Junior School Newsletter - June 19 2020

19TH JUNE 2020

DEAR PARENTS You will have to forgive the brevity of my bit of the newsletter this week (“It makes a pleasant change!” I hear you all chorus!) as my attentions are focused on preparing for the reopening of the Junior School to all year groups on Monday. I think I have now managed to speak to most parents via Microsoft Teams at some point (I will not miss the sound of my own voice or the sight of my face on screen once all of this is over!) and we have just about everything in place for Monday morning. We are delighted to be welcoming back the children – the school has seemed an empty shell without them. Certainly, the joy and excitement on the faces of our trailblazers in Early Years, Year 1 and Year 6 has been a joy to behold and I look forward to seeing the same with their friends in Years 2, 3, 4 and 5.

The return to school will not be about pushing academic standards – you have been helping the children do their best to keep on top of these during lockdown – but rather about giving them what I’m sure they’ve all been missing over the past nearly three months: social interaction with their friends. I’ve no doubt that it will feel strange for them all to be together again, but we have some fun things planned with which to end the school year on a high. These include a Sockfest Challenge (more on this next week!), House orienteering, Sports Day (sadly without parents, before you start dusting off your spikes for the parents’ races!), End of Term awards and many others.

Lucy, Lotte and David – 5LM all receive Headteacher Awards, and congratulations to the following children who were awarded Home/School (delete as applicable!)

Learner of the Week certificates:

We very much look forward to seeing them all “walking cheerfully” around the school on Monday!

Have a wonderful weekend.

In friendship

Edward Rossiter

Ps. Did you know that Shakespeare is credited with inventing over 1,700 words? “Bill” wrote some of the most beloved and revered pieces of literature the world has ever known, but in order to craft his plays and poems, he sometimes resorted to making up his own words. In fact, The Bard is said to have come up with words including moonbeam, laughable, eyeball, bump, puking, champion, bedroom, excitement, and zany.

@SibfordJS @SibfordOxon @SibfordOxon

FOUNDATION AND RECEPTION There has been a lot of ‘friction’ (or not) in Early Years this week. The children have been exploring the impact that height, friction and rain water have on how fast something travels down the guttering. We got the measuring tapes out and measured how far things went as well.

The rain did not stop us from acting out some ‘socially distanced’ helicopter stories outside.

The children were, yet again full of wonderful and imaginative ideas. One of the stories, even linked to the rain with a Caucus race to get themselves dry and prizes for everyone. Can anyone guess what they have been reading at home? To help us warm up for our story telling we used plastic animals and dinosaurs in the outside area to make up stories.

In maths we have been solving problems linked to the class stories that we have been reading over the last few weeks. Akeyo filled a basket with 10 pieces of fruit to take to Handa. What could the fruit have been? Thinking of 2 fruits we then explored the different combinations that there could have been, using our number bonds to 10 to help us. We also used lots of practical objects to help us. too.

We have also been lucky enough to have all our children back in class this week. It has been wonderful to see so many happy faces and be back to a ‘full house’. We got to have a little celebration for Jude, who celebrated his 5th Birthday on Wednesday. Happy Birthday Jude!

In other news, with not enough plastic instruments for everyone we got some old water bottles, and filled them with gravel, sticks and stones. We explored the sounds they made and then had a great time using them for a singalong with Rachel and Barney.

YEAR 1 AND 2 Ronald Rhino has been the animal of the week in Year 1 and 2! A variety of work has been completed on this lovely story, where poor old Ronald thinks he does not have any friends or anything that is special about him, but fellow animals help him to realise this.

So, Year 1 and 2 have looked at a variety of different aspects for this story, from thought bubbles, acrostic poems, rhyming work and character descriptions!

It’s been another week where Becca Edwards has thrown a number of problem solving activities their way and has particularly enjoyed challenging some of the children in their one to ones to measure the perimeter of zoo enclosures with some peculiar shapes! It was lovely for children to learn about the different traditions and cultures, especially with one of the children interviewing her dad about her Nigerian roots, I am sure we could see her as a reporter in the future!

They also looked at the traditional art painted on Ndebele huts, making their own, with some fabulous designs. In addition, there were some interesting new African animal creations when they were asked to choose body parts for various different animals as part of their science week. We look forward to using all of this knowledge they’ve learnt so far in the term with an exciting project for the end of term, face to face in school!

YEAR 3

Children in Year 3 learned about the importance of word choice and word order in poetry by looking at diamond poems. They explored how their choices can affect the feelings and imagery created by the poem. They all had a terrific go at writing a diamond poem about the night.

