Southfield Autumn 1 Newsletter 2022

‘Ex Corde Vita’

HEADTEACHER INTRODUCTION

Dear Parents,

As the first part of the Autumn Term draws to a close and we look ahead to half term we can reflect on the myriad of exciting events that have taken place.

We celebrated our exceptional results from the summer but also the school is the recipient of two prestigious awards. The first is the PSQM, Primary Science Quality Mark awarded to schools with an outstanding science curriculum. Secondly, The Geography Quality Mark for schools who demonstrate a highly successful and rich geography provision. These will soon appear on our official letters and we are incredibly proud of our achievements.

We have welcomed our lovely new Reception Chopin and Handel to the Southfield family and they have settled in so well! We are all very proud of you. Our new Head Boy and Girl, Tom and Erin and Deputies, Harrison and Grace have taken up their roles with great gusto. Our first School Council meeting of the year was held and children are looking at making improvements around the school site! Year 6 enjoyed an exciting week away on the Isle of Wight and the organisers all reported that Southfield was the best school they had hosted.

The generosity of spirit of our community was once again in action with the extremely generous Harvest Festival donations. We see our school TRUE values in action! A big thank you to all for your kindness.

Our beloved Charities Week was held this term and classes were busily reading and writing about their charities and made exquisite pieces which were sold at the fair! Classes were also exploring diversity and created and composed some beautiful work. Year 1 have been enjoying getting muddy and wet at forest school and exploring science in the natural world.

Educational visits have begun in earnest with Year 5 watching the stage version of their novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at the theatre. To capture the essence and bring the Victorians to life Year 4 visited the Gunnersbury Victorian Museum.

We saw some very creative pumpkins this week and a huge well done to all the winners!

Wishing you all a very happy and peaceful half term

Dr Jones

Headmaster

CHARITIES WEEK

We held our annual Charities Week this half term and it was an amazing week for the children to immerse themselves in a range of activities related to their chosen charity. Each year group made an item which was sold at our Charities Fair and all money raised will be donated to the chosen charities. We want to thank all our parents and carers who gave their time to come to the fair and purchase items. Your money will make a difference to many people locally and nationally.

Reception: As part of our charities week, we talked about the importance of water. We looked at some of the different ways we use water (drinking, cleaning our teeth, flushing the toilet), and why else water is important. We decided to create raindrop necklaces to show how important clean water is. We raised £21!

Year 1: During Charities Week, we learnt about the charity Guide Dogs UK and the work that they do. We loved learning about Guide Dogs and how amazing and clever dogs can be! Did you know it takes two years of training for a puppy to become a working guide dog? We all had a lot of fun getting sticky decorating our biscuits! We raised £65!

Year 2: Our charity was the ‘Royal National Lifeboat Institution’ (RNLI). We learned all about this charity and their dedication to saving people who have become stranded at sea and face the possibility of drowning. Their lifeguards are exceptionally brave! We raised money for them by designing our own boat fridge magnets and these were sold at the charity sale. We raised £110.50!

Year 3: Our charity in Year 3 was the World Wild Life Fund. We researched the conservation efforts they carry out and we drafted an open letter to the general public to persuade them to support this wonderful charity. We also adapted the story ‘Peter’s Place’ to convey a heartfelt environmental message. We made animal pom poms to sell at the charity sale, we raised £58.11!

Year 4: During our charities week, we've been able to raise money for charity Barnardo’s, who do extraordinary and vital work caring for children and young people in need of support. We created bars of soap to sell as part of the school’s charity sale. We raised £68.10!

Year 5: Children in Year 5 learnt all about the work of the RSPCA, discussing how they help animals in need. For our charity sale, we produced gift cards using a range of materials to create different animals with inspirational quotes from the author Charlie Mackesy. We raised £42.10!

Year 6: Year 6 raised money for Help For Heroes which contextualised our learning on World War One in how veterans and their families need support when returning from war. We designed war related sketches and painted them on canvases as a tribute to the soldiers who have risked their lives for our freedom. We sold our sketches at our whole school Charity Sale and raised £49.61 for the charity.

