‘Ex Corde Vita’
HEADTEACHER INTRODUCTION We have literally condensed so many interesting and exciting elements into this half term and I really hope you enjoy reading the newsletter which offers a flavour of the myriad of opportunities our children enjoy at Southfield.
Our commitment that all children experience outdoor learning through forest school continues and it was Year 3 who had the chance to visit this term. I know they had a very muddy yet enjoyable time. It was a pleasure to invite Year 4 and 5 parents to our very first History Exhibitions which showcased the children’s history work on the French Revolution and Ancient Rome. It was indeed a splendid afternoon and the children were rightly proud of their achievements. Our celebration assemblies have been special occasions allowing parents, children and staff to recognise great work and achievements. Year 3 Strauss performed an exquisite Ancient Egyptians class assembly with talented acting and singing and we learnt a great deal about the Egyptians.
A strong and important part of our curriculum is the contextualisation of subjects through rich visits and workshops and this term Year 6 have been busy visiting both the Imperial War and Army museum linked to their study of World War II. Similarly, Year 2 have visited the Natural History Museum linked to their scientific topics. Reception classes have experienced workshops on people who help us and Year 1 had a super workshop centred on Queen Elizabeth II and her 70 year reign as part of their Kings and Queen’s topic. The beginning of some of the wonderful Platinum Jubilee celebrations we will be holding later in the summer term to celebrate the queen’s service to our country.
We were very excited to launch our JASS scheme for years 3-6, the primary equivalent of the Duke of Edinburgh Award. I know children are busy attempting to earn their respective badges in different areas of the curriculum and at home. Our very talented choir and orchestra have been busy rehearsing and we look forward to a performance next term. The introduction of our lunch time clubs with chess and fencing have been highly popular so much so that after half term there will be many more exciting clubs and options. A particular favourite is Mr Coleman’s tap-dancing club!
I hope you find time to relax and enjoy half term and look forward to another exciting half term when we return.
CLASS ASSEMBLIES This half term we had 3 Strauss’ class assembly which took us back to Egyptian times. Strauss's assembly was a whistle stop tour of Ancient Egypt. We looked at how and why Pharoah's built pyramids, who the greatest pharoah was - Ramses II is considered the greatest due to the sheer amount of building he over saw, despite Tutankhamun thinking he was the best. There was even an indepth mumification!
PARENT WORKSHOPS We have held several parent workshop’s this half term. We introduced our JASS Award (primary version of The Duke of Edinburgh) for KS2; we had a Computing workshop to explore our learning and the digital world and we explained our Geography curriculum and what we doing to earn The Primary Geography Award. Ms Green also led a workshop on our PE provision at Southfield. These are all available in the Parent Workshop section of the website. https://www.southfieldschool.org.uk/Parents-Workshop/ https://www.southfieldschool.org.uk/Curriculum/Junior-Award-Scheme-for-Schools-JASS/
HISTORY EXHIBITIONS
This half term Year 4 and Year 5 held their History exhibitions for parents. They have been studying the The Romans and The French Revolution respectively and we loved having parents in to see all of the children’s hard work over the last 6 weeks.
CONTEXTUALISED CURRICULUM
This half term has been incredibly busy with lots of trips, workshops and visitors to bolster the children’s learning and bring meaning to their topics. We have had the police in to talk to Year 6 and EYFS have had visits from the police and the NHS to talk to them about how they help people. Year 2 visited the National History Museum as part of their science topic on habitiats. Year 4 went to our local church St. Peters and met with Fr. Fabrizio who answered lost of questions about their RE topic on religious leaders. They also had an anti-bullying workshop with Monster Cat Theatre. Year 5 attended some workshops at Kew Gardens related to their Science topics and Year 6 have been to the Imperial War Museum, the Science Museum and the National Army Museum which really brought their World War II topic to life. Thank you very much to all the parents and carers who attended the trips and made them possible. We are very appreciative of your time and support.
BITS AND BOBS TUCK SHOP Our Year 6 Enterprise Team, comprised of our Head Boy, Head Gril, Deputy Head Boy, Deputy Head Girl and House Captains have been beavering away on our first ever school tuck shop called Bits and Bobs! They have deisgned their own logo, chosen and ordered stock, priced their items, created profit and loss assessments and they will delivering assemblies on this for the rest of the school at the beginning of next half term. They will be selling a range of items from sweets to pencils, bookmarks to loom bands and so on. The items will range from 20p to £3 and will be on sale fortnightly in various locations inside the school building. Look out for the letter you will receive with more information on this new initiative.
WHAT HAVE WE BEEN DOING?
