Acorn Class

As part of our learning about the World we are finding out if our parents played with some of the toys we play with today. We brought in our favourite toys from home and shared photos of our parents with their favourite toys. Lots of the children didn’t recognise their parents as children but they certainly recognised some of the toys. We are continuing our learning this week with a class toy shop. Edwin used his super phonics skills to make a sign for the toy shop and we are learning the names of different coins. 

Oak Class

In Outdoor Learning this half term we have been following instructions on a map to find the treasure. First we had to mark on the landmarks on the school playground and then create the route to follow. At the end of each session we discussed how important it was to make it clear whether you should go in front or behind the pirate ship and also add some arrows to show the direction.

 

Willow Class

Willow Class have been refining their green fingers over the course of the past few weeks! We have been busy planting trees as part of The Queen’s Green Canopy (QGC), a tree planting initiative created to mark Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022. Everyone across the UK is being invited to plant trees and we have added our contribution.

The class spent quite some time thinking about the best place to put these trees and we discussed what hopes we had for them in the future. We hope that future Barnby pupils will enjoy the shade of these trees for many years to come. 

Our Science topic investigates how plants thrive and survive. We are in the process of conducting several experiments. We have celebrated the germination of our sunflowers and are eagerly watching our rainbow chard grow into a variety of vibrant colours. Our hope is that once the sunflowers go to seed we will be able to take our own seeds home and continue the process to help support those all important pollinators!

It has been quite the green theme this term. We are excited to see what shocking learning we will discover next term when our Scientific investigations turn towards electricity. Watch this space!

 

 

Chestnut Class

This term in Chestnut class we have been taking care of 6 chicken eggs in an incubator. We were all extremely excited to have a new bundle of life in our class. Our first egg that hatched was named Lucky. Lucky was identified as a hen. Our second chicken to hatch was Jim - he was later confirmed as a cockerel. He hatched during the middle of a Maths lesson! Our last chicken to hatch was Dorito who was the smallest and youngest girl of the three. Sadly we didn't get all of them to hatch. 

Chestnut class enjoyed looking after the chicks as they grew - volunteering to clean their cages, staying in to tame them by picking them up and some of us were lucky enough to take them home for the weekend.

Sadly we have had to let them leave our class as our Year 6 pupils are taking part in SATs soon and need to concentrate a lot. We loved taking photos with them. They have gone to good homes now.

Written by Millie and Isabelle Chestnut Class

 

Our Social Action Project this term

We have also been busy creating a positivity garden named ‘Kindness Rocks’ where we will be spreading positive messages to the pupils and families of our school. We have designed a rainbow theme and each rock that will be included will carry a message that people can read and reflect on each day. We have all been very excited to complete this project.

Walk to School Week

Last week the children at Barnby took part in Walk to School week. The Junior Road Safety Officers and Mrs Jackson were really pleased by how many children took part and the different ways children came to school including scooters and skates.

Pupil Parliament

We have had a successful two weeks organising events and raising money for worthwhile causes.

Pupil Parliament were keen to support Comic Relief this year, asking pupils to wear something red and to bring in a small donation. They counted the money and were pleased to report to pupils and parents that £71.60 had been raised.

Spencer in Year 6 sent a letter to Mrs Scott and asked  if we could raise money for the Red Cross Ukraine Appeal. The children designed and made a badge in the colours of the Ukrainian flag. Pupil Parliament then organised the badge swap and took photos of the event too. This raised £125.00 for the Red Cross Ukraine Appeal.  

 

We are very proud of the FRIENDS groups, facilitated by Ms Danks. Supporting pupils to develop their social and emotional awareness, learning strategies to build positive friendships whilst also identifying how they can support others to do the same. Pupils have shown great kindness to each other and this is evident in their behaviours within the class and around the school. “I like to have a space where I can talk about how I am feeling and know someone will listen and support me.” “It’s helped me find people like me.”