HARVEST FESTIVAL

We have just celebrated our annual harvest festival and we were delighted with all the donations. All the donations were taken to our local homeless charity The Upper Room. Thank you to all our Southfield Community for your support.

CONTEXTUALISED CURRICULUM

This half term we have continued to provide children with a range of experiences as part of the topics they are learning.

Year 1 have enjoyed their visits to Forest School and have had fun climbing, running, jumping and exploring the tree swings.

Year Four visited Gunnersbury Park Museum to find out what life was like back in the Victoria era. Thanks to the wonderful exhibits and workshop, they got to experience what being a Victorian cleaner, chimney sweep, maid, police officer, and even pickpocket was like all of which allowed them to further understand the characters of our English text, the novel Street Child, even better!

As part of their novel study The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ by C.S Lewis the children in Year 5 went to see a live perfomace of the novel at the Gillian Lynne theatre. The children thoroughly enjoyed the performance.

PE

The children have had had a fun filled start to the new school year in their PE lessons and during lunchtimes.

This term KS1 have been learning and developing new skills and echniques with throwing and Catching. Whilst in KS2 the children have had to learn how to work as a team and individually to work through a number of different challenges and activities in our new unit OAA (Outside adventurous activities).

Lunchtimes has continued to be a great success.

The children are enjoying a number of great daily activities with our lunchtime coaches from The Elms.

One of those amazing coaches is Jessica Gordon Brown a Commonwealth Games 2022 silver medallist winner in weightlifting. Who will be coaching and supporting the children every Tuesday and Wednesday.

WHAT HAVE WE BEEN DOING? EYFS RECEPTION

Autumn 1 in Reception was filled with lots of work through engaging and fun activities around our topic of All About Me.

Over the first couple of weeks we got to know each other through structured indoor and outdoor learning activities that involve the children sharing and working together to solve puzzles, construct and cooperate. We have discussed our creations in the small world and creative area. Alongside this, we have been enjoying whole class learning together on the carpet.

In our Phonics lessons we have been learning our set 1 letter sounds and applying them through sound blending, tracing and initial sound related illustrations. In Literacy lessons, we continue to explore our topic through shared big books as a class. Reading stories and joining in with repeated refrains, discussing the narrative. We have also been creating and annotating illustrations from our favourite books.

As part of our charities week, we have been talking about the importance of water. We looked at some of the different ways we use water (drinking, cleaning our teeth, flushing the toilet), and why else water is important.

We learned that not everyone has everything they need to live happily and healthily, and so charities help others. Talking as a class about what we can do to help save water, we then learned about Water Aid and how they help countries which may not have clean water or proper toilets.

We decided to create raindrop necklaces to show how important clean water is, and that even though there is so much water on our planet only a very small amount is safe to drink.

In Maths we have been counting forwards and backwards to a range of different songs and dances. We have been learning about and practicing sorting and measuring, as well as recognising and creating patterns. We read ‘Guess How Much I Love You?’ in our Maths Discovery lessons and discussed length, size, weight and distance. We also continued to build on our knowledge of counting and Nursery Rhymes.

RECEPTION

KEY STAGE 1 YEAR 1

Autumn One has been a brilliant first term for Year One. We are so proud of how everyone is settling in to their new routines. The children have all grown up over the summer holidays and are now able to sit beautifully on the carpet, move sensibly around the school and line up quickly and quietly.

In our classes we are all feeling extremely proud of what we have achieved so far. We have learnt lots of new sounds in phonics. This has helped us with our creative writing and English work. In English we have been studying the lovely story, Peace at Last. As I’m sure the children will have told you, it is a story about Mr Bear who can’t find a comfy, quiet place to sleep. We have used this story to write letters, diaries, character and setting descriptions. In Maths we have been working on our knowledge of number and place value. We have now started on our addition and subtraction skills and looking at different methods to solve number problems such as the part, part whole method.

YEAR 1

The week of the 10th October was Charities Week. We loved learning about Guide Dogs and how amazing and clever dogs can be! Did you know it takes two years of training for a puppy to become a working guide dog? We all had a lot of fun getting sticky decorating our biscuits!

