Headteacher Newsletter Issue 11
FORTNIGHTLY NEWSLETTER ISSUE 11: 5.3.21
I hope you are all well. We are looking forward to seeing the children next week and thank you again for all your hard work during the Lockdown period.
Last week we circulated a variety of information to support you all with the return to school next week. The documents are also on our website if you need to refer to them.
http://www.clavering.essex.sch.uk/2021/02/march-return-information-parents/
Please take note of the protective health and safety measures that must be in place when we return in order to keep everyone safe and the school open.
World Book Day – 4th March 2021
Class teachers set a task for the children to decorate a potato in the style of a book character in celebration of World Book Day. What a lot of imaginative creations!
Many other exciting activities have been completed too, including a scavenger hunt, book reviews, character profiles, sharing our favourite books, designing posters and ‘Where’s Wally’ colouring.
Here are just a few examples:
I have attached two leaflets, which may be of interest, offering top tips on how to support reading at home. One is aimed specifically at EYFS/Key Stage 1 pupils and the other at Key Stage 2 pupils.
Regular testing for households of school pupils
The Local Authority circulated a letter to parents this week regarding testing for household of school pupils –
“ We are writing to you with information about a new national scheme which will enable households with a school-age child to access regular asymptomatic Covid-19 testing, and to encourage you to participate in this initiative. Any adults living in households with primary school, secondary school and college age children, including their childcare and support bubbles, are now able to access free Lateral Flow Tests (LFT) to take twice a week at home.”
This is a very important process which will support us in limiting a possible spread across the school community. These tests are not for the primary aged children to take themselves but for their household and support bubble.
The school must be notified of any positive results and the household/support bubble would need to isolate immediately at the same time as getting a PCR test to confirm the result.
More information, including how to order the tests, please see the link below.
We have also included, with this newsletter, the letter from the Local Authority that we circulated earlier this week.
Message from Essex County Council – Financial Support
If you’ve tested positive or been asked to self-isolate it is really important that you stay home to stop the spread of Covid 19. Essex County Council has secured an extra £3m from Government covid funds to provide financial support to residents who need to self-isolate. The funds have been given to borough, city and district councils to provide one off £500 support payments to people unable to work and who do not qualify for the Government’s Test and Trace support payments. To apply for either the Government or discretionary grant see https://www.essex.gov.uk/test-and-trace-support-payment
Learning across the school
Reception
We enjoyed writing a sentence about our half term on the first day back. We have been working on leaving spaces between our words and using our phonics to help us spell words.
Inspired by another child, Jasmine made a Chinese dragon during half-term and Kyle coloured this fabulous dragon:
We have begun our new half-term with a topic all about Space. Our resident expert Buddy has already taught us so much with his models of the solar system at home!
We read the story Whatever Next by Jill Murphy and found lots of our new phonic sounds and tricky words in the text! We enjoyed coming up with ideas about what we would pack if we travelled to the moon in a rocket. The children came up with wonderfully imaginative and practical ideas such as a drone and a notepad so that we could research the moon (Connor) and also an oxygen mask as there isn’t enough oxygen to survive on the moon (Isaac). Seren suggested we packed lots of healthy snacks for the journey and a book to read!
We have been learning how to measure length and have some brilliant measurers in the class now. The children enjoyed the practical aspect of this and we related the skill to real life jobs such as measuring boots for an astronaut and furniture for jobs in building and design. We all drew around different sized shoes and measured their length with cubes or pasta shapes. We also measured larger objects with our hand span and pigeon steps. During one break time, Archie enjoyed measuring the length of his house by walking down the lane next to it in pigeon steps – 143 steps long – excellent counting:
We then even moved on to looking at the calibrations on a ruler and measuring small items in cm using our ruler! Amazing work Reception.
In the afternoons, the children have been working on space crafting projects. Children have made rockets, flying saucers, sun catchers and even moon rock. Wilbur has painted the solar system:
We were fascinated to see the photos from Isobel’s telescope which her family got out during half-term to prepare for our space topic!
In Phonics, we are doing really well with our sounds and tricky words. We have learned our vowel digraphs and are working every day to apply our sounds to our reading and writing. We use online games to help us with this and Emily has come up with some super suggestions for how we can record the words we are reading – thank you Emily! She confidently shared her ideas with the whole class:
We have also been learning about different ways to tell the time, studying the features of clock faces and are beginning to tell the time. This links very nicely with our work about space thinking about day time and night time.
We are also learning facts about the planets and we are amazed by the features and distances in space! Elizabeth really helped Mrs Course to describe the gas planets Jupiter and Saturn being like a cloud! We have loved hearing Buddy’s expert knowledge about the planets – he has been busy at home too:
Reception children and parents – you have all been fantastic this term during your online learning. We are so proud of you – well done!
Year One
Class 1 have been busy in English focusing on the key elements which make up a set of instructions. They have then applied their knowledge to write a set of instructions on how to wash your hands, how to draw a house using 2D shapes and also instructions on how to make a jam sandwich.
For Maths, we have begun to look at units of measure, specifically for length and height. We have spent the week measuring all kinds of objects using non-standard units of measure.