Pupils at Glebeland strongly felt that they would like to do something to help support the people of Ukraine. It was decided and agreed for Mrs Ives cookery club to make a large batch of cupcakes to enable every child in the school to decorate them in the same colours as the Ukrainian flag. The delicious treats are being sold in a cake sale with all proceeds going towards aiding civilians of Ukraine.

 

PDP News

The school council and Mrs Carter have been focused on how they can also support our school community. They have set up Gardening Club on Monday and Tuesday lunchtimes with the objective to transform areas around the playground and school field. Keep an eye out for their blooming displays!

During lunchtimes, we have the wonderful football coach, Daryl, lead football club focused on developing pupils skills and techniques. Many of our pupils have and are involved in playing for local teams and are keen to progress in the sport. So, PDP have decided to raise funds to purchase quality footballs to enable others to realise their potential. On Friday 8^th April, all pupils and staff can come to school in their sports kit. Any donations received will used for the purchase of quality footballs.

Enrichment is running strong at Glebeland with pupils having access to a range of opportunities to develop their creative, sporty, investigative or literary streak:

Mrs Softly has been inspiring the next group of artists during Art enrichment with collage, sketching, and blending.

Mrs Franklin is leading Times Table RockStars club for those who just can’t get enough of challenging each other with times tables facts!

Miss Bettinson has continued to nurture the readers and next generation of authors during Book group, accessing a range of fiction and non-fiction books.

Mrs Gibbs’s Lego group have let their creativity soar as they build wilder and more complex structures.

Our latest addition’s this term have come from Mrs Ives who is leading the Cookery enrichment group to display their inner chefs in sweet treats. The pupils have learnt how to make shortcrust pastry, French apple flan and a lattice cherry pie, all from pure ingredients, delicious!

Also, Miss Woolatt has taken on the sporting role of delivering Dodgeball to some very energetic KS2 pupils.

Reception

Robins have been trying to answer their big question "Are dinosaurs extinct?".

To do this we have looked at what the word extinct means and considered other animals which are in danger of extinction and what could be done to protect them.

We considered how we know dinosaurs existed when they lived so long ago and discovered that Mary Anning found the first dinosaur fossils and that palaeontologists are still discovering new species of dinosaur from fossils they are finding even now.

We made our own dinosaur fossils from salt dough and have been digging in the mud outside looking for our own fossils. We have thought about where dinosaurs lived and how they raised their young, and what could have happened to make them all disappear.

Year 1 and Year 2

Woodpecker class have been working on an instruction writing unit in English.
The children were very eager to find out what the mysterious creature was that Mrs Ives saw running across the field early one morning! They practised asking and answering questions in order to name the creature and then brainstormed ways to trap it. Miss Bettinson then used the children’s ideas to write a set of instructions. Over the next few weeks, the class unpicked these instructions and discussed the features and toolkit that they would need to use when writing their own version of the model text. The end result was a class instruction book where you are likely to find 'How to trap...' instructions for a variety of beasts and household pets.

Year 3 and 4

Starlings have been learning to write a 'tale of fear' in English lessons. The children have used talk for writing to tell the story 'The Nightmare Man'. They then practised writing sentences to describe objects that looked scary in the dark and they described their character's reactions. Lastly, the pupils wrote their own tales of fear by changing the scary character and the events in the story. 

Year 5 and 6

Red Kite’s computing topic this term is looking at how we can use code to create our own learning games. We started the unit by exploring the different functions on the website and by creating 'sprites' that can move and change on command. We then learned how code our 'Sprites' to ask maths questions and to check the answers. Finally, we have been testing each other's games to identify 'bugs' and then adapting our coding to fix them. 

At the beginning of February the whole school dressed up with a numbers theme in order to raise money for the NSPCC and at the beginning of March they all dressed up for World Book Day with donations going to the NSPCC. These two events raised a fantastic £100.73.