KEY STAGE 1 YEAR 1

This term we have also been really lucky to get to go to Forest School. Here we have learnt how to look after nature, be creative with our natural crafts and safely make fires we even baked some apples on it. Forest School is perfect for developing the children’s gross motor skills as it gives them the opportunity to climb, run, jump and explore the tree swings. It is a lot of fun.

As the classes are finding their confidence and individuality at school, it is important to discuss diversity.

Towards the end of this half term we have been celebrating just that. We have been looking in class about what makes us the same and what makes us different. This has tied into our Science topic of the 5 senses. We have learnt that although our eyes, skin and different features may look slightly different our bodies all work in the same way. In Geography we have learnt all about map making and what makes a successful map. Our learning about spatial sense has allowed us to make more sense of the world around us.

This half term, Year 2 have been studying the book ‘The Mousehole Cat’ in English. They have used the novel to help expand their own vocabulary and enhance their writing. The children have written some wonderful diaries, letters, poems, and short narratives! We learnt about similies and alliteration and wrote acrostic poems describing the storm.

In Maths, we have been focusing on counting forwards and backwards in ones and being able to identify the place value of two digit numbers. We have been using games to enhance our learning and we are gaining so much confidence. Furthermore, we have been comparing and ordering numerals and measurements based on known facts and applying this knowledge to solve a range of reasoning and mastery problems.

In Science, we have explored systems of the human body, including the digestive, circulatory and musculoskeletal systems. We really enjoyed finding out what makes us function! We also learnt why blood is red and about how scientists developed vaccines.

In Geography, we honed our map skills. We learned how to use a map to locate objects in orienteering and we learned how to draw our own map from an aerial view. We also drew our own class map and included a key. We also learnt about the compass points and used these when describing a route from school to a place on a map.

On our RE day we studied the Buddhist religion. We acted out the story of Siddhartha Gautama and learnt what Buddhists believe. We discussed The Five Buddhist Morals and what they meant for Buddhists. By the end of our RE day we had learnt a lot of new information and enjoyed learning about the Buddhists beliefs.

During charities week we learnt about the ‘Royal National Lifeboat Institution’ (RNLI). We learned all about this charity and their dedication to saving people who have become stranded at sea and face the possibility of drowning. Their lifeguards are exceptionally brave! We raised money for them by designing our own boat fridge magnets that we sold at the charity sale.

KEY STAGE 2

YEAR 3

For the start of our Year 3 journey, we have stepped back in time to mid 1900s America to experience the heart warming tale of Charlotte’s Web and explore the highs and lows of the friendships between the animals, Wilbur, Charlotte and Fern. We wrote a variety of genres tying in with to the events of the novel such as a first person diary as Fern pleading to save young Wilbur’s life, our own play script of the animals colluding to propel Wilbur into the spotlight and a newspaper article communicating his fame.

In Maths, we have recapped and built upon our place value knowledge to master flexible portioning, hone our mental arithmetic skills of counting forward and backwards in 1s, 10s, 100s, 1000 and use our knowledge of number facts to multiply and divide numbers in 10s, 100s and 1000s. Our scientific, boffin bending research has centred on the human body and various key functions such as the nervous and digestive systems. Our archaeological heads have pondered the historical periods from the Palaeolithic Age through to the Iron Age by analysing and questioning artefacts and famous historical sites, such as Stonehenge, to understand how the lifestyles of our early ancestors changed over thousands of years.

In Geography, we began with building on our prior spatial sense learning and can now navigate with an 8 point compass, interpret and identify co ordinate points on an OS map and we have compared the physical and human geographic features between London and San Francisco.

In Real Life Maths, we solved cryptic archaeological clues by orienteering around the school site in teams and we experienced the emotional turmoil of rescuing, nursing and then releasing an injured animal in the Creative Writing story, ‘Fly, Pigeon Fly!’ Its been a buoyant and busy start to Year 3!

4

This half term in English, we have been reading the novel Street Child. Set in Victorian England, it follows Jim Jarvis a young orphan living an extremely tough life in 1860s London. We have used the novel to inspire our writing in a variety of ways, such as creating diary entries, letters, and articles, and have enhanced our understanding of what life was like for young people like Jim through both Drama and a trip to Gunnersbury Park Museum Victorian School. As Jim is eventually taken in and cared for by Dr. Thomas Barnardo, we were inspired to pick Barnado’s as our chosen cause for Charities Week.

