Junior School Newsletter - June 14 2019

JUNIOR SCHOOL

NEWSLETTER

Friday 14th June 2019 Dear Parents

Whilst the weather has been at an unseasonable level of dampness it has not prevented us from keeping busy. This began on Monday when we welcomed six other schools to our first Society of Heads Aquathlon. The children who took part did incredibly well in near monsoon conditions and we achieved some impressive results (please see below). They did so well they even had a celebrity fan in former England Rugby World Cup winning Captain Martin Johnson… who was there supporting his son!

Muscles only slightly rested and some of the children were back out again on Tuesday with our triathlon competition. Sadly the weather put paid to us being able to carry out the biking leg, however there was, again, some excellent performances. A huge thank you to the PE department who strove through the elements to make the events so successful and to the parents who showed their support.

After exercising their bodies, Wednesday saw Year 6 put their brains through the wringer as they joined up with Year 7 to tackle some maths puzzles posed by the maths department.

Elsewhere the focus has been on tomorrow’s Open Day. Maypole practice has been carried out in spite of the conditions and classes have been preparing the activities and classrooms in readiness for our guests’ arrival. By now you should have received information about the timetable of the day, but in brief the festivities begin with our open ceremony at 9:30 in the Main Hall. The children and staff have been working hard leading up to it and forecast is presently good, so I hope to see lots of you in and around the Junior School on Saturday!

Next week we have further fixtures, an author visit, a trip to Rollright Stones and, of course our Summer Revue on Thurdsay afternoon.

I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend.

In friendship Edward Rossiter Head of Junior School Sibford School

PS. Did you know octopuses lay 56,000 eggs at a time?

Foundation and Reception Last week it was the peas causing trouble and Supertato coming to the rescue. This week all sorts of food has been getting up to mischief. We have had naughty mushrooms, donuts, pancakes, bananas and slices of bread putting fruit and vegetables all around the playground

just for fun. Look at the shock on Amélie’s face when she found a pineapple in the outdoor basket! Luckily, we had all sorts of fabulous food ready to come to the rescue, including some bad peas that had turned good. We took all of these wonderful experiences to make our very own sparkly books.

The villainous and heroic food was all made from salt dough. As we made them, we thought about shape and the language of shape. Were they solid, flat, long, curved, straight, pointy?

We have continued to explore shape throughout the week: building towers, making repeating patterns and choosing ways to sort them.

The children have loved having real vegetables to play with in their supermarket. They like pretending to buy them and take them home to make soup. As a result, we decided to use the potato, carrots and butternut squash to make some real soups. We decided against following some of the recipes they had put into our class recipe book…one included adding melon, oranges and a toy monkey!

Year 1 and 2

Well we wish the weather would have been more typical of that you’d have in Australia this week rather than what we’ve had, but that hasn’t dampened the spirits of Year 1 and 2. Talking of spirits, they have been once again focusing on Australian Dreamtime stories this week.

However, they started the week with not doing an awful lot of writing in their English lessons; though this is similar to that of indigenous Australian storytelling. They continued to learn how an array of different symbols would be used to build up a story and so worked as a group to create a story and retell it. Rather than writing this story, each child then drew a symbol for their part of the story on a wood round. It’s hoped that the two stories will be on display around the Junior School at some point in the future!

Following on from this, Becca Edwards gave them free rein to paint whatever they wanted, but in a traditional style. Many of the children took influence from paintings they’d already looked at and combined it with ideas from their story telling, particularly thinking about the geometric patterns and dot style. They then were surprised once again when Becca Edwards told them they’d done maths in their art lesson after being requested to find, measure and collect two sticks to a specific measurement in order to display their paintings.

Year 1 and 2 are learning that a lot of the stories or influences about cultural history are taken from the wild or the animals and so were able to learn just a little bit more about Australian animals but then apply this to their knowledge of food chains. One of the food chains which they created showed mainly carnivorous animals; shrimp – platypus – crocodile! In addition, Becca Edwards gave them a few problem solving activities, thinking about place value and number facts in particular. One of these was ‘Connect 4’ where they had to make a total, but at the same time try and make their partner loose! There was lots of great discussion though some children were disappointed that they couldn’t quite catch Becca Edwards out.

