Junior School Newsletter - June 5 2020

DEAR PARENTS Monday marked a bittersweet moment to begin the second half of the Summer term. The sadness that many of the children are only able to be with us virtually was balanced by the joyous return of those year groups allowed into school. Having been on campus for the previous ten weeks to witness the unnaturally quiet buildings and surroundings, the school has seemed something of an empty shell; a mannequin in place of a living thing. The return of happy and excited voices, the cheery grins and friendly (socially distanced) reunions has certainly brought with it an injection of renewed life, albeit not quite the same as having all 101 of us together. Â And, yes, you read that last bit correctly! Our welcome has also extended to new friends Chloe and Jacobi in Early Years and Ava in Year 5. Thus far we have only managed to meet virtually but we sincerely hope to see them, and their families, in person as soon as possible.

It has proved quite a challenge to put all the appropriate protocols and procedures in place for Early Years, Year 1, Year 6 and a small number of Key Worker children, but it has certainly been worth it to see the eager way in which they have bounced in in the morning and left, exhausted but grinning, at the end of the day. Alongside this we have continued to be impressed with the quality of the work produced from our home learners, full of initiative, interest, and inspiration. We emphatically hope it will not be too long until we are all able to convene again and await government guidance in that regard.

Away from the preparations for the reopening of classrooms, teachers have also been compiling the End of Year Reports. These will be going out as usual closer towards the end of term. As we approach the end of the academic year, we are also turning our attention to next year. Normally, we would be preparing for our transition morning, which will, unfortunately, not be able to take place in its normal format. Never fear though – we do intend to sprinkle the “magic dust”, even if only virtually and more information about this will go out later in the term.

It has also been pleasing to see so many children continuing to carry out their Kids Marathon runs and walks. I am delighted to announce that the children’s endeavours mean that we have moved up to 15th nationally with an average of 31.4km per runner! As good as that is, it would be great to break into the Top 10 by the end of term, so get your trainers on and get out there!

Shortly before Easter, several children undertook LAMDA exams. Congratulations to the following children who all achieved Passes with Distinction:

Congratulations also to the following children who were awarded Home/School (delete as applicable!) Learner of the Week certificates:

Head of Junior School Stickers – Lucy and Ava Mi – Y5, Alice and Erin Y6.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and look forward to seeing you virtually or in person next week.

In friendship Edward Rossiter

Ps. Did you know an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain?

@SibfordJS @SibfordOxon @SibfordOxon

FOUNDATION AND RECEPTION I could not be prouder of the children who have returned to school this week in Early Years.

They have taken the changes and new routines in their stride and bought back the fun and energy that has been missing for so long.

Our English this week has been based on Handa’s surprise, at school and at home. We have been thinking carefully about the setting and using the clues in the story to think about where the story is set (more from Year 1 and 2). We thought about the kinds of fruit and vegetables that we can grow in our gardens and how they are different. One of our home learners had a lovely fruit picnic in their garden, pretending to be the various animals from the story eating the fruit. The children in school have made up their own class book based on the things they might put in the basket for their friends who are at home. I cannot wait for them to see it when it is complete.

My class also decided that they really wanted to make some potions, so we set them all up with their very own potion lab. This linked perfectly to our maths which has been based on measure this week. They weighed out fresh herbs, poured in coloured water, timed the cooking, and even measured the length of and cut down some of the herbs. They then wrote up the recipes for their potions, which contained lovely ingredients like goblin snot and water from the North Sea. Unfortunately for Libby Andrews and myself one sniff of the potion was enough to turn us into frogs, dinosaurs, unicorns or bats. Our maths also involved exploring the grounds and hunting for bugs. We found lots of bumble bees in the herb garden which is positive news.

And finally, one of the most exciting things for me, was having a Silke chicken named after me. One of my home learners sent me a lovely letter telling me what they had been up to and letting me know about their newly named chicken.

YEAR 1 AND 2 What a wonderful start it has been to the new topic ‘Summer Sunshine’, fortunately enough that’s how the week started. It has been great to see so much enthusiasm in their learning this week. Handa’s Surprise has been the focus text for their English, which has seen them complete a range of activities from making fruit baskets, a story map and their very own fruit salads! This helped especially when Becca Edwards asked them to weigh fruit (and other objects) as their maths was all about weighing objects and comparing their mass, also with a bit of cooking in there too. Becca Edwards is quite jealous to hear so many children have been making delicious recipes at home, but of course measuring the ingredients carefully first!

Their topic work has revolved around African animals, busy investigating animal prints, to researching an African animal after learning about the ‘Big Five’ in Africa’s National Parks. They made their own baskets, as part of English and thinking if they could, what else would they put in there! They also made fact sheets all about Africa. Who knows what will be in store for them next week……

Congratulations to Abby and Yasmin for reaching 250 reads, well done!

YEAR 3

During English lessons, this week, children in Year 3 continued to look at the Owl who was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson. Their main task was to plan their very own chapter for this book. Titles include Dark is peaceful, Dark is Amazing, Dark is Magnificent, Dark is Necessary and Dark is Super. Children looked at patterns found in the book and used these patterns to help structure their own stories. On top of this they turned into teachers and corrected punctuation errors with their multi-coloured pens. It would appear we have quite a few budding teachers in Year 3. During maths, children focused on money which involved tricky calculations with prices increasing and decreasing. Next, in Maths, they measured their own feet in centimetres and millimetres. Is Megs Allen the only one who has one foot very slightly larger than the other? Children in Year 3 settled into their afternoon tasks as they picked n mixed their way through a variety of different subjects/ activities.

