Tollgate News

December 2017

Children in Need 2017

On Friday 17th November, we took part in the National

fundraising event, Children in Need. The school council

decided to hold a non-uniform day and a cake sale. It was

great to see so many children take up the added challenge

of wearing something spotty. The school councillors chose

the best spotty outfit in their class, before deciding on an

overall winner. Well done to Leo (Jellyfish) for winning!

Thank you to everyone who donated cakes—for the first

time ever, we sold out!

We raised a total of £203.97. Thank you for all your kind

donations.

Dear Parents and Carers,

Wow, it is Christmas once again and the school is full of excited children and adults; all looking forward to the arrival of Santa!

This term the children have been provided with some wonderful learning opportunities. Early Years were little stars in their

Christmas performance "The Grumpy Sheep". Year 1 had an exciting morning with a reporter from the East Anglian Daily

Times. Key Stage 1 performed their show "Stranger in the Manger". They were fabulous. Year 3 completed their Royal Ballet

School programme with a wonderful performance to parents. Year 4 enjoyed a WW2 evacuee day. They made some very

tasty rock cakes, served with a lovely cup of tea.

We have welcomed David Nettleton, local Councillor and Steve Boor, Trust Chair to the school. They were both very impressed

with the children's behaviour and focus on their learning. We have also had 30 new children and their families join us this

term. You have all made them very welcome.

Thank you for your continued support, ensuring your child arrives at school on time and is here every day to ensure they learn

and make good progress.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I am looking forward to working with you all in 2018.

Claire Bates, Headteacher

Bury St Edmunds Christmas Fayre

This year, a group of Year 4 children took part in the fayre’s

opening parade. They took part in a workshop with Moreton

Hall Prep School to make lanterns. Glow sticks were added to

the lanterns on the night. The children carried their lanterns

through the town as part of the parade. We finished on Angel

Hill where the fayre was declared open. Well done to those

who took part—the lanterns looked amazing!

Once again, the school choir walked down to Angel Hill and

sang on the Greene King Stage. They sang a mix of Christmas

songs and some of our favourite assembly songs. The children

sang non-stop for over 30 minutes! The children had worked

incredibly hard in the lead up to this and their hard work paid

off as they entertained the crowd. Councillor Robert Everitt

who compered the stage commented on how wonderful the

children sang and how much the crowd had enjoyed their

performance.

A huge well done to all those involved.

Reception

This term we have looked at Traditional Tales including The

Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood. The

children loved it when the wolf came to visit and blew our

classrooms around. They created WANTED posters and went

searching for clues as to his whereabouts. We enjoyed making

and eating porridge just like the Three Bears. All the children

have developed the skills needed to retell

a story and have enjoyed acting out all

these different tales.

We have been really impressed with the

children’s phonics this half term. The children love to write

and can often be found writing

throughout their play. We can

tell the children have been

practising their phonics at home.

All this really pays off and helps

the children.

Nursery

This half term, in Nursery we have focused on nursery rhymes. The children had an arachnid encounter with Mrs Wappett's pet Black Brazilian tarantula Aragog! They built Lego walls for Humpty Dumpty and made Humpty paintings and collages, as well as sequencing events in the rhyme and talking about how Humpty felt and how the Kings Horses and Kings Men had tried to help him. The children found Hey Diddle Diddle hilarious - a cow jumping over the moon and a dish running away with a spoon? There were lots of fine motor activities involved with Tommy Thumb, including drawing round their own hands and creating their own finger families. They also used their 'Peter Pointers' to do mark-making and drawing in a paint tray and creating extremely effective mono-prints. Alongside all this, the children have been learning valuable phonics skills - rhyming, syllable clapping, oral blending, initial sounds and segmenting sounds in simple words. They have been learning the alphabet and using Jolly Phonics to link sounds to letters and learn the phonics actions. As a class we have been making an alphabet scrapbook containing photos of all the children and logos they have found on food containers and boxes at home.

Year One

Year 1 have had a fantastic half term exploring and

finding out all about the different ways news and weather

can be presented to us. They have taken on the role of a

News Presenter and a Radio Presenter, writing their own

newspaper reports and getting to work with Liz Nice from

the EADT. We were also lucky enough to have had

Mrs Buckland come and talk to us about her time working

with a paper.

Amongst all of this, we have also been working hard on

adding and subtracting. The children enjoyed the hands

on experience of using tools, such as playdough, Numicon

and the abacus to physically work out the sums.

The children have also enjoyed finding out about height

and length, proving differences between them by putting

themselves into height order whilst using lots of

comparison language.

The children have wowed us with their knowledge on

money, recognising the coins and developing problem

solving skills to find out

which coins we can use to

make up certain amounts.