In addition, they started to look at some of the traditional songs of Australia and why they are important within their history, focusing on the kookaburra.

Year 3

Year 3 have been getting to grips with weight this week where they have been estimating calculating and investigating the weight of objects, including the wide array of things that they can find that weigh 100g. They even put their information into a bar graph which helped them to answer weight-related questions.

They have also continued to create their magnificent mosque which, until recently, resembled a pile of boxes but is emerging into a grand structure equipped with prayer mats, shoe racks and even a Qur’an!

In Science, they have been finding out what pollination actually entails and, in the process, learned about the male and female parts of a flowering plant (yes, lots of plants are both male and female – but not all). I think that learning about pollination gave the Year 3 pupils a newfound respect for bees (and indeed other insects) as they pondered, in awe, their incredibly important job!

Like many classes, Year 3 turned their attention to Alice Pennell’s challenge of creating poetry to celebrate our school. Year 3 thought about the words of George Fox: ‘Walk cheerfully over the world.’ They thought about what this actually meant and unpicked that it should mean that by being generous/kind/polite/cheerful towards absolutely anyone you meet, regardless of culture/race/sex/political stance, that is when you shall come to walk cheerfully over the world.

Year 3 thought about examples of this within our school, which inspired them to write poems which included repetition, rhythm and rhyme to celebrate our school.

Finally, preparations for open day have been well underway! Year 3 have been making a start on their shields and also learning some Ancient new skills which might have come in handy if you were a farmer, spinner or weaver in The Iron Age. You can find out more on Saturday.

Year 4

In 4MA this week, English and History were combined as children were introduced to a marvellous little book about the Norman Invasion by June Crebbin. Children started their own storyboards to help retell the story. Thanks to Ed Rossiter all of Year 4 had an extra special lesson detailing the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings.

Lots of glue and tissue paper, in the 4MA classroom, gave rise to some excellent interpretation of Matisse’s Goldfish Bowl – well done children super effort.

In English, 4KS spent some time looking at different cake recipes to explore the idea of genre.

The end result is the same, a yummy cake or page turning book, but the ingredients (or content) within them make them very different. We then had some fun coming up with the ingredients needed to bake a comic cake, for example: add one grated clown’s nose, a generous amount of annoyance, 4 practical jokes, laugh into your pot, close the lid quickly and cook until your sides split!

Finally, all the children in Year 4 started work on their Viking shields. Children discovered; typical Viking shields were 80-90cm in diameter, many were painted red and white or black and yellow and nearly all Viking warriors entered battle with a shield and often the shield was their one and only means of defence.

We hope you like our photos from our Viking play last week.

Year 5

In Geography this week, continuing our Landforms topic, Year 5 have been learning about how hills and mountains are shown on a map. Even though they are invisible when you go for a walk in the country, contour lines can be found all over the Ordnance Survey maps we have been studying; they show the land’s height above sea level. The children enjoyed making their own 3D models of a hill with contour lines as you can see.

Year 6

Year 6 have just about dried out and woken up after their amazing week in the Lake District.

Favourite activities were definitely caving and canoeing – how quickly the traffic jams, the flies and the soggy socks are forgotten! The children had a wonderful time, and were great ambassadors for our school, demonstrating cheerful resilience and living adventurously!

Please do look at the blog for lots of memories and photos.

Talking of memories, they have been busy writing their entries for the Year 6 Leaver’s magazine, and rehearsals have started for our final celebration Meeting. They have also written poems for a poetry competition entitled ‘Celebrating Sibford’. Here is Penelope’s…

Sibford School Weather it’s scorching or pouring, Raining or storming, Sibford will never cease to amaze me.

In the good times and the bad, The happy and the sad, We will always live adventurously.

Part of a community, Many an opportunity, Living peacefully and cheerfully as one.

Wet suits have been handed out in readiness for sailing next week, and we are all looking forward to 3 more days out on the water. Let’s hope the sun shines. The Maypole dancing preparations have been slightly dampened by the lovely June weather we have had, but in true Sibford style we donned our coats and wellies and skipped round with tireless enthusiasm, to the sound of Alice Pennell’s desperate cries of ‘your other left!’