We also had a ‘Stop and Read’ afternoon which all the children thoroughly enjoyed.

 

Class 2, Henley Community Primary, when they had a firefighter come to visit for our Time Travellers - Great Fire of London topic. He showed us his real helmets dating back from 1990’s to present day for a chronology and evolution of how they have progressed for ease and safety is the user. We compared the equipment that they had in 1666 during The Great Fire of London by looking at leather buckets and wooden carts on an iPad and then looking at huge shiny red fire engines and hoses. The children loved trying on the helmets and finding out about the differences between the past and present day.

Last Thursday, Class 3 went to Foxburrow Farm for a day of mapwork, orienteering and minibeast hunting. Luckily the weather was glorious and the children came back much more confident with reading maps and following directions. They found a huge number of newts hiding under the logs in the orchard but were told not to touch them as newts are cold blooded and humans are warm blooded.

On the 11th March, all the children in Key Stage 2 at both Henley and Helmingham Primary School got together for a creative writing day in order to celebrate the 25th anniversary of J.K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. We were placed into our Hogwart's houses and spent the day creating new magical creatures. We then planned and wrote non-chronological reports to educate the wizarding community about these new, fascinating creatures. We had a great day together and some of the writing we produced was AMAZING!

The U11 Basketball team travelled to Inspire Suffolk on 1^st March to take part in the Suffolk School Games Competition for our area.  The competition was organised into two leagues. The girls would play as a unit in the first half of a match and the boys would play the second half.

We were well prepared and excited to begin the first match against Halifax and won 4-1 which was a great start to the competition.  We went on to win the next two matches against St Johns (3-1) and Colneis (9-0).  We scored some super goals from a long distance and were quick to defend down the court.  Henley faced Morland in the last match in the league which proved to be the toughest so far resulting in a 2-2 draw.  We were delighted when we discovered we were the winners of league one and we would face St Matthews, the winners of league two in the final.

The final was exciting from the outset, although St Matthews picked up an early goal.  Henley were determined and kept up the pressure throughout, stealing back a goal in the second half.  It was very tense, but Henley attacked with conviction and scored again, winning the match 2-1.  Henley won the Competition with an amazing performance from the whole squad.

Class 1 at Henley have been spending lots of time outside this week. We’ve enjoyed the changeable weather and the early spring sunshine. We’ve been digging the vegetable patch, playing outside in the rain, writing in the sunshine and building with friends.

Number Day at Henley

On Friday 4th February, the Greenfields Schools celebrated NSPCC Number Day. The children dressed up as 'Anything to do with Number'. There were maths related activities all day and then we all met up for a zoom assembly to show off our costumes. The celebrations finished with a themed cake sale.

Our Class 2 Circus Day was linked to our Topic: The Circus, we learned a lot about history, the first form of similar entertainment which was the Circus Maxiumus in Rome, Italy. We discussed in Geography where in the world and on the map this was. We practised coordinates in maths to find the circus tent, food vans, dog agility etc on a circus map. We wrote a 'wanted: circus acts' poster in English and lots of beautiful descriptive writing to describe circus actors using adjectives and adverbs. We used our curriculum threads: chronology to make a timeline of past and resent circus' and comparison to compare the similarities and differences of them. We spoke about how the Romans left a huge legacy and discussed their civilisation, community and culture in the Circus Maximus and cause and consequences of it. We spoke about how we now have lots of different forms of entertainment but that we do not do much chariot racing anymore, we do not often have many exotic animals in the circus anymore as it was not very kind. 

We finally celebrated our end of topic knowledge by practising circus skills in a PE skills day where Mrs Sturmey dressed as a funny clown! Class 2 practised new skills and built links between prior learning and new skills by using pedalos, balancing plates whilst walking on a 'tight rope', juggling, flipping over on a pole and we had a circus show which some other teachers joined us to watch. We had so much fun and used many of our curriculum drivers such as our Learning Pi hexagons: participation, collaboration, imaginative and creative, determined and resilient. 

