Upload
others
View
1
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
“Shaping bright futures together”
Spring Term, 12th February 2021 in Lockdown
News from Mrs. Peacey
Here is the beautiful Ashton Tree of Happiness, now on display in the corridor in school, ready for when we all come back together and made with all the contributions of thoughts about what makes us happy from children in each class.
Well, we have made it to half term, I hope you are all looking forward to a good break away from your screens over the next week and hopefully when we come back there may be news as to when we can re-open the school. Next week the teachers will not be monitoring class emails as they need a break too.
I have some news to share with you, Mrs Stephenson has announced that she will be retiring from this August. This newsletter isn’t long enough to be able to say all I would like to about how lucky we have been to have Mrs Stephenson working in our school. Her energy, positivity and amazing ideas have inspired a whole generation of children in Ashton who have been exceptionally lucky to have been taught by her. She is a hugely valued member of staff who always keeps an eye on everyone’s wellbeing and we can’t begin to say how much we will miss her. We do however wish her well and really look forward to being able to have a wonderful party when restrictions allow to show her how much she has meant to all of us.
During half term, please get creative with an entry for the Art Competition, the poster with full details is attached to the newsletter. We can’t wait to see what you come up with and will put them all on show in the school. The closing date is 26th February so you have two weeks to get busy. Good luck. Here is a link to the poster: https://www.ashton.worcs.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/6.-Art-Competition-Final.pdf
Can you help school raise funds for much needed IT Equipment? Please take a look at the information here: https://www.ashton.worcs.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/6.-IT-Donation-Open-letter.pdf
Children were reminded this week how to keep safe when using the Internet. More information is available here: https://www.ashton.worcs.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/6.-Online-Safety-Newsletter-Feb-2021_Ashton-Under-Hill-First-School.pdf
COVID Update
Should your child receive a positive test at a weekend or
during the holidays
please ring or text 07709987018 and leave a message.
“Shaping bright futures together”
Well, what an exciting week it has been for Acorn Class!
You may well have seen the BBC news reporting about the
ongoing alien activity in and around Ashton under Hill. This
week the children discovered that the round silver object
left behind on the roof of the school by the departing alien
spaceship was in fact an alien egg which hatched on Tuesday
leaving a small, lonely and hungry alien at loose in the village.
Various passers-by spotted the alien and notified Mrs Brown
who then gave us clues about its appearance so we were able
to draw pictures and we made posters to let people know
what we were looking for. What excitement there was when,
early yesterday morning Mrs Barnett spotted the lonely alien
outside school and managed to take a few photos before it
disappeared. The children wrote lovely letters offering food,
shelter, love and friendship to the alien which was so kind. It
was with mixed feelings that we heard on this morning’s news
that the little alien had been rescued by his family but NASA
have thanked Acorn Class for the role they have played in
ensuring good interplanetary relationships.
For more photos of our Acorn adventures, please look at our class blog at
https://www.ashton.worcs.sch.uk/news/acorns-news/
ACORN C
LASS N
EW
S
This week in Acorn Class our theme has been ‘friendship’ and the
children have been busy thinking about how they can be a good
friend to others and have been carrying out lots of small acts of
kindness to brighten up other people’s lives. So, we have made
cards and pictures to send to friends and family and we are putting
together an animated collection of ‘cheer up ‘pictures to send to
local nursing homes. We have painted friendship pebbles, and
drawn chalk pavement pictures to brighten up the lives of passers-
by and have made some wonderful ‘recipes for friendship’ and
kindness trees.
In celebration of ‘Chinese New Year’ today, we have been learning about the celebration and enjoying
various linked activities including making lanterns and Chinese dragons, trying out
Mandarin writing and tasting Chinese food. We hope that this coming ‘Year of
the Ox’ will be very different to the outgoing ‘Year of the Rat’!
“Shaping bright futures together”
CLA
SS H
AW
THO
RN
N
EWS
Hawthorn children have been working very hard this week, whether at home or school, and we’re all ready for a well-deserved half term break.
In English, the children pretended to be a soldier injured in
the Crimea and wrote a letter to Florence Nightingale,
thanking her for her care and excellent nursing skills. To
top it off, they wrote out their letters in best handwriting
and had a go at making them look authentic with the aid of
a wet teabag! They achieved fantastic results, as can be
seen in this photo.
Y1s are now working on numbers to
50 and began the week by sorting
an amazing range of items into
groups of 10.
Y2s have continued their work on
statistics using tally charts,
pictograms and block diagrams to
represent their data.
