Term 4 Newsletter – March 2024
World Book Day Adventures! I absolutely LOVE seeing our pupils and staff channelling their favourite literary characters!
Our world book day celebrations provide so many additional opportunities for us all to appreciate reading and to prompt us to get more out of it! We enjoyed healthy competition with our ‘The Masked Reader’ games (pictured below!) which saw pupils guessing readers and their books, as well as a book-swap event, a whole school assembly, a literary treasure trail and of course our DEAR (drop everything and read!) which this week included a spot for pupils to share their own recommendations and reviews!
Year 2 Forest School. Pupils had fun exploring our grounds for ‘found’ items such as sticks, moss, leaves and flowers to create nature pictures. We are currently reading Traction Man in class and as part of our studies made our own nature illustration of our favourite part of the story or for inventing new adventures for him! Great work everyone, I really enjoyed your outside gallery of artworks!
As part of their Computer Science studies, our Year 5 pupils have been familiarising themselves with Crumble controllers (micro controller board), their associated components and how to write the programming used to control it. Pupils explored how the items connect together to create a complete circuit and how to construct programmes that turn a LED on and off and set its colour. Brilliant work class! Next, we will add buzzers and motors to our programme. Our pupils and I would like to thank Dartford Grammar’s Computing Department for lending us the Crumbles and associated equipment – our pupils have loved working with them!
Reception have been enjoying learning all about superheroes and explored the stories ‘Supertato’ by Sue Hendra and ‘There’s a Superhero in your book’ by Tom Fletcher. We have been busy practising reading and writing tricky words including ‘he’ and ‘is.’ We have started putting our phonics learning into our own sentences. Look at our super sentences all about the superhero in the story. We came up with the adjectives to describe the hero all by ourselves e.g. kind, strong, fast.
All of our pupils are able to access specialist music lessons and a wide range of instruments and singing resources as part of their music curriculum in class. Additionally, we have private music teachers that can be booked for KS2 children (charges will apply) on saxophone, clarinet, flute and guitar, either one-to-one or in small groups. Piano lessons are available from Y1 upwards. Please contact Mrs Greenbank our music teacher for more information ([email protected]) In the below photos Mrs Greenbank is rehearsing a ukulele piece with Year 6. They are practising hard for an end of year performance on their ukuleles.
Across the school our pupils have been making special cards for mothers, grandmothers and carers. Our Year 1 pupils made and decorated wonderful 3D cards .. as you already know!!
Red Nose Day. Across school, pupils and staff supported the work of comic relief and joined in with spreading the word by donning red noses and special comic relief T-Shirts and accessories.
Spring Concert. On Tuesday 26th March nearly 60 children from KS2 performed in the annual Spring Concert. They had practised so hard and it certainly paid off with an amazing performance. The concert began with the school orchestra, which encompasses children from Y3 up to Y6. It’s always great to see them all working together. There were also ensemble items from the older children on flute, clarinet and saxophone as well as four piano solos from Y5 children who are currently working towards Grade 1. Year 3 performed as a class on their recorders, which showcased all their learning since last September in their class lessons. All in all it was an extremely enjoyable concert. Thanks to Mrs Jarvis and Mrs Gee, our peripatetic instrumental teachers, for joining us to support the children. Any enquiries regarding instrumental lessons at the school, please email Mrs Greenbank (Music Teacher) [email protected]. The below photos are from our rehearsals.
Forthcoming Dates;
First Day of Term 5 – 15th April (no clubs on this day)
Open Afternoon (for current parents/carers) 17th April (3.30pm – 5pm)
Year 3 Trip to Horton Kirby – 2nd May
Last Day of Term 5 – 24th May
First Day of Term 6 – 3rd June
Year 5 Trip to Royal London Observatory – 18th June
Year 1 & 2 Trip to Joss Bay Beach – 21st June
Year 6 Trip to PGL – 21st June
Year 4 Trip to the British Museum – 25th June
Reception School Trip – Eagle Heights 4th July
Best wishes,
Charlotte Scott
Head Teacher