 

 

The Owls children have been learning about the story 'Jasper's Beanstalk'- our other core text for this term. We look at this story daily, reading the text and the story map to learn the plot. The Owls were very excited when we received a letter from Jasper, the main character, asking us to make him a beanstalk! The Owls worked collaboratively to build a beanstalk from recyclable materials, and it didn't take long for Jasper to scamper up it! 

A few days later, we found that the beanstalk had wilted and fallen down, so Jasper sent us a new letter, this time with some real beans to make a real beanstalk! The Owls children have planted the beans themselves, and show great care for them by ensuring they are placed by the window (so they get lots of air and sunshine) and giving them water to help them grow. 

The children in Owl’s room have been bird watching! We looked at some bird identification posters and talked about the birds, learning their names. We went outside to see what we could spot.  We got very excited when we heard and saw some birds flying over the garden, and watched the seagulls as they landed on the roof and counted these. We also looked for birds in the trees and talked about where their nests might be. We recorded our findings and discussed these at group time.  This led to a conversation about other birds, including owls so we found some pictures of different types of owls, discussing what they looked like and their different names.

You could do some bird watching in your garden or at the park! 

This week the Squirrel children have been exploring different materials and different ways we explore resources. This has included painting bubble wrap with our hands and paint brushes, making salt dough decorations, exploring the paint with our feet, and using corks to create marks on our Christmas trees!

The children were able to recall what activity they did the previous day and what part of their body/resource they used to complete that activity.  Some children were able to link the different body parts they used to songs we like to sing, for example 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' and 'Hokey Cokey'. 

The Squirrel children used very good sentences and vocabulary during these activities. Children were overheard saying, 'This paint is very cold', 'Pop, pop, pop the bubbles', 'It's slippery', 'The paint tickles my feet', ' We need to be careful when we go into the kitchen, the oven is very hot!' and ' The Christmas tree is gigantic, like mine at home!' 

Making ‘Spot the Dog’ fairy cakes

This week in the Hedgehog room the children have been baking their very own Spot fairy cakes. They cut up the butter, measured the ingredients and then had a go at mixing all the butter, caster sugar, flour and eggs together. Some of the children were keen to fill up the cases with the mixture. After the cakes were cooked, the children decorated them with yellow icing to show Spot the dog and used chocolate chips to represent Spot’s spots.

As you can see, they look very yummy.

 

What a day we had celebrating the 25^th birthday of World Book Day.

Pupils engaged in activities throughout the day based around the theme ‘you are a reader!’

We had our own World Book Day party, we shared our costumes and told the rest of the school a fact that we know about our character. Each class has a winner who received a £5 book token. The winners were:

Seedlings – The fairy from the book ‘That’s not my Fairy’

Pine –The little Mermaid from the original Hans Christian Anderson tale. Parents had helped their child to understand that this came before the Disney version!

Juniper –Willy Wonka who stayed in character through the day.

We held a reading café and got to eat a fruit snack while children read in mixed class groups.

There was a house book quiz, which resulted in Waveney and Dove drawing first place, closely followed by Deben and Orwell.

We looked at the bronze reading challenges on Learning Pi and each child was able to achieve one of the challenges during the reading café. Parents have now been asked to login and record their child’s achievements from the day.

Gressenhall

Year 5 and 6 children have been on a visit to the Museum of Rural Life in Gressenhall. On their visit they learn about life in Victorian times including the use of steam and took part in a realistic Victorian school lesson.

The Red House Aldeburgh

Year 1 and 2 children visited the home of composer Benjamin Britten and tenor Peter Pears for a day of music. The theme of the day was ‘how does Disney music make us feel?’ The children were involved in some fantastic learning opportunities based around Benjamin Britten and enjoyed listening to, reading and making some music! It was a pleasure to hear the staff at Red House comment that the children were a credit to their schools.