Year Two

Right at the beginning of this half term, Year 2 went on a very

exciting (and imaginary) trip around the world, seeing different

animals in their habitats and different continents. In English, we

wrote a recount of this trip and it also allowed

us to explore different countries and use them

as our settings when we were focusing on

story writing.

We linked this to our science by finding out about different

animal’s lifecycles, basic needs and what humans must do in

order to keep healthy.

In P.E we concentrated on what happens

to the human body when it does exercise

and were lucky enough to have a dance

teacher showing us different ways of

moving. We used glitter to show how

easily germs can spread.

Year 2 are now as keen as ever to keep

healthy by making sure they wash their hands

with soap and warm water!

Year Four

Year 4 enjoyed a day as WWII evacuees. This term they have

been learning about the Blitz and the movement of children

out of London. The books, War Boy, Carrie’s War and Friend

and Foe were used as stimulus for learning. In addition, Ms

Rainford, an 85 year old lady came in to school to tell us about

her experiences of hosting an evacuee in Devon during the

war. Stories included a time when there was bombing in her

village and how they all took cover under their desks and also

when her brother lied about his age so that he could join the

army at 16. On Monday 4th December, children came to

school as an evacuee and participated in activities throughout

the morning. Highlights included: making rock cakes, speaking

in front of the green screen, breaking codes, learning to play

marbles and creating a gas mask box. Parents joined us in the

afternoon for tea and cakes made by the children.

Year Three

Year 3 have thoroughly enjoyed their topic on the Celts and

the Iron Age; this was closely linked with our English text:

Boudicca’s Army. The children have learnt facts about who

the Celts were, how they lived, how they farmed, hillforts

and artefacts. They also learnt about the different types of

characters involved during that period, including the

Romans. They acted out chosen characters with the rest of

the class having to guess who they were doing. Great fun!

Our lessons with the Royal Ballet School concluded with a

presentation in front of parents; including some of what the

children had been learning over the last half term. A small

selection of children were chosen to attend further sessions.

We are delighted that they will be continuing on their ballet

journey.

Christmas at Tollgate As always, Christmas has been a busy and exciting time in school. We have had a decoration afternoon, play rehearsals and performances and of course a lovely Christmas dinner! The children have all worked incredibly hard on producing some fantastic Christmas performances; learning their lines, singing some very catchy tunes and putting every effort into the rehearsals. Each child has made a Christmas tree decoration which can currently be found on one of the trees around school. These will all be coming home on Tuesday 19th December. We must say a huge thank you to the kitchen staff for Christmas dinner. Cooking 250 dinners cannot be easy. Father Christmas joined us for lunch and gave out the Christmas biscuits for dessert! On Tuesday 12th December, the whole school were treated to a pantomime performance of Dick Whittington. They absolutely loved it! Our thanks go to the Friends of Tollgate School for organising this for the children.

Important Dates

January

February

March

Attendance

Our attendance for this term is 94.5%. This has slipped below the our

target of 96%. We appreciate that there has been a lot of illness this

half term, but please encourage the children to try and make it through

the day. Year 4 have once again dominated our

NIMO (Not In, Miss Out) award for this half term.

If your child is absent then please let school know

by 9.30 am on 01284 752742. You can leave a

message on the school absence line or contact the office.

Art Workshop

On Thursday 30th November, Realise Futures came to school to run a Christmas arts and crafts workshop for parents and

children in Reception and Key stage 1. 20 parents and children spent the afternoon making cards, angels, snowmen, reindeer

food and Christmas masks. We all had a lot of fun, especially with all the glitter and sequins.

3rd PD Day

4th Children return to school

5th Eco Council & Gardening Club

15th Primary and Middle School

Application Deadline

30th Astronomy Evening (at CU)

7th Blast Off! (selection of Y4)

8th Trust Evening of Dance

9th PTA Disco (3.30—4.30 pm)

12th Half Term

19th Children return to school

1st World Book Day

27th Parents’ Evening (3.40—7.30 pm)

28th Trust Concert

29th Break Up for Easter

Notes from the Office

Applications for primary and middle school places must be

made to Suffolk County Council by 15th January 2018. Thank

you to everyone who has already made their application.

Any outstanding payments for dinner money, Happy Harbour

or Nursery should be made to the school office. In the New

Year, we will be making it easier for you to keep up to date

with school dinner money payments by accepting them

through ParentMail. Look out for updates and information

coming soon!

Our before and after school care facility is getting very busy. It

really helps if you make your bookings in advance so that we

can make sure that we can accept all the children and avoid

disappointment.

Merry Christmas and a Happy

New Year from all the staff at

Tollgate Campus