JUNIOR SCHOOL
NEWSLETTER
Friday 8th March 2019
Dear Parents Book week 2019
As you will no doubt be aware, books and reading have dominated our learning this week. We began on Monday with a special themed Meeting for Worship where the teachers shared with the children some of the books that have had a major impact upon their lives. We wanted to share with them that the written word can be more than entertaining escapism; it can be a source of inspiration too. On Tuesday the teachers swapped classes to read to a different group of children. I had the pleasure of reading Roald Dahl’s The Enormous Crocodile to Year 1 and 2 – I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did! We also had the opportunity to give out the Key Stage reading challenges which should have made their way home by now. The children have until the end of March to successfully complete the 10 trials – it would be great if we could have some photographic evidence of them too (particularly “reading somewhere unusual”!) On Wednesday we split into our House groups to take part in a Vertical Learning Morning. Clark, Fry, Gillett and Nansen rotated through four activities including a Gruffalo trail, a Harry Potter spell-casting dance workshop, an art upcycling task using pages from old books and a Roman reading-based board game. Throughout the morning the children engaged brilliantly with the tasks, as you can see from the photographs (that will be on display on Firefly shortly) – the product of their artistic endeavours can also be seen in the lovely new display in the library. When they weren’t involved in the activities, Nick Hadley was extracting volunteers to read to camera – retelling the story of The Gruffalo on its twentieth anniversary. We hope to show the premiere of it soon! Thursday saw the arrival of World Book Day itself and an absence of pupils. In their place we were inundated with Thors, vampires, unicorns, several Robin Hoods, a smattering of Arthurs, the occasional mermaid, a couple of spiders, the odd werewolf, an Icarus or two, Bobby Moore (one interpretation of the theme of Myths and Legends!), not to mention just about the full