EYFS NURSERY Our topic this term was ‘Traditional tales and Nursery Rhymes’. It was been such a fun topic! The children have spent lots of time in the role play area either reenacting the different stories or using their imaginary play to turn it into a café, taking orders and serving up some delicious food. The children have also produced some amazing art work, which they will be taking home soon. The children have enjoyed a different traditional tale and nursery rhyme weekly. I think our favourite was Hickory Dickory Dock, ask your child about it, they will explain why they like it so much. The children are playing harmoniously together and you can see the change in their ability to interact and collaborate with each other. In the outside space we have created treasure trails and maps, build structures and paths leading to various islands.
RECEPTION Our topic this term was ‘People who help us’. We enjoyed learning about the different jobs that people do and the wonderful things they do to help us. We had great fun playing in our role-play areas, which were transformed into a hospital, a doctor’s surgery and even a supermarket!
We were lucky enough to be visited by two doctors-a ‘talking doctor’ and a doctor who cares for older patients. In addition to this, a real life policeman also came to see us! We loved finding out about the his uniform and the different equipment he carries around with him- handcuffs, a torch, a baton and a note book for writing important messages. The highlight of the visit was when he drove his police car into the playground and turned the lights and sirens on! What an exciting day!
We have learnt so much this term and our teachers are so proud of all that we have achieved. We are becoming more confident at using our sounds in reading and writing. In maths, we focused on finding different ways to make 5 and 10 and added two numbers by jumping along a number line.
KEY STAGE 1 YEAR 1 We have had another busy half-term in Year 1, in which the children have really worked hard and excelled in all our different curricular areas. Our English work this half-term has been centred around our class text, The Magic Bed, by John Burningham. Using this book as a springboard, we have written letters, diaries, acrostic poems, adverts, character descriptions and postcards over the course of the half-term. In terms of grammar, we have been focusing largely on verbs, adjectives and exclamation marks this half-term. The children also had the opportunity to further express their creativity in our Creative Writing lessons this half-term. As usual, we used a book as the stimulus for these lessons, with Jack and Nancy, Mister Magnolia and A Huge Bag of Worries being our texts this time around. In Maths we have continued our work on addition and subtraction this half-term, while also learning about 2D shapes, 3D shapes and the greater than and lesser than symbols. Our Geography theme has been the United Kingdom, and we have learnt lots about England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the UK as a whole. In Science, meanwhile, we have been learning about ‘Seasons and Weather’. Our work on this theme has been greatly enriched by the ability to use the school’s Science in the Natural World Wildlife area. In our final week of the half-term, we had our RE, PSHE and Computing days. Our RE day explored Christianity, while our PSHE day centred on the subjects of Diversity and Safety. In Computing, we completed the ‘We are Digital Aritists’ unit, where the focus was on creating work inspired by great artists.
YEAR 2 Year 2 have had an excellent start to the Spring term. They have had really applied their skills and knowledge in all areas of the curriculum and had much fun doing so. This term, they wrote a range of fiction and non-fiction texts, using their previous Science and Geography knowledge about habitats and spatial sense and drew inspiration from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to create newspaper reports, diary entries and character descriptions. They have continued to expand on their place value knowledge, as well as practicing and applying counting in 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s and begun to record data in statistics. Their Geography topic has continued to take the children around the British Isles and even to Cape Town. This term, they learned about the four countries that comprise the British Isles. They discovered the similarities and differences between the four countries as well as comparing them with a non-European country. Science has given the children the opportunity to learn about electricity and explore and investigate using circuits. They have used their knowledge of conductors and insulators to choose suitable resources to complete circuits. They had so much fun creating their circuits and grouping materials according to their properties in relation to the flow of electrical energy. In Art, the children have had a fantastic time creating self-portraits; the children produced beautiful pieces by adding to them each week by applying their new skills. The children also studied famous portrait artists.
KEY STAGE 2 YEAR 3 Wow! We are already half way through Year 3! What a term we have had! In English we used Robert Sitwell’s classic novel ‘Ice Palace’ to develop a range of writing skills through descriptive narratives, short suspenseful stories, diary entries and informal letters. We even wrote some beautiful free-verse poetry, describing a winter woodland as this is the setting for the novel. Our use of expanded noun phrases, metaphors and similes created some very vivid imagery. The mood of the story was reflected in these poems through phrases such as ‘the berries glistened red as blood against the snow covered branches’ and ‘the wind was an unwelcome hug.’ In Maths we have been using number lines to enhance our addition and subtraction skills. We have been learning about adding two digit to three digit numbers, as well as subtracting two digit from three digit numbers. We are working on using inverse operations and informal methods to solve addition and subtraction problems so that we can solve sums in a variety of different ways. This will help the children be confident when learning formal methods of addition and subtraction which is our next step. Light has been our topic this half term for Science. The children have had lots of fun conducting different experiments to further their understanding of how light moves, how shadows are created and change. We used mirrors to explore how the light rays are reflected in different ways! Mirror writing was lots of fun and a lot harder than we expected it to be. We have also made our own sundials at Forest School which has been a highlight of the week! We are having an amazing time in History this term learning all about how the Anglo Saxon’s settled in Britain after the Roman’s left. Did you know that most of the days of the week are named after Anglo Saxon gods before they converted to Christianity? We have started to learn about the Vikings and how their boat building skills helped make them such supreme traders and raiders. In Geography we have been learning about the journey of a river from source to mouth and comparing rivers around the world. 3 Strauss put on their class assembly where they demonstrated all their knowledge from last term’s History topic on the Ancient Egyptians, as well as a very good sense of comic timing! Unfortunately Year 3 Elgar’s assembly will have to wait for the time being but we can’t wait to see it.
