Junior School Newsletter - September 13 2019

JUNIOR SCHOOL

NEWSLETTER

Friday 13th September 2019

Dear Parents One of the most pleasant and enjoyable tasks of mine each week is awarding Head of Junior School stickers. These special awards (which come with the bonus of five House Points!) are nominated by teachers and celebrate some excellent and independent work or a kind and considerate attitude to others. It has been a delight this week to give out the first five of the year, all the more so given that several of them relate to children showing thoughtfulness and awareness of others, particularly newer pupils to the skill.

Congratulations to the following children who received a Head of Junior School Award: Toby – Y1 Bertie M, Emma – Y4, Rhett, Alex D – Y5 Next week (once I’m back from sailing with Year 6!) I will be giving out the Courtesy Badges to children who demonstrated plenty of gentility in the Summer term. These two sets of awards very much chime with the ethos of the school and the Quaker faith (they’re not known as the Religious Society of Friends for nothing!) They also bring to mind the famous words of Ralph Waldo Emerson and this week’s quote: “The only way to have a friend is to be one.”

When not making sure that their new friends are settling the children have been busy getting to grips with a full week of learning. Year 6 have had their first sailing sessions and have coped admirably with some windy conditions. The forecast for the remaining sessions this term is much better and they are well on course to complete their RYA Stage 1s.

Elsewhere the children have begun planning their stalls for the forthcoming Apple Day. Do please talk to them about their plans as they come up with inventive ways to use the crop from the orchard to raise money for charities.

Next week we are looking forward to our first sports fixtures of the year as well as photographs on Thursday.I

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

In friendship Add a little bit of body text Edward Rossiter Head of Junior School Ps. Did you know that cats have fewer toes on their back paws?

Foundation and Reception It has been such a joy welcoming our new students into Early Years, who bring with them new ideas and experiences. It has also been lovely to watch our established students take on a ‘mentor’ role and support our new friends.

Our new topic is ‘All About Me’ and we have been using this as an opportunity to share our favourite stories. We have read a book about an Alligator who likes to scare people, Mr Archimedes who cannot work out why his bath is always overflowing and a skeleton family who live in a dark dark house. We used these stories as a way to explore what happens when we add rocks (or ourselves) to tubs of water and looked at a real animal skull to explore bones.

We have been starting to think about all our senses and went on a lovely nature walk. A highlight being picking juicy wild blackberries straight from the bush. We are hoping to find some more later this week and put them into a yummy crumble. Check out our twitter page Sibford Early Years #SibfordEYFS to see how we get on.

Year 1 and 2 A wonderful start to the term for Year 1 and 2, especially as their topic for the term is ‘Wonderful Woodland’. They ended last week by making mystery objects for their role play in the classroom, ready for a surprise at the beginning of the weekend to see a corner of the classroom transformed.

Despite the long summer break, this didn’t seem to show when Becca Edwards asked the children to investigate numbers within the number system. She asked them to think how to make an estimate, counting in 10s or doing some workouts for counting!

‘The Gruffalo’ by Julia Donaldson was a focus in their English lessons, they looked carefully at the different characters of the story, thinking about what words help to describe them. Using PurpleMash at the end of the week, the children created their own ‘monster’ based on the ideas from across the week. If you sneak into the Year 1 and 2 classroom, you will see a great display that the children have worked together to make. This was a culmination of the week’s topic work in their Art, DT and Science lessons concentrating on (Woodland) Habitats and the animals that live there.

After reading ‘The Gruffalo’ they were given a STEM challenge to create a den for a woodland animal using a selection of different materials. The children confidently justified their decisions and explored how to rectify any difficulties. Following this, they went out to explore the school grounds, searching for a variety of minibeasts, being surprised at the different places where they found them. This is helping them to work towards a little project which might start to take shape outside in front of their classroom, watch this space… Oh and they also had time to create some magical topic book covers using their hand to print a magical tree in their wonderful woodland!

Year 3

Year 3 Children arrived, on Wednesday 4th September, fresh eyed and bushy tailed ready for lessons in Year 3. Class rules were considered and agreed while holidays and adventures were discussed. Detailed discussion morphed into fabulous pictures and written stories.

A mapping lesson in Geography found children considering how birds view our world as they had a go at designing a bird’s eye view of a barefoot island. A rather more dishevelled Year 3 were spotted leaving school on Thursday, having had a Forest School lesson where they designed and built a bridge, demonstrating excellent team work.

