​After months away for some children, we have seen a school full of busy readers. Incredibly, it has been as if the children were never away; excited teachers saw lots of enthusiastic readers, who were keen to share their lockdown reads with their classes.
During your child’s school day, they will receive a dedicated reading lesson (of at least half an hour), as well as several opportunities throughout the day to use their reading skills in many subjects across the curriculum. 
With the children welcomed back to school, we want them to stay motivated to read; we also want them to be encouraged and supported to read at home.
Here are a few things you can do to help them:

• Ask your child to choose what they’d like to read; they will feel more interested in the story if they have picked it out themselves. Don’t worry if they keep returning to the same story; this gives you the opportunity to discuss why they have chosen the book again.
• Sit close together. If you have younger children, you could encourage your child to hold the book themselves and turn the pages as you read aloud.
• Take a look at the pictures together; your children can infer a lot from illustrations and may even make predictions about what might happen in the story – a book cover can tell us a lot about the content inside!
• Use picture books. Picture books can be a great way to talk through your child’s fears and worries, or to help them deal with their emotions. Remember to give them space to talk, and ask how they feel about the situations in the story.
• Keep reading together – this is so important. Even if you have older children, it doesn’t mean you have to stop sharing stories – perhaps you could try a series of book.

Always ask questions and discuss the story. If you’re not confident about asking questions, log on to Bug Club, where you will find lots of questions about the story by just clicking on the bug icon. Let your child’s class teacher know if you’re unable to access this at home

Well, year 4 have returned to school eager and ready to learn.  It has been so nice to see them back in the classroom. We have missed their smiles.  The children have impressed staff with how they have adapted to the new school day, accepting new rules and routines, which has minimised any impact to their learning.  They have been amazing! 
During our English lessons, we have used drama to retell the story of an inventor and her robot, collecting emotive and descriptive language in order to create imaginative diary entries. Our math sessions have consisted of recapping number knowledge, specifically place value.  
The children are excited about our topic for this half term. Anglo Saxons seem to ignite discussions, questions and ideas and the children can’t wait to find out more.  We have begun by exploring artefacts, using our inference skills to decide what their purpose might be.  

Mrs Gradley 
​Year 4 Bubble Support

​We have finally reached the end of a very strange school year! Thank you for all your support and encouragement over the past five months - it has been much appreciated. We have tried to cover all bases and did as much as we could to fulfil all the requests and hopefully, went most of the way to achieving most of the requirements - apologies for anything we missed!

We said a sad goodbye to our Year 6 pupils who have all grown up and gone away leaving a very big hole (not literally!) behind. Their last day was full of emotion and pizza and there were some very sad Year 6 teachers. We have sadly said goodbye to Mrs Sawkins, Mrs Ward and Mr Hayter who are all taking up new opportunities and also to Mrs Stanger who has departed (temporarily) on maternity leave.
And so we move on to the next year…..

We have a new teacher joining us, Mrs Stack, who will take up a post as a Year 1 teacher, Mrs Allen will take over from Mrs Sawkins as the new Pupil Counsellor, we have four new LSAs joining us – Mrs McGaughey, Miss Masuku, Mrs Toms, Mrs Stock and Mrs Bryant and we also have Mr Gowland who becomes Deputy Headteacher alongside Mrs Dawson to enable her to extend her work in the Provision. We also welcome back Dr Emmanuel and Mrs Chakanyuka from maternity leave!
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September will see a different set up to previous years in order that we follow the Government’s guidance on how to keep us safe. We will have to stagger the entry times for different classes and I have attached a map of entrances and timings. It will be very helpful if you can follow the timings closely so that social distancing can be maintained. Also attached is a Parent/Carer guide which should answer most of your queries.

​In the meantime, have a lovely summer break and we look forward to seeing you all in September.

Here is our initial school closure home learning pack. This is what children would have learnt if they had been in class over the two weeks up until Easter. 

​In class this week, 3JP have been recapping the features of a diary.  We will be using this to create a diary entry for one of the fictional characters in our half term text, Ug.  This links with our theme for the half term, the Stone Age.  Our developing knowledge of this period in history will be useful as each of us will be creating a web page to share what we have learnt.
 
In our maths lessons, we have begun learning about perimeter of a shape.  To help us understand this we noted how our school has a perimeter fence which goes around the outside of our school.  This led us to use measurements to work out a perimeter for ourselves, there are additional resources on Mathletics that can help us.
 
Obviously, the news has been intently present in all our minds.  Alongside other classes, we have discussed how we can keep ourselves safe, look out for others and how people in different professions are looking to resolve the situation.  Some of us even made comparisons to their History learning in Year 2, noting how different times are now the Great Plague in 1665-66.

Writing across our school has been amazing this week! Every year group has been working hard to produce a piece of work suitable for our writing star award assembly. Who will get it for their amazing writing? We will have to wait and see!
 
Reception have been writing letters this week; they have been using Jack and the Beanstalk as their stimulus for their written work! They have been writing a letter to the Giant, from Jack, thinking about what might be at the top of the beanstalk – I wonder what the Giant’s reply might be!?!?
 
Year One have been exploring biographies this week – pupils have been exploring the features of biographical writing, as well creating their own about Grace Darling. Here is an extract from a pupil in 1RS: Why is she remembered? Grace Darling is remembered because she recued nine people on the 7th September 1838, the SS Forfarshire crashed on the rocks. What an impressive piece of writing from an amazing Year One writer!
 
From the sea to space, Year Two have been also looking at biographies but they have been studying about the world-famous astronaut Neil Armstrong. A writer from 2RM has produced this awesome piece of work: Neil Armstrong was born on August 1930 in Ohio in the United States of America. When he was a child, he loved learning about space. When Neil was fifteen, he received his pilot’s license – before he even learnt how to drive a car!
 
Now to Key Stage 2! BH in 3JP has been using effective vocabulary and various sentences structures to create an amazing narrative. “How would life be different if you had softer trousers?” thought the medium-sized 8-year-old boy. “Come on! Get up! Better be fast your mother will scream the cave down trust me!”
“Will she?” Doug queried to himself, he tugged at the stone slab to try and speed things up.
 
In Year Four, they have been working on biographies. They have been exploring the features of biographical writing, as well as producing display pieces of work advertising the particular features; the pupils have then been acting out some of the biographies which they have been studying, in a drama-style lesson.
 
Speeding into the near future (hopefully), Year Five have been creating their own futuristic vehicle and have explained how it works. They have been focussing on explanation texts and are using futuristic vehicle as the stimulus for their learning. We have so many ingenious ideas coming from our year fives, here is a list of some of some of them: cars with eyes – so they are able to drive themselves; an in-built food dispenser, for when the passengers get hungry; a cloaking device and all-terrain wheels! What an awesome sounding car!
 
Now to the oldest pupils in our school: our wonderful Year Sixes! They have been working exceptionally hard on instruction texts; they have thoroughly enjoyed writing their texts this week because it has been about annoying their teachers!
Here is an extract from LS in Y6, I wonder what teacher she is aiming to make them ‘Beg the head teacher to fire them.