‘Ex Corde Vita’
HEADTEACHER INTRODUCTION
Dear Parents, I am delighted to share our Spring Term 2 Newsletter with you which is bursting at the seams and jam-packed with all the exciting things we have been doing at school this term. Class assemblies have continued and have been rich in exceptional acting and singing and entertaining both parents and children alike. Year 3 Strauss’ Egyptian extravaganza was a huge hit and we learnt a lot about the Ancient Egyptians. Similarly, we enjoyed an excellent rendition of Jill Murphy’s classic picture book ‘Peace at Last’ from Year 1 Ravel. This was an absolute treat with superb acting and storytelling and delightful singing. Science week was a particular highlight with the arrival of the Explorer Dome for two days. Children were able to learn about space and many other fascinating topics. Practical experiments and using slime and other messy ingredients were a huge hit! Our annual Reading Festival was once again a special time for us as a story centered school with author visits, workshops and lots of reading taking place. We enjoyed the hugely popular annual dress up as a character for World Book Day. There have been a plethora of school educational visits which support children to contextualise their learning in a practical setting. Year 2 have enjoyed time in Hampton Court Palace complimenting their study of the Tudors. Year 3 and 4 visited Butser Farm to explore the Ancient Britons and learn more about Roman Britain. I am thrilled that our lunchtime clubs are proving so enjoyable and successful with opportunities from chess, fencing, German, Italian and Tap Dancing! I would like to thank my incredible team at school for always going the extra mile and embracing the busy and exciting ethos at the school to provide the very best opportunities for our children. They are indeed phenomenal! May I wish you all a very Happy and enjoyable Easter.
Dr Jones Headmaster
CLASS ASSEMBLIES This half-term we had 1 Ravel’s Class Assembly, which was based on Jill Murphy’s book called Peace at Last, a favourite book of all the children. The children did an amazing job of bringing this beloved book to life, and even sung their own versions of some classic bear and sleep related songs!
Year 3 Elgar also led a class assembly based on Ancient Egypt which they had studied in Autumn term 2. They were able to use their knowledge to put on a thrilling performance which depicted how people would be mummified, the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and also the process of building the pyramids. The class gave a fantastic performance and they finished with a dance to an educational version of ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’.
HISTORY EXHIBITIONS This half term Year 1, Year 2, Year 3 and Year 6 held their History Exhibitions. They showcased their work for parents to come and see. Year 1 have been learning about ‘Kings, Queens and Leaders’, Year 2 shared their knowledge of ‘The Tudors’, Year 3 have been studying the Anglo Saxons, Scots and Vikings and Year 6 have been learning about World War 2. This was such an exciting event and we are proud of the work the children produced for the exhibition.
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 2 have visited Hampton Court Palace as part of their History topics on Tudors. Year 5 have watched a Shakespeare performance in school and will start their perforcamce as part of the Shakespeare project in the Summer term. Year 4 have been at Forest School and have really enjoyed the outdoor activities. Year 3 and 4 have visited Butser Ancient Farm, where they had the opportunity to use all the knowledge and skills they have learnt as part of their History topics.
Reading Week Our annual reading festival was a huge success again this year. We started the week off with some fantastic poetry and rap workshops with the superb Christian Foley who treated the children to a taster of his own skills and he then helped the children to write their own poetry and perform it by the end of the session. He was incredibly impressed with the standard of some of the writing the children produced. On Wednesday we had the return of Hobgoblin and their production of ‘The Greatest Fairytale Ever Told’ and by all account it was! Thursday was World Book Day and it was fantastic to see the effort the children went to to dress up as their favourite book character. Key Stage Two were treated to a Michael Rosen workshop and talk which went down a storm and we ended the week with a visit from the great Jeremy Strong who held workshops and a book signing at the end of the day. The week was punctuated by in class activities such as D.E.A.R (Drop Everything and Read time), partner reading, book making, fruit and veg book character making, diorama making of the children’s favourite scenes from a book, dress-up parade in assembly and a competition to find where Wally was hidden around the school. All in all it was a superb week and we can’t wait for next year!