And finally, we’ve been celebrating Chinese
New Year, finding out more about it every
day. Coincidentally, our greeting this week
was Ni Hao which means ‘hello’ in Cantonese.
The children had a range of arty-crafty
projects to have a go at, such as a fortune
teller, a folding dragon and Chinese Zodiac.
Welcome to the year of the Ox, one and all!
We’ve now come to the end of our Transport topic. Futuristic
vehicles have been designed and made from junk modelling and
evaluations completed. We’ll be setting up a special gallery on
the website where you can see the children’s amazing
creations. We also took time for an end of topic quiz via Google
Classrooms and were incredibly impressed by everything the
children have learnt. Well done, Team Hawthorn!
In science, Humpty Dumpty faced a big problem - he kept falling off the wall and having to be put back together again! The children’s challenge was to investigate the best material to wrap around him to protect him against breaking, but it also had to be comfortable to wear and not too heavy! Goodness, what a challenge! The children both in and out of school had a great time investigating, as the pictures show.
“Shaping bright futures together”
NEW
S F
ROM
OAK &
WILLOW
We cannot quite believe that we have come to the end of this extraordinary half term –
it feels like it has sped by, whilst at times, we have felt very frustrated that this
lockdown has continued to last for so long. We cannot express how thrilled we are with
the level of engagement and enthusiasm we have seen from the Key Stage 2 children
during this time. They have continued their learning with great resilience and produced
some fabulous pieces of work. We know a lot of this has been down to the support you
have provided them and we are very grateful, as we know at times how challenging it has
been for all involved!! We all deserve a well-earned break next week and both the Mrs
T’s will be avoiding any screen time – we hope you will do the same. We hope that the
children have plenty of opportunities to play and get lots of fresh air and find things to
entertain themselves. Even enduring a bit of boredom – it does them good to be bored
sometimes – that is how they learn to be resourceful!
We have had some excellent Google Meet experiences this week. Nearly all of Willow class have read to Mrs Tulley, and we have thoroughly enjoyed our meet ups; chatting about books, sharing stories and catching up on our news and keeping in touch. Willowers have also met up twice for story time where Mrs T has read to them and if only virtually, have shared some special time together as a class or year group. Oak have also experienced this via daily Google Meets with Mrs Thompson. In this time, they have shared their news together in morning and afternoon registration sessions. Also, these sessions have allowed them to read out parts of their English work or look at their volcanoes and have invaluable socialising opportunities with their class mates. We will continue to develop our use of these sessions over the next few weeks.
Maths this week has had a Money
focus for Year 3, they have been very
good at counting it, and knowing what
they can buy within a budget. Great
life skills being practiced. Year 4 have
learnt about perimeter and have been
busy counting squares and problem-
solving using lots of regular and
irregular shapes. Year 5 have been
reading and interpreting data in tables,
which has given them some good
opportunities to practice their
addition and subtractions skills as they
have been finding the difference and
comparing numbers.
“Shaping bright futures together”
Oak’s English work has been centred
around figurative language, learning
about oxymorons, metaphors, similes
and personification. All this will
contribute to helping them to continue
to improve the quality of the
sentences they write. Willow Class
have been using their grammar skills
from last week to help them create
adventure stories with clear
structure. They have produced some
very exciting and interesting stories
with twists at the end and have been
incredibly creative!
In PSHE our theme this week has been Chinese New Year and on Wednesday afternoon the children learnt all about this celebration and created some lovely work to reflect what they had learnt.
To help us to continue our Music lessons through Lockdown, we have had access
to YUMU which has allowed us to listen to and appraise different songs. The
children have had great fun over the past couple of weeks singing along to
different songs including Happy and Dancing in the Street. They do little tasks
to go with each song for example doing drawings inspired by the music or
reworking the lyrics.
“Shaping bright futures together”
more
NEW
S F
ROM
OAK &
WILLOW
We came to the end of our Geography topic this week with a ‘big make’! The volcanoes you produced were amazing all different shapes and sizes, some dormant and some very active! We really enjoyed sharing the children’s work and watching the videos you sent in of eruptions. Thank you very much for helping your child with this task and we hope they did not cause too much mess!! Enjoy this selection of your handy work:
We hope you have a relaxing break and take some time out away from any routines or screens.
We are very much looking forward to starting back next half term, with Mrs Clements back
on the team and beginning our new topic on Romans to keep those enquiring minds busy.
Look out for the invite to our ‘Back to School’ Google Meet Roman quiz at 9.15 on Monday
22nd February. We want to kick off the new half term with some fun and to see you all again!!
Our very own
Worcestershire Ring
of Fire!!