June 16 Parish News

It's hard to believe that the summer term has come around so quickly again! The children are appreciating being able to spend more time outside enjoying the beautiful surroundings of the school and staff are always keen to get children out of the classroom and hold lessons in outside spaces where possible.

This month, the whole school embarked upon a Bluebell Walk one afternoon which was kindly organised by Ms Waites. Diligently prepared for the great British weather with Rain Macs, Wellies…. and Sun Cream and Hats, pupils and staff enjoyed a walk through the fields and into the woods to see the Bluebells.

Eleanor from Year 4 said:

I liked our Bluebell Walk. Everyone in the juniors had someone from Infants as our buddy and we got to chat to them and help them if they needed it. We saw the lovely Bluebells and we walked in some very squelchy mud. Afterwards my wellies were really muddy!

In Physical Education pupils are focusing on Athletics for the summer term, with lots of relay race practicing in readiness for Sports Day. Pupils are also enjoying Football, Rounders’ and Tennis.

This month members of the school community, including Mrs Comer our head teacher, parents and pupils, took part in the “RBC Race for the Kids” 5K event in London in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital. One of our pupils has been supported through leukaemia treatment at GOSH this year and we were so proud that he managed to get round the whole course independently and complete the 5K. “Team Woody for RoRo” raised over 15k for Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Nursery and Reception have been learning how to create exciting similes this month and have been looking at examples like “As hot as the sun” or “As big as an elephant” and trying to create their own. One example I was given by our pupils included “As kind as Miss Ayres!” which I thought summed her up perfectly!

Years One and Two are studying weather for their topic and they have been creating musical instruments to make weather sounds.

In Years Three and Four pupils have been focusing on fractions in Maths and looking at explanation texts in Literacy.

This month has been SATS focused for our Year Six pupils. The first year to take the new government SATS papers, I’m sure some of you may have seen reactions in the media from teaching staff and parents to the questions set, which were considerably harder than in previous years.

Miss Williams our 5/6 teacher has told me how proud she is of all of the pupils who worked so hard in the lead-up to the exams. She was especially impressed with how much all of the pupils supported each other during SATS week, sharing supportive words and boosting morale amongst each other. The camaraderie and resilience they displayed during SATs week was excellent.

I’m pleased to report we had no tears from pupils, although there was a few scratching of heads from Governors trying to decipher some of the answers to the questions!

To close this month, our Years One and Two Teacher Miss Groves is sharing some work from her class:

“This half term in year 1 and 2 we have been focusing our English work on the story ‘Monkey and Me’ by Emily Gravett. We really enjoyed role playing the story which is about a girl and her cuddly toy monkey going to a zoo. We monkeyed around pretending to be different animals, which included actions and sound effects as we recounted the story.

We even had a visitor to help inspire our writing, a monkey! Well, it was Miss Groves dressed as a monkey.

We became authors of our own ‘Monkey and Me’ stories this half tem when we wrote mini books. We designed and created the front cover for our books. We then studies blurbs from other books before writing our own. As well as writing, we drew illustrations to accompany our stories.”