Newsletter
January Week 3
Friday 21st January
It is unbelievable to think that this Friday marks mid- point in our first half term of the year and although we have not had any snow, due to the position of the school playground, it can be quite icy when we have had a very cold night. For this reason, families may be directed to come through the front door to avoid crossing the main playground because it can be very slippery. Please be mindful, especially of the younger pupils who are vulnerable when they run ahead and when going through narrow entrances. If parents/ carers need to speak to a member of staff at the beginning or end of the school day, and it is very crowded, please allow access to and from the classes and use to office to give your message and the office staff will make sure it gets to them.
Times Tables Rock Stars Battle of the Bands
Battle of the bands is back! Starting Monday 24th January, the children will have one week to play as much TTRS as possible to earn points for their class. This time we will be having Year 6 vs Year 3 and Year 4 vs Year 5. Let's see who the champions will be this time!
5 Star Award
Credit to our Tracey and Faye in the kitchen, not only do they work incredibly hard to produce meals of a very high standard , they also ensure that hygiene is maintained at every level to achieve the highest grade of 5 stars.
Congratulations for meeting the standard every year - you are star performers!
Netball Competition
Children from Years 5-6 were selected to participate in our netball inter-house competition against other schools. This has been our first netball competition in nearly two years! The children represented Livingstone brilliantly. We took two teams and each team played four matches. Out of the eight matches played, we won four and drew one which is a great score record.
Movie Night
We had a brilliant movie night on Thursday. The student council would like to thank all the children and teachers that made the night so enjoyable!
The Student Council would like to invite children in Year 3, 4, 6 and 6 to a movie night on Thursday 27th January. It will be a FREE event, with popcorn and juice available.
To ensure pupils are able to watch the film in full, we still start the film at 3pm and finish at 4:30pm. Pupils will be picked up from outside their classrooms.
Please let your child's teacher know if you would like them to attend.
Please do not provide snacks for your child unless they have particular allergies. Thank you.
Nursery
Here in the Nursery, we have been continuing to learn all about Winter. We have enjoyed making our own snow using cornflour and water and making animal tracks in the snow. Here, Esmae has made some penguin footprints and then compared them with the footprints of a Polar Bear. Great work, Esmae!
Immanuel has enjoyed learning all about the winter animals and making lots of tracks in the snow. He can now say 'Polar Bear' and 'Penguin' Later, we read 'Fox in the Snow' together and he was so interested in the story. Well done, Immanuel. You concentrated so well!
Kingfisher Nursery
Kingfisher Nursery have had a very icy week!
We continued looking at 'The Gruffalo's Child' with our focus this week being on the icy weather. Children enjoyed exploring our Arctic play table, enjoying small-world play with Arctic animals and using plastic ice-cubes to build ice towers and igloos. We even had our own igloo in our class that children had the opportunity to climb into and hide from the cold weather!
Children worked really well to use tweezers to move plastic ice-cubes to count, with some matching one-to- one correspondence. Children enjoyed watching colourful ice cubes melt as we used them to mark- make.
What another brilliant week, well done Kingfisher Nursery!
Reception
We have been super busy in Reception finishing off our learning about the story of The Gruffalos Child. We have been writing about the Big Bad Mouse and the children have remembered fantastic language from the story. In Maths, we have been making our own 'numberblocks' and printing them with paint! We have been ordering them, discussing what the numbers are and looking carefully at how to make 4 and 5.
During our daily calendar we have been discussing the season 'Winter' and the types of weather and things we see during that time. Using sticks collected in the pond area during forest school, we made winter trees after looking at lots of pictures. We hope that making snowflakes and enjoying winter activities will bring the snow as we are very excited for it!
Please read the reading materials given in the book bags this week and continue practising using speed sounds book (including previously learnt sounds!)
Miss Purse's phonics group: sh, ch, th, qu, ng
Miss Edwards group: sh, th, ch and qu
Miss Knappett: c, k, u, sh
Tiyah - for a great effort in phonics and writing this week
Cody - for trying a variety of activities this week
Year 2
Year 2 have been working really hard in Maths this week with money. We have been using different coins to make combinations of money, comparing amounts of money and completing some problem solving involving money. Next week we are looking forward to starting on pounds as this week we have focused on pence.
In English, we have started a new unit using an animation to help us with our writing called the lone robot. We have created an emotions graph for the character who starts in the forest and ends up getting on a train and taken away to a factory. We have written sentences using conjunctions to extend our sentences. Next week we will start to write the story about the robot, watch out for our narratives!
In the afternoons, we have been enjoying our science topic of living things and their habitats even more and we have been creating our own paper chain food chains for our class display!
This week our achievements awards go to Soroiyan for her excellent progress in Maths and to Kevin for his brilliant use of conjunctions in his sentences.
Year 1
This week, Year 1 have focused on place value with numbers up to 50. We can explain how many tens and ones are in a number and show this number by drawing it as well as representing the number using diennes, tens frames and numicon.
Our writing is improving every week and we are nearly finished Set 3 sounds in phonics. We are also trying to use our 'story-teller' voices when we read our stories for the third time.