YEAR 4

In English 4KS started the week by reading Zoo by Anthony Browne.

The children thought about a favourite day out, and whether we agreed with the opinion that zoos were a good idea or not. We looked at adverbials as a way of improving our sentences and thought about how they changed the emotion of the sentence. The children then spotted adverbials and punctuated fronted ones appropriately.

We had some very persuasive letters to a zoo-owner, asking them to treat the animals well, explaining why they should do this and how they can do this. We then used some poems about Foxes to look at secret strings (anything that links one word or phrase with another) keeping in mind what Michael Rosen says about secret strings…

“Remember, these strings belong to you. They may be strings that the poet had in mind – but maybe not.”

The children have embraced the ‘Pick n Mix’ activities this week, including looking at scientific methods and thinking about historical heroes… what they are and specifically why William Wilberforce is considered a hero by many people. As well as this, the class were tasked with creating a fact file for a country in either the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere or along the Equator (or all three!) researching key information about it (name, capital city, population, language(s), average rainfall) and finding out what its flag looks like and any other interesting facts they could find. Art has involved them looking carefully at the colours and design of the Indian Madhubani style of painting, we have had some fantastic recreations of faces, fish and turtles!

YEAR 5 The highlight of the week for Year 5 has got to be the ice lollies! Having changed the structure of the school day to incorporate more choice into our afternoon sessions, it would seem that most children have loved having a legitimate reason to make and eat ice lollies (it was our first cooking task after all). They have shown impressive creativity and resilience in making their own frozen treats and have learnt that you can make a delicious lolly even if you don’t have any ice lolly mould or any of the ingredients in the recipe. Any kind of fruit, juice, yoghurt or smoothie will do, plastic cups or yoghurt pots make great moulds and you can make a lolly stick out of a plastic spoon. We used our end of the day catch up calls as a chance to share our creations and have our very own ice lolly parties. It is fair to say everyone who took part has loved this task – we can’t wait to see what we’re going to cook next week!

The children have also enjoyed a range of other activities on our ‘water’ theme, including making seaside collages, completing a geography quiz, finding out about John the Baptist and desalinating salt water to name just a few. We have loved seeing the photos they have sent us – it’s great to see everyone having so much fun whilst also learning something new. Very well done to everyone who has completed our pick and mix activities this week - we’re very impressed with your hard work and dedication!

Alongside our fun filled afternoons, we have spent our English lessons this week continuing to read our class novel, Street Child by Berlie Doherty. The story is getting very exciting now and the children have impressed us with their ability to think about the main character’s motives and to predict what might happen next. As well as learning to use evidence from the text to support their ideas, they have found out about what life might have been like inside a Victorian workhouse. Above all, we have shown that despite the challenges of lockdown, we can still enjoy a good story together.

Well done to each and every one of you for another brilliant week. As ever, we are incredibly proud of you all!

YEAR 6 Yo-ho-ho, a pirate’s life for me. Yar! No, it isn’t International Speak Like a Pirate Day (fyi, it is on Saturday 19th September this year) but Year 6 have been shivering their timbers and counting their pieces of eight this week. They have thrown themselves into reading about Jim Hawkins’ adventures on the high seas and considering what makes for an exciting adventure story. They have written about the salty sea-dog Billy Bones and have some theories about what might happen next in the story. Sticking with the theme of maps, the children have been running around the school campus (2 metres or more apart, of course) to find as many orienteering points as they can during PE lessons. This has been a very handy link to the geography topic as the children are learning all about mapping and 6 figure grid references (look on Firefly for an excellent explanation of how these work from Steve Backshall and the Ordnance Survey). Nick Hadley’s group are working on their own map of the school campus over the next few weeks.

Our Year 6 Home Learners have been working on a watery theme for their afternoon topic of The Seaside. The children who are in school in Nick Hadley’s tried to join in with this on Wednesday as they got wet during a nature walk around the campus.

There were many soggy feet as we underestimated the amount of rain we had during the day – wellies next time we think. However, many different species of tree were still correctly identified around the school including limes, birches, oaks, rowan and horse chestnut. There is an abundant variety of wildlife around at the moment with the birds not being scared off by the usual volume of screams and shouts during break times.

Did you know we have both Great Spotted and Green Woodpeckers nesting on the campus? The problem with wildlife is that it does not stay sitting in one place for too long, so our artwork this term has concentrated on the main school buildings. As has become traditional in Year 6, the children are painting a picture of the front of the school. Using their knowledge of drawing using perspective learnt earlier in the year, Year 6 practised drawing the outline of some of the smaller buildings before they tackle the Hill building in the next few weeks.

Alice Pennell’s group (clearly more informed meteorologists), enjoyed a lovely sunny stroll earlier in the week, and chose a shady spot to read and reflect on how lucky we are to be able to roam and explore the beautiful school grounds of Sibford School.

They also worked hard on their outdoor graffiti and were rather dismayed when the rain washed them away (maybe not such budding meteorologists after all!) We were also treated to a visit from the man from Del Mote, who gave a master class in art to Nick Hadley’s group!

YEAR 6 That is all from Year 6 this week, but we’ll leave you with the word sung by the Old Sea Dog at the ‘Admiral Benbow’ –

‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest – Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!’