To all our wonderful Highflyer families

I am sure you will all agree … what a fantastic sports day we all had – with the weather just right; and the Year 2s being absolutely brilliant! Therefore, a HUGE congratulations to all our amazing HF athletes – who positively excelled themselves both ‘on’ and ‘off’ the track/field … and, of course, well done to the winning team, Demeter! Your support and care was greatly felt by all – to ensure such an incredibly happy and successful day – with, we hope, ALL the children feeling rightly very proud of themselves – as we certainly were :) …

This week, our history topic (on Monday afternoon) is learning about 'Who a monarch was in the past compared to the present day'.  We will be thinking about what a monarch was able to do a 1000 years ago – in contrast to King Charles III’s traditional yet evolving role today … and discussing what his current duties ask, expect and have, historically, required from him. Also, this week we will be continuing our exciting, and ever-enjoyable, Science topic on mini-beasts - investigating their habitats and understanding what different environments they need to survive. Week 1 has already given us a great amount of fabulous fun - as incy insect fans this past week - using our meshed pooters (handheld insect vacuums which allow us to safely collect bugs without touching them), magnifying pots/bug viewers (and hand-held glasses!) – to examine ‘up close and personal’, alongside our minibeast classification guides and junior Bugnoculars to finish off inspections through various viewing circles :) Butterfly nets and a wormery to follow – so, fingers crossed, our searches through our Forest School area provide just as fruitful as the big field/vegetable patch!

Forest School, once again, continues on Wednesday morning with Anne, Miss Douglas and Mrs Shrimpton (from 10am) with our Performance Sport coaches supporting the children to play a series of fun multi-sport/outdoor/team games on our All-Weather Pitch or within the Walled Garden (depending on which can offer the children the greatest degree of shade!?) on Thursday afternoon (from 1.30pm) - as timetabled …

Our penultimate spellings will be tested on, as usual, Monday morning during this coming week - with our last list of ‘new’ spellings given out then. For the following week, our final of the year, we shall simply be having an informal practice of our learnt Common Exception/High Frequency words which will not be tested/quizzed etc - including the conclusion of our end of year reading assessments and Term 6 Writing piece (for our white ‘best’ folders) to move up with the children into Discovery Class from September.

In terms of phonics, once again, we shall be reviewing the phonics taught over the last year - remembering the spelling patterns for differing graphemes that were similar in sounds; but will include some revision activities from before in our independent booklets. Our skills of proof-reading and partner sharing (to spot and, hopefully correct errors!) - including dictation - will be also practised.

For the last two weeks of Maths, we will also be completing our position and direction unit – whilst ensuring we have some real-life learning ‘fun’ with our corresponding yet great selection of practical maths games and problem-solving tasks as well. We also have an additional plan to continue practising our 2x, 5x and 10x tables – pushing onto our 3x, 4x and 6x; whilst revisiting our previous unit on statistics - including data, graphs and understanding how to 'read' a bar chart/pie chart within Science. We are still, however, using position and points of a compass (to ensure that our links within our geography and learning compass points combine - and that the children are feeling more confident with this added life skill at their fingertips!) …                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Events: Monday – Lower School to provisionally set to watch the KS2 dress rehearsal performance from 1.30pm of 'Midsummer Night’s Dream' … (tbc) …; however, given that this week's temperatures are expected to steadily rise again to the upper 20 degrees our timetables, as before, may vary slightly – with ‘flexibility’ being a sensible key to ensuring not only the children’s comfort but also well-being/hydration in such unusual ‘highs’ of exceptional but glorious summer sunshine! However, we would remain – as always - ENORMOUSLY grateful if all children could PLEASE have their own sun-cream applied before school – especially due to those children whose skin may not easily tolerate another’s child’s chosen brand if inadvertently shared – however, ‘generous’ and ‘kind’ they believe they are being towards one another… aaawww – bless them ;) with, of course, their sun-hat (wide-brimmed if at all possible?) and a full/clean water bottle every morning … which we promised shall be regularly topped up!

Wishing you all another lovely week - especially as by this time next week our adored Highflyers will have had their first taste of life in Discovery Class; and always seem to grow another foot in the air when they know what eagerly-awaits them in their terrific year ahead – and the many more adventures they shall SO happily undertake ‘together’!

Don’t like to type where has this year gone but …!?! And … gosh … how we shall miss them …

With very best wishes – as ever,

Mrs Winters and the HF ‘Team’