Science Week What fantastic experiences the children had during Science Week this year! This year’s theme was ‘Growth’, which linked to multiple areas across science, technology, engineering and maths. The children investigated plant and animal growth, discussed the impacts of economic growth on our society, explored growth in the universe and considered their own personal growth over the last twelve months. The highlight of the week was arguably the ‘Explorer Dome’, where children were shown their place in the universe in the ‘Space Show’, and how their body works and develops in the ‘Human Body Show’. We were also extremely fortunate to have our own parent STEM Ambassadors come to school and deliver talks to the children. Annick’s Insects saw the children learn all about how insects grow in comparison to humans and exploring the different stages of their development. The Wonder of Plants saw the children learn all about the astonishing properties of plants that scientists have uncovered over the last 20 years and how the dynamic behaviours of plants can be explained by using ‘the mathematics of communication’. The week culminated in a dress up competition on Friday, where the children came in dressed as a STEM ambassador of their choosing.
A huge thank you to Ms Sawala and Mr Brody!
This has been a fantastic Spring term in PE, the children have enjoyed learning and developing their gymnastics techniques. They have been practising and performing different patterns and shape with balance and control, demonstrating stretching and curling as they master pike into a forward roll. Through dance, children have learned and created their own historical and cultural dances that have included dynamics and characterisation. During games, children have learned and developed their backhand through tennis, they are mastering throwing and catching skills for net and ball games and we have learned how to work together as a unit when striking and fielding in Cricket and Rounders. Also this term, some children in Years 3-6 took part in a number of different sporting Competitions against other Ealing schools, from A Hybrid pentathlon to a virtual Athletics Competition, where agility, speed and most of all team work was needed to complete in a number of different Athletic Challenges. It has been a successful half term and we have a lot more planned for the Summer term.
PE EVENTS
LUNCHTIME CLUBS Lunchtime Clubs This half term was the start of the popular teacher led clubs, children are enjoying taking part in these and are learning new skills. Some of the clubs taking place are: Wildlife and Science Club- Year 1 children are exploring the natural world around them with the guidance of Mr Dale. Debating Club- Year 4 discuss a new subject each week and debate the reasons for and against it. Mr Waine and Mr Tauchert have said the children are very passionate about the subjects being discussed and are engaged in every debate. Tap Dance Club- Mr Coleman’s class is being thoroughly enjoyed by Year 5. They are learning basic tap steps and combining these into a dance routine. Coding Club- Mr Porter has been showing Years 1 and 2 how to use coding software to create their own games. Book Club- Ms Kemp and the children choose a text to read together and they discuss the book at length exploring the themes that are present. German Club- Mrs Gosh, our wonderful parent volunteer is teaching children basic greetings and the children have already started to understand simple statements. Newspaper Club- The team are currently busy working on their next edition. They have interviewed children and teachers for their opinions on all the recent events that have taken place. Arts and Crafts- Ms Faine has been exploring different patterns and sequences with mosaics. The children have been applying their skills from Art lessons and making their own mosaics.
Fencing Our extremely popular fencing club has returned, with Years 1 and 3 taking their turn to hone their sword fighting skills! The children have learned the correct foot placings, how to move forwards and backwards, in stance, and started to engage in fencing bouts with one another (all while wearing protective gear – of course!).
Chess Southfield participated in their first, friendly Chess tournament this year against Belmont Primary School. The children applied the skills and tactics they had learned in their Chess lessons and performed extremely well! They will have the opportunity to engage in competitive matches again when Southfield host the next tournament.
WHAT HAVE WE BEEN DOING? EYFS NURSERY This term our topic was ‘Growing’. We turned our role play area into a Garden Centre. During Science week we had a lot of fun planting seeds and seeing them grow. Our class book was called ‘Tad’ it is all about the life cycle of a tadpole who tries hard against all her challenges to become a frog, we really enjoyed reading the book and learnt about the life cycle of a frog. We also had such fun during ‘The reading festival’! We continued to enjoy our love of books. We read daily, in the morning and afternoons. We are always in the quiet area reading books with our friends. We have enjoyed our weekly visit to the library and reading with Year 6. We dressed up for ‘World book day’ and loved finding out which books our characters were from. We also had book quiz, following the clues to work out the book title. We went on a ‘hunt’ for Wally all around the playground! We have really enjoyed this half term and look forward to next term.
RECEPTION Reception have enjoyed the second half of the Spring Term. Our Topic was ‘Growth and New Life.’ We have loved exploring plants and animals. After reading Jack and the Beanstalk, we planted and looked after our own beans. We also observed how they grew and wrote our Bean Diaries. In Maths, we explored measurement and subtraction.
