Happy New Year to everyone and I trust you all had a wonderful Christmas

holiday. This term we are delighted to welcome new pupils Maria, Reuben,

Alexander and Norman in Nursery and Manzo in 1M, we hope you have

enjoyed your first week with us.

Over the holidays there have been staff changes due to Miss Seymour resigning

from her position of Year 1 Class Teacher. For the remainder of the academic

year Mrs Johnson will be teaching in Year 1 (1J), Mrs Clarke will be leading

Nursery and Mr Simon Pearce will be teaching the lessons Mrs Clarke was

teaching last term. Mr Pearce was formerly the Director of Studies at my

previous school, Yarm.

The first day of term was fantastic in school, the children were so excited

finding out what their new themes were going to be. Reception visited Energi

on the first day of term as part of their theme ‘Bounce’. Year 1 children had all

received a golden ticket over the Christmas holidays inviting them back to

‘Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Story’ - they found that their classrooms had turned

into a scene from the factory. Year 2 came to school dressed as Victorians for

their theme ‘Hard Times’ based around the story of Oliver Twist. Year 3 came

to school dressed up in home clothes, to find out when they arrived that they

were off to visit Yorkshire Wildlife Park as part of their theme ‘Planet Earth III’.

The school environment looked amazing and my thanks to all of the staff for

their incredible work producing these stunning classroom settings.

On Wednesday the Year 1 children had a very energetic morning taking part in

Street Dance sessions. Stacey Didcock once again was brilliant, teaching the

children new moves and dances. My thanks to Mrs Hicks for organising these

sessions through Sainsbury’s Active Kids.

On Thursday Year 2 and Year 3 travelled to Sheffield Arena to take part in the

Young Voices Concert. I am sure that the parents who were in the crowd would

agree that the children were absolutely amazing! I was so proud of them all for

their singing and dancing. They learned so many fabulous songs and even sang

in Welsh ‘Calon Lan’. A particular favourite of mine was when they sang ‘You’re

The Voice’ and, using the British Sign Language for the deaf, signed throughout

the song. One of the songs made popular by Gareth Malone’s Military Wives

Choir ‘Stronger Together’ was particularly poignant, as the whole evening was

about the Young Voices choir of over 5000 children. When they sang together

it was incredibly powerful. The children were treated to music from Natalie

Williams, Tabby Callaghan, a performance from The Beatbox Collective (please

click here to find out more about these artists) and Street Dancing from the

amazing Urban Strides (please click here). My thanks to all of the staff who

accompanied the children, the parents who came to watch, Mrs Hayden for

organising and teaching the children all the songs and dances and of course, to

our incredible children who were sensational and were a pleasure to

accompany.

What a fantastic first week back! Have a lovely weekend.

CoMPasS You can follow us ...….. Newsletter No: 14

Friday 13th January 2017 Registered Charity No: 1141329

WEEK COMMENCING 16th JAN

DIARY:

Mon Y3 Ukueles Club (lunchtime)

Rec Speech & Drama

Y1 Multi Sports

Y1 Creature Creations

Y2 Maths Club

Y2 Hockey

Y2/3 Yoga

Y3 Tennis

Y3 Tag Rugby

Tues

8.30 am CSF Meeting (Dining Room)

Y2/3 Choir (lunchtime)

Y1 Team Relays

Y2/3 Sports Club

Y1/2/3 Ballet

Y2/3 Karate

Y2/3 Chess

Y3 Speech & Drama

Y3 Swimming Club

Wed Rec/Y1 Yoga Bunnies (lunchtime)

Y1 Speech & Drama

Y1 Coding

Y2 Art Club

Y3 Recorders

Y2/3 Chess

Y3 Animation Club

Thurs

Y3 Ukuleles Club (lunchtime)

Y1 Art

Y1/2/3 Street Dance

Y2 Multi Sports

Y2 Library/Book Club

Y2/3 Speech & Drama

Y2/3 Top Trumps/Cards/etc

7.30pm CSF Meeting (Rayson Room)

Fri Rec Construction Club

Y1 Football

Y2 Ball Skills

Y3 Hockey

Environment Agency Flood Drop-in Session

The Environment Agency will be hosting a drop-in session in the Old School Office at St Peter’s School between 4:30 and 7:30pm on Tuesday 24 January 2017.

The session, which is free to attend for everyone, will cover essential information on what to do before, during and after a flood. There will also be an interactive model of a flood catchment area, and the opportunity to find out more about potential improvements to flood defences in and around York.

Silver

Aidan, Emelia, Rory, Pietro, Sam,

Rohan, Tristan and Emily

Gold

Daisy, Louis, Ben, Tizzy and

Margaux

Class Winners

2H

The Year 3 badminton players ended their extra

curricula club with a singles tournament. This

gave them the opportunity to put all their new

found skills and tactics of the beautiful game

into some exciting and closely fought matches

which they umpired too. They have been an

amazing group to work with and I hope they will

all continue to enjoy playing badminton in the

future. Mrs Hicks

Is this your bowl? It is in the office, please come and claim it!