Throughout our time in Maths, we've recognised the value of each digital four digit number; ordered and compare to numbers beyond 1000; counted in multiples of 1000 and found numbers which are 1000 more or less than a given number. Throughout all of these, we have been applying our knowledge to solve a range of both numerical and reasoning problems.

This half term in Science, we have examined the human body; in particular, the importance of a healthy diet. We’ve explored this from a variety of angles, from learning about the process of digestion to understanding the importance of good dental hygiene.

In Geography, we have explored the notion of spatial sense, examining our local area and utilising four figure grid references to identify locations on a map, as well as predicting how our area might change as population increases in the future.

In History, we’ve been learning about Ancient Greece, gaining understanding about the concept and significance of city states such as Athens and Sparta, their inherent idiosyncrasies, important battles like those of Marathon and Thermopylae, who Alexander The Great was, and how he built such a vast empire.

YEAR 5

This half term Year 5 have loved reading ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ by C.S Lewis.. We have developed our narrative storytelling, characterisation and technical English skills by drafting numerous genres of writing such as a diary entry, third person narrative recount, newspaper report and a letter. Our understanding of the novel was recently brought to life when we visited the Gillian Lynne theatre to see the live performance. Although it was a late one, the children thought it worth staying up for.

In Maths, we have learnt to order and compare numbers up to 1,000,000 and solve place value word problems and reasoning questions. For Real Life Maths, we used our map skills to chart a trans continental voyage similar to Captain James Cook around the world and use the map’s scale to convert centimetres into kilometres. We have also scaled the dizzy heights of the Himalayan Mountains, converting feet to meters and compared the size of each mountain.

In Geography, we have been developing our core spacial knowledge and skills – such as navigating around the world using latitudinal and longitudinal co ordinates and interpreting relief maps. For history, we have learnt about the Golden Age of Baghdad in 900 CE and its impact on modern society including our number system, algebra and alchemy.

In Science, we have been learning about the human body, in particular the changes that occur between birth and old age and the milestones that occur across the stages. We then compared the growth stages of different species and drawn graphs to identify patterns in the data collected.

During our PSHE day, we discussed what it means to be a refugee and how this differs to being a migrant. Following this, we also discussed the United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child and learnt that as a citizen of this country, we have rights and responsibilities and understood how these may affect our day to day lives. Finally, in our RE day, we started our study of Buddhism by exploring the story of its origins in present day Nepal, by Siddhartha Gautama before discussing the 5 Buddhist morals.

YEAR 6

Year 6 have had fantastic start to their final year of primary school! This term, Year 6 have been using their class novel The Other Side of Truth by Beverly Naidoo as their stimulus for writing. Seen through the eyes of Sade, the novel explores what it means to be classified as ‘illegal’ and the difficulties that come with being a refugee. The children have produced excellent work across a whole host of fiction genre styles, including a narrative with speech, a diary entry, poetry and a newspaper report.

YEAR 6

In Maths, the children have deepened their understanding of place value and solved problems using the four operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They have had to explain their reasoning and provide evidence to support their understanding.

Our Geography topic Spatial Sense has seen the children applying their prior learning from previous years by analysing maps and diagrams to investigate the location of places in the world and why the climate differs using lines of longitude and latitude to locate positioning.

This half term’s Science topic of The Human Body has seen the children learning all about the circulatory and respiratory systems. They have delved into the heart and now have better knowledge of the role this muscle plays in pumping oxygenated blood to vital organs and around the body. They also completed an experiment where they had to measure their pulse rates before, during and after an activity to see the changes and recorded their findings.

In History, we have been exploring the consequences of World War I in Britain and the wider world. They have learned about the political reasons that lead to the outbreak of WWI, the Treaty of Versailles and the experiences of people on the home front, including the important roles women and children played. This tied in wonderfully with our charities week as our chosen charity was Help For Heroes. The children absolutely loved learning about the wonderful work the charity does and produced some beautiful paintings depicting war.

Primary School Bedford Park Chiswick London W4

‘Ex Corde Vita’