RECEPTION
We had two extra special weeks: The Reading Festival and Science Week. We had special visitors talking to us about their exciting jobs- a poet and a story writer. Christian Foley created a rhyming rap with us while Jeremy Strong talked to us about his characters and inspirations for his stories. We also had Hobgoblin Theatre Group act out a medley of traditional stories- we helped them put the events in the correct order. On Thursday we came to school dressed as our favourite book characters. Across the week we read, acted out and discussed Jack and the Beanstalk and Jasper’s Beanstalk- we also took a vote to choose the story we preferred. It was a close call! During Science Week we took part in many wonderful activities. We made our own bug hotels, measured each other using a range of classroom objects, created beautiful repeating pattern with leaves, and made our own greenhouses as we planted our own seeds. We enjoyed a visit from ‘Annick’s Insects’ and absolutely loved our session in the Discovery Zone, where we learnt lots of interesting facts about the solar system. To end science week, we all came to school dressed as STEM Ambassadors. We can’t wait to do it all again next year!
KEY STAGE 1
Next term we are looking forward to learning all about minibeasts!
YEAR 1
This has been an action-packed half-term for Year 1! Science Week and the Reading Festival were two major highlights of the half-term, and the children hugely enjoyed throwing themselves into the events, workshops, experiments and dress-up days that came with those two weeks. Our World Book Day dress-up and the ‘Explorer Dome’ during Science Week were two particular highlights!
KEY STAGE 1 YEAR 1
We also hosted our very own History Exhibition, where the children were able to showcase the learning they have been doing on our ‘Kings, Queens and Leaders’ history topic. We showed the parents what we have learned about monarchy as an institution, about Queen Elizabeth, about the controversial King John I and about the Magna Carta. Huge credit must go to the children and parents for the amazing History projects which were completed over the half-term, which the children were so proud to display in our exhibition! In terms of our curricular subjects, we have been busy in both English and Maths this half-term. In English we have been focusing on non-fictional writing, and the children have produced book reviews, information reports, biographies and newspaper reports to name but a few! In Maths we have been learning about the inverse relationship and how to count in multiples of 2 and 5.
YEAR 2 What a brilliant half term Year 2 have had! For the second half of spring term we focused on non – fiction genres of writing in English lessons, including newspaper reports, information texts and biography writing. This linked directly with our science, history and geography topics. In Maths, we continued to use our place value knowledge to explore other mathematical concepts. The children learnt about measurement, statistics and their 2, 3, 5 and 10 times tables, as well as our weekly arithmetic sessions, focusing on the four operations: Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division. In Science, the children have been learning about Plants. We looked again at what plants are and what they need to grow and explored seeds and bulbs in great detail. The children learnt that germination is the process where a seed begins to grow and changes into a seedling. They absolutely loved their trip to Kew Gardens and their workshop where they were able to stretch this knowledge even further! Year 2 have also enjoyed PSHE and RE day this half term. Our PSHE topic was ‘Living in the Wider World.’. We learnt: The difference between wants and needs and to explore life in different countries and we learned how to identify who to talk to if they are worried or scared about something. In RE we participated in discussions about how we mark stages in the human journey. We answered questions such as, ‘Why is life often described as a journey?’, ‘What are the main episodes in human experience?’, ‘What events do we celebrate?’ and ‘What events cause us to struggle or lament?’. The children have thoroughly enjoyed Art this half term as they learnt about landscapes and symmetry by studying of Turner’s Snowstorm and Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows. They compared the work of these artists, then the children created and evaluated their own seascapes. One of the highlights for Year 2 this term was their trip to Hampton Court Palace. Tudor times were brought to life for them and they were absolutely fascinated about what life was like in the palace during that era.
KEY STAGE 2 YEAR 3 This half term in Maths Year 3 have consolidated their knowledge of addition and subtraction. We have also worked on multiplication and division. We have been focusing on our 3,4 and 8 times tables. In English we have been focusing on nonfiction. We have studied biographies, information texts and explanation texts to name a few. We have travelled back in time and dove into the world of the Vikings and were able to take a virtual tour of the ‘Museum of the Viking Age’ in Oslo. Also enjoyed our trip to Butser Farm we impressed the employees with all of our Viking knowledge. We have continued to build our knowledge of the UK with emphasis on the South West Coast. We have learned all about erosion and how this has affected the Jurassic Coast, learned how climate effects agriculture and how tourism is a major industry in the South West. We are all very intrigued about how farmers are combining agriculture and tourism in order to grow their business. A good example of this is ‘The Big Sheep’. Over this half term we have had a variety of exciting events. We had our Reading Festival where we held a variety of workshops and were lucky to have Christian Foley, a spoken word poet, deliver a fantastic interactive session. We were amazed by how quickly he could put a poem together and this inspired us to write our own poems when we got back to the classroom. We also had Jeremy Strong deliver a workshop and he also signed books at the end of the day. The following week we had Science week where we were able to carry out a selection of experiments. We learned about optical illusions, periscopes, life on Mars and life cycles.