On Wednesday, Year 6 were treated to a puzzle morning with the Year 7 pupils as part of our Transition process. The children had to work together to solve a number of different challenges. Thank you to the Senior School Maths department for inviting us, and to the Year 9 Maths Leaders.

Host Recruitment - Our hosts benefit from a financial reward but also gain a cultural/life experience too.

For over 15 years, Gateway Education has successfully opened the UK for international students to live and study through our supportive guardianship programme. We recognise students don’t just grow academically, when they immerse themselves in the British culture and experience life with a host, they gain so much more. Our hosts are vital to providing a nurturing and safe environment for our students to fully experience life in the UK and we have a wide variety of hosts such as families with children, professionals and retirees.

We are continually growing our host network for both long and short-term placements (full academic year or 1-2 weeks) to ensure the highest standards.

If you are interested in finding out more, click here for further information: http://bit.ly/SibHost Junior School Eco Council – Eco Bricks

Don’t forget we are still waiting for your Eco-Bricks!

Any completed bricks can be brought to the Junior School office, where there will be a collection box after half term. Once you have placed your bottle in the box, you can collect a sticker to put on the display outside the office to help keep track of our total number of bottles! Thank you in advance for all your help.

Sibford Junior School has so much to sing about and share that it now has its own dedicated Twitter page. Give @SibfordJS a follow on Twitter and keep up to date with all the Junior School news and daily activities. https://twitter.com/SibfordJS’

Sport Reports Head of Society Aquathlon – Monday, 10th June 2019 and Sibford Triathlon – Tuesday, 11th June 2019

On Monday and Tuesday this week we had near 350 pupils competing in 2 Aquathlons. On Monday we hosted the Society of Heads Schools for a full day of competition. We hosted 8 different schools that had travelled from all over the country and even in very poor weather conditions this did not dampen the spirit of all the pupils. Congratulations to the Year 4 boys for team event and Jago for winning the whole year 4 boys competition. Special mention to Lotte (Y4), Henry (Y4) and Sophie (Y5) who finished in the top 3 of their events.

On Tuesday we hosted 11 different schools, although it was meant to be a triathlon, due to weather conditions, we could not do the cycle section which meant pupils had to adapt to the new race conditions. Once again the Year 4 boys of Jago, Henry and Thomas shone by winning their relay completion, Sophie winning the Year 5 girls competition and Olivia winning the Year 6 girls competition. Once again special mention to the Year 4 girls of Lotte, Emily and Lucy who came second in their relay competition, Oscar finishing 2nd in the Year 6 boys event and Emma finishing 3rd in the Year 6 girls event.

Well done to all our competitors who competed in dreadful weather conditions and performed to a very high level. Credit to those who performed these tiring events on both days!!

Wednesday, 19th June 2019 - Not to be missed! Rain or Shine Theatre company presents ‘As You Like It!’ in Holly House Garden, Sibford School

The performance at Holly House Garden, Sibford School is on Wednesday 19th June at 7.30pm. Tickets are available from both Junior School and Senior School Reception, pop in or call 01295781200, Rain or Shine 0330 660 0541 or ticketweb via www.rainorshine.co.uk.

Tickets are limited so book without delay.

Thursday, 20th June 2019 – Junior School Summer Revue, 2.45pm in the Main Hall

The Children and Staff of Sibford Junior School would like to invite you to attend their Summer Revue which will include a selection of music and words involving every child, on Thursday, 20th June at 2.45pm in the Main Hall. During the Revue we also hope to celebrate the learning and achievements that have taken place since September 2018.

Saturday, 29th June 2019 – 2pm to 6pm – PSFA Summer Fun in the Sun – Family Day

A note for your diaries that the PSFA Summer Fun in the Sun Family day will take place on Saturday, 29th June from 2pm to 6pm. Entry is £3 for Adults and £2 for children. Refreshments will be available, have fun in the music tent, join in the art and crafts and enter a team in the “Sibford Challenge”. If you would like to help please email PSFASibfordSchool@outlook.com. Booking and payment can be made with Lynne Singer in Junior School.