Year 1 had an

energetic morning on

Wednesday as they

took part in the

Sainsbury’s Street Dance sessions.

Stacey Didcock taught the children

some cool moves showing plenty of

attitude and the children performed a

short dance at the end of their

session. Thank you to everyone who made this possible

by collecting the Active Kids vouchers last year.

WARNING!! The voucher scheme for 2017 is being

launched very soon so please shop until you drop and

bring your vouchers into school!

This week Year 3 kick started this term’s topic at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park.

Planet Earth III has begun!

We enjoyed our visit to the Wildlife Park where we saw some amazing animals including lions, tigers,

polar bears and a rain shy giraffe! We held a giant snail, a cockroach and stoked a giant lizard!

We learnt lots of interesting facts about animals and have continued this in the classroom researching

and finding out about different animals. We are becoming experts on these different animals and have

created fact files and mini reports which will shortly be displayed in our classrooms, so pop in and take a

look!

2S and 2H all had an exciting start to the term.

Everyone came dressed up in Victorian clothing, ready to

experience ‘Hard Times’! This is the name of the new

theme this term. The children have been working on old

wooden desks, using slates and ink pens. A few inky fingers

have been seen and not being able to rub out ink has been

a challenge for the children. The children have been

suitably segregated into Boys and Girls classes for much of

the week and daily drill has been thoroughly enjoyed by all.

On Monday Year 2 will be dressing up again, ready to enjoy

another wonderful drama workshop with Paul Birch from

the Riding Lights Theatre Company.

We have bounced into 2017 in Reception! We had a fantastic time at Energi Park exploring how our bodies bounce and having fun in foam pits, giant air bags and on trampolines! We continued investigating ‘bounce’ this week by seeing what type of ball bounce the highest and lowest. Visiting St Peter’s Sports Hall we looked at balls of different sizes and textures. We then did our best estimating (see our fab thinking faces!) and ordered the balls by what we thought would happen. The fun followed testing in groups and then even measuring to see how high the balls did bounce! It’s safe to say RL are springing into this term with lots of energy and fascination!

This week in Year 1 we have been immersing ourselves in our new theme: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The children have transformed our role play into the chocolate factory from the story, complete with a boiled sweet pink boat and a bridge across the chocolate river. We made chocolate truffles and flavoured playdough sweets so the classroom smelt like a chocolate factory too. A lot of our work this week has been in pairs or teams to help us settle back in with our friends and encourage the children to think how to plan together, negotiate and problem solve. For example voting for which bridge they liked best or working in groups to make tally charts for sorting sweets and deciding their own criteria.

It was great to see you all back this week, Christmas seems so long ago already! We had a very chilled out playgroup this week, some children made glittery snowmen and each of his buttons had one of our initials on so that we could spell our names. It might snow this week so you can make a REAL SNOWMAN! See you all next week.

I hope you have all had a happy and relaxing Christmas and I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy new year.

Forthcoming Events

Quiz Night – Friday 10th February 2017, 7.30pm in the Rayson Room

Sign up sheet is now in reception! Sign up your team of 6 or 8 people by Friday 3rd February.

The cost of this exciting event is £10 per person which includes food, please either give payment to me or hand it into reception. Cheques to be made payable to St Peters School. Once we receive payment you will receive your ticket for the evening.

All proceeds will go towards Clifton School Friends to enable us to continue to support the many in school projects.

Race Night – Date to be confirmed

Following on from last year’s successful race night we will be holding this fun event again, please look out for further announcements!

Parents’ Socials

Year 3 Mum’s & Dad’s Night Out – Friday 27th January 2017

Dates for your diary

CSF Meeting – Tuesday 17th January, 8.30 am in the school dining room – all welcome.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend,

Elizabeth

RS bounced into 2017 with a spring in

their step! Leading on from a successful

trip to ‘Energi’ trampoline park we

continued our topic using Space hoppers!

Over the course of the week we used

different ways to measure distance

and time using the spacehoppers. We

predicted outcomes, recorded results

and reviewed tests. We analaysed

what went well and how tests could

be improved to make them more accurate. An energetic

start to a very exciting new term ahead..!

We have had a great first week

settling back into Nursery talking

about and sharing photographs of our

holidays . We also welcomed some

new children and we enjoyed showing

them around and making new friends.

The cold and wild windy weather

inspired the children to experiment

with making kites at forest school

which was very tricky, but we worked together and

didn’t give up! Some children then chose to

make kites using their kite making skills and

after researching different kite designs. We

are hoping it will snow

so that we can continue

to enjoy the wintery

weather!