YEAR 4 This half term in English, Year 4 has continued to focus on writing non-fiction genres based around our topics from this half term and last. This has included a biography focusing on the career of David Attenborough, instructional texts on how to create a string telephone, an explanation texts looking at the Punic Wars and the impact on Rome and an information text discussing the impact of air pollution on our planet and environment. We have continued to have our bi-weekly Creative Writing sessions, looking at stories such as, ‘The Promise’ by Nicola Davies, which focuses on theme such as showing determination, open-mindedness and consideration towards others, which ties in directly to the schools TRUE values. We have continued to build on our knowledge of the United Kingdom with an emphasis on Northern Ireland, while in History, children have taken the opportunity to look more in depth into the rise and fall of Ancient Rome. In Science, we have begun our topic focusing on sound, and understanding that sound is made up of back-and-forth movements called vibrations. We have been fortunate enough to enjoy a wide variety of activities and workshops during the Reading Festival, such as talks and demonstrations led by Christian Foley and Jeremy Strong. Following this, we have had the pleasure of taking part in a selection of experiments throughout Science week, such as growing our own spring onions and creating bug hotels. Forest School has taken place throughout this half term, which has provided us a wonderful opportunity to feel empowered in the natural environment, while demonstrating creativity and teamwork, which has been an absolute pleasure!
YEAR 5 Upon our return from half term, we dived straight into the excitement and high-octane energy of two themed school weeks – the Reading Festival and Science Week. Throughout the Reading Festival, the children had the opportunity to hone their poetic wordsmithery with the spoken word poet, Christian Foley. Various activities, such as pocket book making, buddy reading with other year groups and a remote talk with Michael Rosen culminated in World Book Day fancy dress! For Science Week, our lab coats and scientific apparatus were donned and intricately setup to measure and assess the growth of spring onions and create other-worldly clay models of creatures that could survive the cold, hostile environment on Mars. The children travelled through our solar system in an immersive inflatable dome with stunning light projections and were guided on star constellation spotting and navigating using the North Star. We also learnt about how scientists have uncovered a link between a shark’s length and their age – which led to pupils measuring each other’s height and collating their data on a bar chart in ascending age order, to assess whether this correlation may be applied to humans. For non-fiction English, the children have written several knowledgeable and academically diverse texts – from explaining the life cycle of a butterfly (which links to the prior half term’s topic of living things), to an instruction text on carrying out the spring onion experiment. In Maths, we have mastered the calculation of perimeter, area and converting various units of measurement, volume and capacity. We have also explored the precision of geometric angles and applied our reasoning skills to various perplexing logic and word problems. Our historical adventure has moved on from the rise and fall of Napoleon and the French Revolution to the harrowing history of the transatlantic slave trade, building on our prior knowledge of colonialism and its legacy. Our geographic focus has shifted from the UK to Australia, where we are developing our understanding of how other countries and climates contrast and compare.
YEAR 6 Pupils excitedly entered the second half of the term eager for the Reading Festival week to commence, thinking of their costumes based on books they’d read weeks prior to the day. During this week, students enthusiastically participated in workshops including an interactive session with Christian Foley. After this, pupils were visited by none other than Jeremy Strong who graciously spoke about his experience becoming an author and his successes since beginning this journey. They absolutely loved participating in question time at the end of the talk. The highlight came at the end of the week with both classes dressing up as their favourite book characters – seeing their teachers dressed as their favourite book characters as well was a real treat. It wasn’t long before the excitement continued as Science Week drew closer. Year 6 could hardly contain their excitement when they found out they would have the chance to enter “The Dome” to learn about outer space. Our experts were so knowledgeable and the learning pupils received from this workshop was invaluable. The students themselves answered some pretty challenging questions with a knowledge that shocked even the leaders of this activity. Activities for the week included recording the growth of spring onions over a two week period, calculating the age of a shark based on its length and observing the behaviour of light by creating periscopes! This term, topics continued with a focus on WWII in History, learning all about the human and physical features of South America in Geography and investigating all things to do with ‘Light’ in Science.
‘Ex Corde Vita’
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