pleased so many parent/Carers were able to join them in this special celebration. Our final day of the term was enjoyed by everyone, the PFA again supported the school with our first Christmas Activities in the main hall. The children enjoyed the different stalls, from Guess the Santa to pin the tail on the reindeer, everyone participated and clearly enjoyed the day.

All of these events take a considerable amount of planning and effort and I must say a huge thank you to the PFA and my staff team for their hard work. 
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Finally, I would like to say thank you for the good wishes, gifts and cards that have been sent in to us all, your kindness is very much appreciated. I hope you all have a healthy and happy Christmas and I look forward to seeing you all in 2019.


Mrs Coates

Thank you to all those parents and carers who were able to attend last week's project evening, where children were able to display and share their various homework projects from this half term. 

As always, we really value your feedback, which again has been overwhelmingly positive. Have a look at some of the work shared by Mason (Y6), Emelia (Y3), Billie (Y2), Sutijay (Y2), Paige (Y2) and Aaliyah and her big sister (Y2).

Please also remember that while these half-termly homework projects will continue, pupils still have opportunity to practise and consolidate their basic skills through their personal logins to Mathletics, Active Learn and other online tools that the school has subscribed to. Challenge within these programs can be managed and adjusted by class teachers, so do speak to your child's class teacher if you have any further feedback or requests regarding the level of challenge in these activities.

Year 4 have been busy designing their own ‘Hoosh’ as part of a Design and Technology project. A Hoosh was a type of broth that the explorer Ernest Shackleton had to eat as part of his expedition to the Arctic. Some children even created their own recipes and menus using the knowledge of the ingredients that the explorers would have had available to them.  
As part of their term’s foundation unit of study, Year 6 have been studying the artworks of Paul Nash: a British surrealist painter and war artist, as well as a photographer, writer and designer of applied art. They used watercolours to emulate the wartime artwork produced by Paul Nash. During the remembrance service, the children’s art was proudly displayed for parents and carers to admire. Reception kindly offered some of the poppies which they had designed to enhance the displays; they were very bright and imaginative. ​

When we arrived in our classrooms on Tuesday morning something extremely exciting had happened.   Something bright and sparkly had appeared on our carpet.  We examined it closely, being very careful when we touched it so it did not break.  We were all very excited to discover that it was a star!  We examined the star closely, using our senses to explore it.  We then created a word bank of different adjectives to describe the star including radiant, beautiful and shiny.  Next, we looked at using this language to create our own star acrostic poems.  We even began to look at similes in our poems to make them really exciting for the reader. We began by writing an acrostic poem as a class, using all the fantastic language that we had created in our word bank.  After that, we wrote our own star acrostic poems, using exciting adjectives and similes.  Some of us will be reading out our poems at the Nativity performance.  ​