Collection for the Ukraine

Children, staff and parents collected items of support for families in the Ukraine. A collection box was set up in the school entrance hall and a full list of items required sent home. The morning following the distribution of the letter the school entrance hall was already beginning to fill. In all we donated a car full of items.

Further to the school collection some of our pupils held a book and toy sale to raise money for Ukraine. They raised £311.53 in total and have donated it directly to a local man called Pete who is driving to Ukraine for the 2nd time on Thursday. The money raised will be used to buy medical supplies for the hospitals.

Red Nose Day 2022

A school Council chosen charity for this year. Some of our eldest pupils arranged a number of competitions, in their own time, and provided prizes; guess the favourite cake, the wackiest dresser and name the teddy bear. Thank you to you all.

In classes, we looked at the reasons we are fundraising. Seedlings and Pine, or Pinelings as we call them collectively, talked about resilience and overcoming barriers to achieve something. We created our own jars of courage listing all the things we could think of that had been tricky to overcome, but we had achieved in the end.

During the afternoon Seedlings, Pine and Juniper joined together to create a giant obstacle course. We were resilient, collaborative, resourceful, participated, were independent thinkers, built links, were adaptive, purposeful and took risks.

Altogether we raised £137.

On a lovely spring day Ash class went on a walk around the lovely village of Middleton focusing in on their science objectives for this half-term - looking at the changes that take place throughout the seasons, thinking about how the weather changes depending on the season and why the length of the day varies throughout the year.

Back at school they wrote a collaborative text, being a ‘collaborative’ learner has been one of our Learning Pi characteristics focuses this half-term.

A Beautiful Spring Walk

Written collaboratively by the children of Ash Class Inspired by our walk through Middleton village - 7^th March 2022

 

We are going on a Spring walk.

We are going to find a pooh stick.

What a beautiful day!

We’re not scared.

Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp over the wooden bridge!

 

We are going on a Spring walk.

We are going to watch the river flow.

What a beautiful day!

We’re not scared.

Tra la, tra la, we sing as we march along!

 

We are going on a Spring walk.

We are going to find lots of Spring flowers.

What a beautiful day!

We’re not scared.

Squelch, squelch, squelch, squelch through the sticky mud!

 

We are going on a Spring walk.

We are going to find fluffy alpacas.

What a beautiful day!

We’re not scared.

Swishy, swoshy, swishy, swoshy through the long, green grass!

 

We are going on a Spring walk.

The birds are singing Spring songs.

What a beautiful day!

We’re not scared.

Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet the birds are making nests!

 

We are going on a Spring Walk.

The sun is warm on our faces.

What a beautiful day!

We’re not scared.

Tip tap, tip tap back to school for us

 

Rendlesham has designed some art work to celebrate its diverse curriculum. Four areas of the school have been updated with stunning images linked to our curriculum. Many thanks to Mrs Woodruffe for her hard work in designing and planning this project which has created a real wow factor to the communal areas in school. We can't wait for parents and other visitors to come in and see the transformation.

Last week the children celebrated a week of amazing science activities. We kicked off, on Friday11th  with Professor Nitrate and his incredible experiments that created such a buzz that children had already decided science was the best subject ever! This was then built on throughout the following week with fantastic support from parents  and staff. Children created experiments at home which were so individual; we were all fascinated to see the science selfies and read the children's annotations of their activities. Last Friday was the finale, where children dressed as inventors, scientists, explosions and anything science related! We had some amazing costumes ranging from Marie Curie to blown up scientists. A science fair was created in the atrium and children from the older classes demonstrated some experiments and all children got to explore the wonderful models children had created at home for the event. The day ended with water powered rockets taking off from the playground and a huge round of applause for Mrs Brown for creating such a wonderful week of activities and for generating such a passion for the subject she loves the most!

Year 5 and 6 boys from Rendlesham have taken part in a football competition at Ipswich Town, 2 great wins saw them through to the quarter finals but a cheeky goal from the opposition ended their run with a 1-0 defeat. 