Year 4

This week in science, children discussed what teeth are used for, they discovered we use molars for chomping and grinding food, incisors for piercing and biting off pieces of food, canines for tearing and gripping the food. Looking at their teeth, using mirrors, children were tasked to find out who bit into Megs Allen’s cheese. Suspicion fell on Tom (he has two very strong upper incisors) however it was Dori! Well done to Dori for keeping quiet while the children tried to work out who the perpetrator was.

Year 4

4KS are settling brilliantly, embracing their new topics and friends with infectious gusto. This week we have used five a day to help us further investigate our ‘out of this world’ topic. We allocated the planets different fruits to demonstrate their scale and distance from the sun. With one step representing around 32,000,000km, it really was one small step for man, one giant leap for 4KS! In English we got our drama hats on to retell some traditional fables in small groups, with the rest of the class having to work out the moral of the tale. I was so impressed with the superb teamwork and bravery of the children to perform their fables in front of an audience.

Year 5

We have been working hard in Science, investigating how sounds are made and what makes some sounds appear louder than others. We spent some time outside and listened to the sounds around us and then talked about the way in which we hear these sounds.

Back in the classroom, we investigated different ways of making sounds by banging, flicking, tapping and plucking different materials. We also conducted an experiment with a coat hanger and a piece of string. We tied one end of a piece of string to a wire coat hanger and the other end to one of our fingers. We found out that the sound made when we tapped the coat hanger with a metal spoon was louder when we put our finger behind our ear. It was louder still when we put our finger gently inside our ear. This is because the sound waves can travel from the coat hanger, directly along the string and into our ears, rather than having to travel through the air to reach our ears.

We had lots of fun learning about where sound comes from and are looking forward to finding out more about sound over the next few weeks.

Year 6 By the time you read this, Year 6 will have completed their first four days of sailing. All the children are learning how to rig the boat, launch and recover them, and many are beginning to Year 6 have had a very busy week, finishing their sailing course on Monday and preparing and remember how to point the boat in the correct direction. After the stormy weather of the first rehearsing their Leavers Meeting. We hope you enjoyed their presentations today! three days, where surfing might have been more appropriate than sailing (there were actual waves!), Friday has seen Year 6 mastering the art of tacking with fully rigged boats. The poor weather had no impact on the children’s excitement and enthusiasm for being IN the water of course, with everyone taking great pleasure in jumping into what is always slightly green water.

The warmer weather today has made this even more appealing and Year 6 have once again headed home with very damp and slightly smelly sailing kit, aching joints, a few bruises, but big smiles on their faces. The final day of sailing for this year is on Monday – let’s hope for more of the same.

Sibford School Photographs – Thursday 19th September

Colourbox School Photography will be at Sibford on Thursday 19th September to take individual portrait shots. If you have more than one child at the school and would like them photographed together this can be done from 8.30am in the main school hall. Junior School Parents arriving with children at 8.30am can take them directly to the Main Hall. Children who are dropped off at early birds will be taken to the Main Hall at 8.30am.

It is essential that any sibling shots are pre-booked. Bookings must be received no later than 9am on Monday 16th September.

If you have children in the Junior School or in both the Junior School and Senior School and would like them to be photographed together then please email Lynne Singer in the Junior School office (lsinger@sibfordschool.co.uk).

If you have children in the Senior School only, but would like them photographed together, please email Nikki Homewood (nhomewood@sibfordschool.co.uk).

Please note any Senior School children having sibling shots will be responsible for making their own way to the hall. If they don't arrive on time we are unable to chase them up.

Eco Bottles

If you haven’t already seen the collection outside of Reception, we are still collecting Eco Bricks.

Add your brick to the collection and don’t forget to write your name in the 100 square! Have a look on Firefly for extra information, but your donations are greatly appreciated. If you need extra plastic, please help yourself to the extra bits in the bags. It is also really important that they’re packed very tightly. They need to weigh hopefully around more than 500g or until you really can’t cram any more in, in order to be effective! We look forward to your continued donations.

Horse Riding – Thursdays Years 3 and 4 -Thursday, 19th September 2019

Please note that due to riding instructors attending the Blenheim Horse Trials there will be no horse-riding for Years 3 and 4 next Thursday, 19th September. Children will take part in a PE lesson instead. Horse Riding will recommence the following week Thursday, 26th September.

You will not be charged for this missed session.

Kaleidoscope Studios

Please find attached a flyer from Kaleidoscope Studios (they currently run our Friday Lunch Time Dance Club) giving details of their open days on Saturday, 14th and 21st September here at Sibford School.