Class 1 have also focused on the image of Buddha and how this is celebrated during the festival of Wesak. Some lovely animal masks were made for the festival.
Year Two
Class two have had another very busy couple of weeks online learning. We have begun our Transport Topic by looking at how transport has changed over time. The children have made their own vehicle, here are some examples:
In Science we are learning about the uses of everyday materials. The children have been experimenting to find out how absorbent different materials are. Here are some of us enjoying our Science:
In English we have been reading ‘Diary of a Wombat’ we have really enjoyed hearing about all the mischievous things the wombat gets up to. We used this as inspiration to write a diary of an animal of our choice.
In Maths we have been learning about 2D and 3D shapes. We have been learning their properties, finding lines of symmetry and making patterns using shapes. The children have particularly enjoyed our online shape scavenger hunts!
I am extremely proud of how hard every member of Class Two has worked over this lock down and I cannot wait to welcome them all back next week!
Year Three
Class 3 have been busy working on our measuring lengths skills and converting between three different types of measures.
In English, we have been developing using direct speech in our writing and exploring inference and prediction through extracts from different texts to support World Book Day.
Every week we have Wellbeing Wednesday and we have had fun meeting different monsters who live in Monstro-City. Over the last two weeks we have met Fleeta the friendship monster and Vinci the interest and hobby monster. The children have explored the importance of friendship and how hobbies can make us calm and build our self-esteem. The children were challenged to make a new friend for Fleeta, they were very creative.
I want to take this opportunity to say a HUGE well done to class 3 for all their hard work during home schooling; I am proud of each and every one of you.
Year Four
In the final two weeks of home learning Class 4 have continued to work hard. We have been trying to be descriptive in our writing, including expanded noun phrases, adverbs and subordinate clauses. For World Book Day we created some fantastic potatoes and discussed books we enjoy reading and the characters we like the most. In maths we have been learning about fractions and revising our methods for column addition and subtraction. In our geography work we have been weighing up the positive and negative effects of deforestation and researching the Congo rainforest.
Class 4 have worked incredibly hard over the past 8 weeks of home learning and have shown great resilience adjusting to the different style of learning. They should be extremely proud of themselves!
Year Five
Year 5 have been learning about rivers and how key features are formed; they’ve written explanations of the process of forming meanders and some have drawn their own labelled diagrams to support their explanations.
We’ve also been getting creative with our cameras, taking photographs from different perspectives and in close-up to focus on unusual and impactful patterns and details – some took the viewpoint of a mouse, others of birds and other creatures.
We have enjoyed celebrating World Book Day – the children created their own posters and videos to advertise their favourite books.
And finally, we’ve had great fun in our morning meet-up sessions, playing games and sharing news and items from home.
It’s been an unusual couple of months but the children have risen to every challenge and it has been a joy to see their excited and engaged faces every day – well done Badger Class, we look forward to seeing you in person next week!
Year Six
Class 6 have been thinking about their lockdown experiences both the positive and negative aspects of lockdown. We have written poems about lockdown and written letters to our MP Kemi Badenoch, expressing our hopes for the future after lockdown. We all agreed that we would like it if everyone continued to enjoy long walks with our families and taking care of our environment. We asked her if the government could encourage people to join community projects; to use their cars less and cycle more and invest in green energy.
For World Book day we shared our potato book characters which were very imaginative and wrote book reviews of our current reading book to encourage others to try a new author. Here are a few of our potato book characters.
Everyone in Class 6, has worked hard during lockdown and coped really well with remote learning. I am very proud of their efforts and achievements during this difficult time and am looking forward to greeting all of Class 6 back in school on Monday.
ACHIEVEMENTS
STAR OF THE WEEK
Spring Term – Lockdown – two ‘stars’ a fortnight
Week ending March 5th
Reception
Delilah – for her fantastic measuring
Connor – for his brilliant ideas for what we could take to the moon
Isaac – for his outstanding effort in every lesson and for his list of what to take to the moon.
Buddy – for teaching us so clearly all about space using his expert knowledge.
Year One
Matilda W – for consistently accurate and well-structured writing, particularly her choice of sounds to spell correctly.
Jake – for his enthusiasm during remote learning by regularly sharing his ideas and answers. This is particularly so in Maths where he gave a variety of different examples to demonstrate his skill of measuring.
Year Two
Toben – for fantastic attitude to his learning.
Maya – for always having a positive attitude throughout home learning
Year Three
Florence – for working hard in English this week to develop an understanding and application of direct speech.
Darcie – for working hard to develop her sentence writing and mental addition and subtraction skills.
Year Four
Aurelia – for great art work-with good attention to colour and shape.
Taylor – for great effort in his descriptive writing.
Year Five
Henry – for his excellent graphic novel
Woody – for writing a great explanation text
Year Six
Joe – for his excellent mental maths skills
Elizabeth – for all the effort she puts into every lesson and her positive attitude towards her learning.
Key Worker Group
Olivia A – for always working super hard and for being an excellent role model.
James F – for excellent maths work, measuring and solving multiplication problems.
Thank you again for all your support.
Have a good weekend and we look forward to seeing the children on Monday!
Best wishes
Rosalind Allsop
Headteacher