Huge thanks to Mr Fisher for organising the event and taking the boys to the stadium. Well done team Rendlesham - this is our first competitive event for some time so it's great to see some wins happening already. Keep up the good work and well done for showing such determination and respect throughout the day. 

 

Spring has sprung a very different picture this year for everyone to the last two years and it has felt liberating to slowly resume a little bit more normality after the last twenty four months.  A small part of normality for life at Southwold Primary School is the strong links we have with our local community.

Southwold Town Council celebrated Commonwealth Day in a traditional ceremony held at Gun Hill on the 14^th of March, Commonwealth Day.   We had a beautifully sunny walk to meet the Town Mayor Cllr Will Windell on the hill and watched on gazing over the sea whilst he read the Commonwealth Affirmation along with a special message from The Queen.

The theme of this year's Commonwealth Day was 'Delivering a Common Future' – which highlighted how the 54 member countries in the Commonwealth family are ‘innovating, connecting and transforming’ to help achieve goals like fighting climate change, promoting good governance and boosting trade.

Back at school the idea of the celebration gave us much to think about and consider.

On March the 22^nd, we were treated to a very different musical experience when we were joined by Robert Gildon, a professional baritone opera singer and Nathan Williamson.  I don’t think any of us were quite prepared for the sound that he produced when he opened his mouth and started singing Schubert’s ‘Die Forelle’ – a song all about a trout being caught by a fisherman.  The song was in German and had the children and teachers spellbound.  This was all after a rigorous vocal warm up that Rob led, that had us all participating in a range of sounds we never knew we could make and dazzling actions.  The children impressed Rob with their eagerness, passionate ideas relating to the music and never-ending questions.  Thank you to Southwold Music Trust for funding such an amazing opportunity for our children.

      

 

Oak class went on a brilliant educational visit on Monday 28th Match to the Red House in Aldeburgh. The Red House is where Benjamin Britten the musician lived. We were able to explore the house where he lived and see all his wonderful collections of plates and shells. We also got to go into the museum and try on the head pieces for one of his productions of Noah's Ark. One of the best parts was definitely the surprise performance from a harpist called Zoe. Who played a mixture of lullabies and Disney classics. She even chose children to come and have a go on her harp. At the end we got to compose a piece of music to play over a scene from Mickey Mouse's The Sorcerer. The children had a fantastic day and were fully engaged and learnt lots of wonderfully interesting facts about Benjamin Britten.

 

We are very proud to announce that the children and staff of Winterton Primary School and Nursery held a sponsored Fun Run in aid of the Winterton Coast Watch appeal and have raised in excess of £1,200 which for a small school is INCREDIBLE!

Wearing the most fantastic array of seaside themed fancy dress costumes, the children enjoyed beautiful weather for the 1.5 mile run, jog and walk across the dunes to the now redundant site of the Coast Watch Tower. It was lovely to be able to give something back to a community that has supported us so much over the last few years and is something that we hope to continue in the future.

Some of our running club have taken part in the School Games Cross Country.

The Year 4s ran 1200m, the Year 5s ran 1400m and the Year 6s ran 1600m. The children had a great time and what a great experience to be involved in.

 

Our children have been busy this term we’ve been working on our learning characteristics of independence, collaboration and determination. 

In Early Years amongst many opportunities, the children have been exploring the invention of the wheel and after ready Mrs Armitage on Wheels they began exploring the bicycle.

Our children in Years 1 and 2 have demonstrated excellent determination to create working cars in their Design and Technology work. They persevered to ensure their wheels rolled and their car travelled.

In years 3 and 4 they’ve been learning about sound and how we hear. They linked their science and topic work together and discovered about the invention of the telephone.

 

 

 

 

In years 5 and 6 they’ve been improving the computing skills using a microcontroller (Crumble) to answer the question: Do you always get out what you put in?