Winning Class for Week Ending
12.07.2024
Class: Gold 96.82%
Whole School: 95.73%
Summer Learning
Winning Class for Week Ending
18.07.2024
Class: Shireen 98%
Whole School: 96.88%
Winning Class for Whole Year 18.07.2024
Class: Riddell 96.48 %
Whole School: 95.79 %
It won’t be a surprise for you to learn that all the research shows – including what we see in school upon return each year – that pupils can regress over summer. It’s not their fault. Six weeks off is a long time: compromising academic momentum and changes to routine.
There are many things you/your child can do to support this:
1. Read.
We cannot stress this enough. Arguably the most important thing of all. By creating the right conditions and routine, daily reading will enable your child to clock up extra reading miles – creating better readers, speakers, spellers, thinkers and writers! Plus, get the right book and it’s awesome entertainment! Younger pupils: read to them every night.
2. Numbots and/or Rockstars
Keep their minds sharp and build arithmetical fluency. There is no harm with pupils in Year 2 & 3 also accessing their Numbots account and racing through the levels alongside Rockstars efforts. Pupils in Year 2 – 6 should all be accessing Rockstars – a little every day is better than long, one-off sessions.
3. Active Learn
This is more challenging than 2. as it focusses on reasoning and problem solving. It may be best to allow your child time on this during the morning. What a difference it can make, though. Really great fun.
4. Spelling Shed
Will really support writing if spellings become automatic as less brain power is necessary during the writing process! Practise spellings in isolation on Shed. It supports phonics, too – younger spellers!
5 Writing
Practice keeping an emotive diary; write about a particularly fun weekend or day. Even basic sentence-level – it’s all great practice and supports handwriting.
6. Watch TV!
Just please, PUT THE SUBTITLES ON and encourage your child to track the text! Even Stephen Fry is an advocate for this!
7. Home Learning Pack
Did your child bring theirs home?
8. Outdoor Learning, Holidays & Trips Out
An education in itself – travel broadens the mind. Look for opportunities to read information displays, boards – take part in contextual maths, for example. Wonderful opportunities. We look forward to hearing from you about all your adventures and your child’s efforts – hopefully capturing some in our celebratory assemblies in Academic Year 2024/2025.
Transition Week Highlights
An entire week of transition complete. Getting ready for what September will look and feel like by immersing ourselves in our new classes, ahead of time and spending quality time with adults – old and new. It really was a pleasure seeing our pupils rising to the occasion. Let’s hear about just some of the highlights:
R/1: Antony
It has been lovely to welcome the new children into school this week. I have been impressed with the level of responsibility shown by those in Year 1, supporting the new starters, showing them around the classroom, and setting up resources for them. The new play builder set has been popular and configured differently each day. Outside, the children have investigated the water wheel and arranged the channels to catch the water.
Indoors, potions were concocted in the sand. We have learnt about Steve Antony, the author our class is named after, and looked at a selection of his books. We used the front covers as inspiration for our class logo, drawing Mr. Panda, Rainbowsaurus and Blip!
1/2: Wenzel
Wenzel Class began transition week by designing class logos, inspired by the many bright and beautiful animals in Brendan Wenzel's book 'Hello, Hello'. The children thought carefully about why it is important to show responsibility at school and volunteered for their new Active Citizen roles. Once allocated, it was great to see how keen they were to begin! Y1s have had plenty of opportunities to become familiar with their new classroom and corridor, and how to get to different places in the school from here. We have been so impressed with how well the Y2s have helped their new classmates, showing resources and explaining routines.
The second half of the week delved deeper and created an author profile on Brendan Wenzel, whose colourful and imaginative books have delighted our students. His work, especially "They All Saw a Cat," has inspired us to see the world from different perspectives, much like the various senses we explored in our first science lesson.
In science, our class dived into an engaging lesson about the human body, focusing on the five senses. The children had a great time labelling body parts and understanding how each sense helps us interact with the world. This hands-on activity was a perfect start to our year, sparking curiosity and excitement for learning.
Stay tuned for more exciting updates as we continue to explore and learn together!
3/4: Larwood
The biggest highlight in Larwood Class this week - aside from settling in and making new friendshas been a scientific visit from Illumina. Using a mixture of chemicals and scientific equipment, children were able to extract strands of DNA from strawberries! We also learned how DNA works and discovered how closely related we are to apes, cows and bananas!
In our science/history lesson this week, children learned about the history of space travel and found out how man finally made it to the moon in 1969. We discussed more recent developments and what the future of space exploration might look like. The children then created a beautiful knowledge page containing detailed timelines and key information.