YEAR 4
This half term in English, Year 4 have read the novel ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’, by Michael Morpurgo. The children will have the opportunity to write from different character perspectives through fiction genres which will include diary entries, setting descriptions, informal letters and much more. Throughout our Creative Writing lessons, Year 4 have continued to contextualise the picture books given to us by relating themes based on our TRUE values through stories such as ‘The Printer’ by Myron Uhlberg and ‘The Last Seaweed Pie’ by Wenda Shurety. Our time in Maths has been spent using our knowledge of place value and deriving facts to help us multiply a one or a two digit number by 10 and 100. Children have continued in Geography to expand their knowledge of Europe, looking closer at the area of Eastern Europe, including investigating Balkan and Baltic countries. Year 4 have focused on Ecology throughout our Science lessons and have explored the reasons why different animals need different habitats, while children in History have spent time to learn all about life in Ancient Rome, discovering the impact the empire has left on countries all over the world. On Friday 14th January, Year 4 were fortunate enough to receive a visit from the ‘Monster Cat Theatre’, who kindly presented a bullying awareness workshop. The workshop consisted of fun role playing activities and scenarios focusing on empathy and why we should care about the way others feel.
YEAR 5
At the start of the New Year and Spring Term, we begun our new Science topic of Living Things and Their Habitats’ with a visit to Kew Gardens – where we honed our scientific skills by examining a variety of plant specimens and how they pollinate both under the microscope and throughout the gardens and glasshouses. We have built on this in the classroom by conducting our own experiment OF growing broad beans in different conditions and making observations at regular time intervals whilst also comparing the life cycles of different species. In geography, we have learnt about three different regions of the UK – East Anglia, the Midlands and Yorkshire. We have used geographic information – such as relief maps – to compare the topography of these different regions and a range of historical sources to understand how the physical and human features have changed over time. For history, we trawled through the historical records of the French Revolution and understand how France was transformed from a monarchy to a republic. We put on the first year-group’s history exhibition, showcasing our learning of the French estate system; the grizzly exhibition of Louis XVI and Mary Antoinette; the rise and fall of Napoleon at the Battle of Trafalgar and Waterloo. We even constructed and displayed our own Bastilles, guillotines, Arc de Triomphe models and Napoleon Andy Warhol-style pop art! Our fictional English text of Tom’s Midnight Garden has provided a descriptive and moving context for poetry, a characterisation narrative, a dairy entry and setting description. We channelled our writing flair through a brand new illustrated novel on the emotive topics of environmentalism and pollution in ‘The Last Seaweed Pie’ and we applied our Real Life Maths skills in calculating travel times and tube routes on the London Underground System.
YEAR 6 This half term Year 6 have been busy contextualising their learning from in class by exploring, investigating and reporting on their learning outcomes. This term has been jam packed full of exciting things – most notable the trips that we have been on earlier in the term. We went all the way to the Imperial War Museum to gain real life insight into the relics of WWI and WWII to coincide with our History topics from the year so far. We loved all of the exhibitions and were able to make links between our tasks, stories and knowledge. We then embarked on a trip to the Science museum to learn all about Electricity, Once we fully explored this exhibition, we enjoyed looking at the other displays before heading back to school. Our third trip for the half term was to the National Army Museum where we looked at the history of how the British military has evolved over time and participated in a workshop to learn more about The Blitz. We were able to make links between these facts and our class novel from Autumn 1 ‘Goodnight Mr Tom’. Here at school, we have been lucky enough to be visited again by Constable McGuiggan who returned for her second Police Workshop this year to discuss the difference between legal and illegal drugs. In English we have been immersed in our class novel for Spring 1 ‘The Other Side of Truth’ and have produced high quality fiction texts based on the characters experiences and the themes of the story.
‘Ex Corde Vita’
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Southfield Primary School Bedford Park Chiswick London W4 1BD Tel 020 8994 6173