Children went on to explore and discuss the structure of cinquain poems. They looked at the different content and number of syllables in each line. In their independent activities they choose from a list of 'Plop-related' subjects to write their own cinquain about. Two opposing cinquains reflecting Plop's feelings towards the dark both at the beginning and the end of the story were also completed.

In maths children looked at 2D shape. They identified and created regular and irregular polygons and measured the perimeter of simple 2D shapes.

Delightfully, elephants are still very important in Year 3 as even more fine examples flooded in this week.

YEAR 4

The children have enjoyed this week’s ‘Pick n Mix’ activities… In Science, they have looked at experiments and what makes a fair test – some even carried out their own fair test to discover which chemical (water, soapy water, water with hand sanitiser and sugar water) was best at killing bacteria.

Geography has involved investigating the bottom of the world; looking at information explaining what makes Antarctica unique – completing a quiz and thinking about what facts were most surprising. The children have been drawing on hands and feet in art (not their own!) as they learnt about Mehndi patterns – designing their own mehndi patterns on feet, legs, arms and hand templates.

In English, to find out a bit more about determiners, we read the poem ‘Hero Dad’. The poem told the story of a hero Dad, not for climbing Mount Everest, visiting Antarctica or being around the world… simply for removing an eight-legger from a bedroom armed only with a paper napkin!

The children thought about how determiners can change the meaning of a sentence, then spotted them in text and chose appropriate ones in sentences. They then planned and wrote their own poem about someone (either in their family or a friend) to explain why they are a hero to them. How nice if they could share them with the person that they wrote about.

YEAR 5 This week we have read and listened, measured and calculated, sketched and painted, baked and eaten, questioned and answered, laughed and chatted. More importantly though, we have had fun with our learning. An awful lot of fun!

In English, we have continued to read about the adventures of Jim Jarvis as he struggles to escape from the clutches of Grimy Nick. The story has gripped our attention as well as providing opportunities to learn about figurative language, adverbials and inference and deduction. We can’t wait to find out what is going to happen next!

Maths lessons this week have provided us with opportunities to learn about area and perimeter, with some of us going to extreme lengths to measure our homes and gardens. Despite having a few issues with broadband speed and technology in general, the children have worked incredibly hard to master some tricky calculations and have impressed us with their willingness to learn and ability to solve some quite complicated area and perimeter problems.

The children have also continued to enjoy their afternoon pick and mix tasks.

This week’s highlights have included baking focaccia bread, investigating the density of oil and water, producing some beautiful art work based on Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa and exploring the significance of water in major world religions. It has been great to hear how much the children have enjoyed choosing and completing these tasks and it has been lovely to see so many photos of smiling children feeling proud of their home learning. As ever, we are incredibly proud of you all!

YEAR 6 That’s another week gone and there are only 10 school days left until the Summer holidays, and the end of the Junior School for this lovely group. Year 6 are filling each day with learning new facts and skills as well as reminiscing over their many achievements, performances, fixtures, trips, activities, and lessons over the past year, and many years in some cases. Filming of the leavers’ meeting is now well underway, with some of the work on this completed during the Home Learning period. Rest assured that no one will miss out on their chance to shine, whether they are in school or not. Two of the happier consequences of the changes to our usual end of term arrangements is that we can premier the Leavers’ Meeting on the final day of the term to the children and make this available to all parents at the same time. Every cloud… The leavers’ magazine is only missing a handful of articles and for Nick Hadley and Alice Pennell to pick the most embarrassing of the available photos to include. Those children who have been with us the longest should be the most worried - sorry Evie!

The children can, of course, persuade us not to include some of these, and as luck would have it, Year 6 have been working on their powers of persuasion during their English lessons this week. Linked to their work on Treasure Island, posters have been designed to entice people to tropical islands, as well as letters to Squire Trelawney begging him to take on a new cabin boy, and pleading speeches to a mutinous crew. Expect your children to now give much more reasoned arguments about why their bedtime should be extended, with rhetorical questions, emotive language, and the ability to make opinion sound like facts. (Children – remember to rephrase “It’s not fair!” as “Is this fair?”. This gives you the chance to refute your parents’ arguments.)

In maths, 6NH have worked on patterns. Wednesday saw the children tackling the most complex of tessellation patterns as the group turned circles into a repeating diamond pattern that looked like 3D cubes. It was even more difficult to complete than it is to explain. Later in the week, the children learnt about Fibonacci sequences and how these can be seen even in nature. Lily finally got to look at the Year 6 snails in a maths lesson AND be learning maths! A happy day, indeed. The snails were, I’m sure, glad to know that their shells follow a mathematical sequence.