Children in Larwood Class have nominated themselves for active citizen roles, designed beautiful logos and understood the importance of change in PSHE lessons. To top off a fantastic week in our new class, we also received a message from Kieran Larwood, the author our class is named after. We have sent him letters and copies of our logos, and eagerly await a response!
5/6: Rauf
It was a fantastic start in Rauf Class, this week. The children were introduced to our core values through engaging discussions and interactive team-building exercises, fostering a strong sense of self-awareness and cooperation. Throughout the whole week, children have demonstrated a deep curiosity and readiness to learn, which is fantastic to see. It’s been heart-warming to witness how lovely and prepared they are for the exciting journey ahead. The positivity and eagerness they bring to each activity are infectious. We are incredibly excited for September and all the wonderful things we have planned.
Year 6s
Our wonderful year 7s have focused on transitional work which centres on themes of change & resilience in order to feel ready for their new schools. They have had a fabulous pool party, ordering some interesting inflatables & resources from the money they raised; planned, collated, rehearsed and delivered their Leavers assembly. As I write, they are currently playing games and choosing their Dominos ready for this lunchtime, followed by more games, shirt signing and cans of pop & poles!
Farewell, Year 6s
New Class Logo Winners
Inspired characters from the books of Steve Antony, Brendan Wenzel, Kieran Larwood and Onjali Q. Rauf, our children worked extremely hard on their designs and it was extremely tough to choose. However, it gives us great pleasure to announce the winners of next year’s class logos as:
Antony (Year R/1): design courtesy of Jensen Wenzel (Year 1/2): design courtesy of Oscar Larwood (Year 3/4): design courtesy of Evelyn Rauf (Year 5/6): design courtesy of Gordon
The prize for or young artists: seeing their winning logos displayed on our website; classroom doors; in the register; on the Hall displays; on our PowerPoints – essentially, throughout multiple aspects of daily school life. Wonderful!
FOES Best Dressed – Summer Theme
As I write, the winners will not have been decided as the competition takes place at 14:30hrs – so whoever you are, well done! Book Club vouchers all round – and for Year 6s – a sweet treat. All these prizes, courtesy of our wonderful FOES.
Summer Works & Thank You FOES
FOES Raffle
Again, as I write, not yet happened and it looks like Friday is due to be a scorcher! Thank You, in advance, for your support at the event, and certainly, thank you very much for inundating FOES with some super prizes and supporting by purchasing raffle tickets.
New kitchen shutter, topic boxes (Hall) and some other general move arounds, all designed to support the curriculum and benefit our pupils. But here’s the big ones…
EYFS classroom next up on our plans: old furniture removal & new furniture assembly taking place next week; painting and flooring over summer – we can’t wait for you to see it and enjoy it, Antony Class!
Fingers crossed, we should have a brand-new ICT suite with brand new, high-spec desktop PCS, pupil laptops and trolley – wow!
Complete refurb of the ICT suite: demolition, rewiring, desks, swivel chairs etc. This has been entirely funded by FOES. This is monumental. Colossal in fact. Your continuous hard work, support and generosity made this happen. A truly remarkable gesture from FOES that will have significant impact on curriculum access, progress and enrichment for our children on a daily basis. Words cannot express our eternal gratitude for making this happen for our young people. Thank You so much, FOES. Thank you to all our supportive parents.
Staffrooms are Dangerous Places!
It’s always extremely humbling walking into the staffroom this time of year and seeing – not only all the tempting treats adorning the table – but especially the cards, with their well-wishes and messages of thanks from parents and other community members. It can be a tiring time of year, so this always raises the spirits and helps staff to realise just how lucky we are. Lucky to have such wonderful pupils and lucky to have such wonderful parents. On behalf of the team, thank you. Staff really appreciate your caring gestures.
And from me to the staff and volunteers, these messages just further reinforce how lucky I know I am to work with such a committed, caring and hardworking team. You make our school great.
Farewell Message
Another wonderful year at Earith Primary School. I feel extremely privileged to lead alongside such a special community – one that puts the needs of our young people at the heart of everything we do.
I am sure, as always, everyone will welcome our new recruits in Year R, and their parents –with open arms.
To the staff who are leaving, thank you. To the pupils in Key Stage One leaving, thank you. To our cohort of Year 6s, thank you. Thank you for years of hard work, dedication and your spirit. Spirit that will never be forgotten. Whatever your next steps, if there’s just five little things to reflect on in this next stage in your journey, it’s these…
…trust in them, and you won’t go far wrong!
To all of our community: staff, parents, governors, volunteers, ALT and of course, the most important people of all – our pupils: we hope you have a fun, restful and extremely well-deserved summer.
See you again next week YEAR!
The Earith Team
