The Week Ahead …

On the back of our fantastic learning experience last week re: the brilliant Highflyer Earth Trust trip, the children have continued to explore our seemingly ever-expanding range of physical and human features re: ‘How is our World Wonderful?’ in English this week. All the children have taken part in a number of class discussions about the types of questions that we would like to ask about how we can try to keep it ‘healthy’ and care for it in the future. It is always so heartening to see the children really enjoying their learning with some super - and well thought out – written descriptive pieces this week; particularly as we have also been enjoying taking part in several activities for National Energy Saving Week. We have recorded some great ideas as to how important it is to save energy (even how we can try to save energy in our day-to-day lives whilst in school and at home!) whilst talking about the importance of conserving energy to prevent further climate change or using less energy by identifying where we might even be ‘wasting’ it without realising … :)

In other news … we have two exciting ‘whole school’ reading initiatives for ALL year groups/pupils to report … with our first being Miss Wall asking every class to bring back their individual Class Book Review Journals. Therefore, all Highflyers have been invited to join in by adding to our ‘shared’ journal, with the children taking it in turns to complete a review (one week per child); with the children having access to several previous examples for inspiration – if required! However, Miss Wall has equally asked staff to hugely encourage individual creativity; with illustrations, diagrams, or unique layouts all MORE than welcome … ;)

Secondly, a beautifully sourced Nettlebed School ‘Book Suggestions Table’ has also been set up by the Main Office door; with all year groups now having frequent access to/encouraged to write down their very own personal recommendations. The purpose of this is, of course, to help us/them build a really diverse and exciting range of books for our school library and individual classroom ‘book corners’; so please do watch this space!

Forest School – as before - remains on Wednesday morning this coming week with the children requiring their full PE kit (including a pair of indoor/dry shoes for Art at 2.30pm with Mrs Mayor) for our Performance Sport coaches on Thursday – from 1.30pm - as timetabled. 

Our phonic focus is: Week 4 Words ending in: –y (cry) Contraction: doesn’t whilst in Maths we are continuing with our unit on multiplication and ‘early’ division – applying our knowledge in real-life situations. Regular times tables practice can, however, really help to embed learning and support the children’s problem-solving skills (predominantly 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s for our wonderful Year Two’s this term!) with our weekly Maths homework, hopefully, additionally supporting these numerical relationships every Friday/each week also. I do know that Mrs Davey recommends Times Tables practice for 5-10 minutes several times a week for the current Year 3s … so PLEASE feel free to get into the swing of things beforehand if you think your child would like to!

Reading – ‘The Dreams of Moxie Mouse and Cat Capone’ is our new shared/whole class group reader from the end of last week/into this week; therefore, any spare copies of Kongy Arrives would be gratefully received back into school (at your convenience) … with HUGE thanks …

On a final ‘date for our diary’ this coming week, Mrs Roberts has asked all classes to celebrate National Puzzle Day on Thursday – during our daily Maths session. She has also suggested that the children can be invited to bring in their own puzzles for the day - jigsaws etc; therefore, please feel free – with the promise of another exciting lesson ahead … :)

Wishing you all a lovely weekend and equally great week ahead – as always,

Mrs Winters/The HF ‘Team’