We began our Art topic by discussing Picasso and Cubism. We look forward to exploring more abstract art next week. Great work Year 1!
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Achievement awards this week go to Kigen for his excellent Maths homework and to Zachariah for his bold Cubist portrait.
Kingfisher 1
Another very busy week in Kingfisher 1, well done to everyone for all the hard work!
We continued looking at traditional stories in English. This week we looked at 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' and have enjoyed acting out the story, discussing the themes and describing the characters and their actions.
The children have worked hard during their phonics and fine motor sessions and are improving all the time!
We have been adding and subtracting in Maths this week using a variety of resources. The children are making good progress.
As always the children enjoyed their Creative Curriculum Day and topic lessons in the afternoons.
This week's achievement award goes to Mario for beautiful blending in his reading. Well done Mario, keep up the good work!
Year 3
This week in Maths, we have been multiplying 2-digit numbers by 1-digit numbers. We have practiced various methods to work out these problems such as drawing our lots of and using our formal method (short multiplication.)
At the start of the week, we wrote our set on instructions and published our work. The children worked very hard to create their big write. Well done, everyone!
Our afternoons have been very busy! Throughout the term, we will be having computing lessons. Our first lesson was about creative uses of I.C.T and how we can present information. In partners, we created a PowerPoint presentation online to share our facts about forces and magnets.
On top of this, we have started art which the children are very excited about. Our focus is abstract art and it has been wonderful to see the children's interpretations of what they see and used inspirations from famous artists to create our own abstract piece of art.
CGP Books
Maths- pages 12-13
English-pages 46-48
Awards this week go to Zyan for his fabulous set of instructions to explain how to make a crumble and Muthara for her excellent enthusiasm in art and using a range of colours and shapes to create her own inspired work.
Year 4
This week in Year 4, we have been continuing our learning on volcanoes and how to swim. Their hard- working attitude and determination towards swimming has made us all very proud and they should all be proud of how far they have come in such a short space of time. After a whole week of swimming, I'm sure we are all going to enjoy a good rest this weekend!
In class, we have been studying the recent eruption of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai volcano in Tonga, the most explosive volcanic eruption in the last 30 years. We have looked at the structure of the volcano and its lactation on the ring of fire, what caused it to erupted so violently and the devastating effects that it has caused, not only in Tonga, but around the world. Year 4 have shown great interest in this natural disaster as well as a great deal of empathy towards those who have been affected.
CGP:
Maths: page 24 and 25
English: page 26
This week's awards go to Grace and Uzair for the excellent effort in swimming. Well done!
Year 5
This week, the children have been drafting their Beowulf narratives, ready to edit and publish next week. They wrote vicious fight scenes between Beowulf with one of his foes: Grendel, Grendel's mother or a fire-breathing dragon. They worked hard to make them interesting and include all the grammar they practised.
In Maths, they've been learning how to divide 4-digit numbers by a 1-digit number, and how to write remainders as fractions.
Their afternoons have been spent learning about the wider world in PSHE, focusing on democracy and why stereotyping isn't a good thing to do. They took part in mature discussions and really impressed their teachers.
CGP Books
Maths: page 25-26 (written division and word problems)
English: page 72 (hyphenating prefixes)
Please see some of their finished pop art self-portraits from last week below; they did an amazing job!
This week's awards go to Maggie for her progress with division, and to Zack for his problem-solving in Maths - well done!
Year 6
What a busy week we have had in Year 6, this week. We all learnt a lot from the Kindertransport workshop delivered by The National Holocaust Centre on Tuesday. We learnt about the journeys many children made alone to escape the Germans. Noah then shared with the class how his Zaida made this journey and his experiences. It was a very moving tribute.
In English, we are writing our long writes and they constantly impress us with their creativity and in Maths, we have finished our algebra topic and will be moving on to decimals, next week.
This week's achievement awards go to Keira for her lovely language chosen to create a purposeful atmosphere and Lily S. for always pushing herself and trying her best in everything.
Kingfisher 2
This week in Kingfisher 2 we have been learning about and calculating mathematical statements for both multiplication and division. The children have been using and drawing arrays to support their understanding and explored the commutative law of multiplication.
In English, we have been planning the plot for our comic strip narratives and creating our final version of the comic using the key features we have learnt about, such as captions, speech bubbles and action words. They have done a great job!
This week’s achievement award goes to Zack for his fabulous imagination, when planning his comic narrative. We loved his ideas and he used some fantastic language.
‘The laser beam hits Monster Pink in the eyes and he melts!’
‘Saint Noble has saved the civilians!’
Nightingales
This week in Maths we have been looking at solving addition and subtraction word problems using the calculation strategies we have learnt.
During English, we have been learning about playscripts and have enjoyed acting out some alternative fairy tales and writing our own scenes.
Our Year 4s have been really enjoying their swimming lessons and are looking forward to next week's.
This week's the award goes to Josh for excellent participation in role-play activities and writing his own script. Well done Josh!
Diary Dates
January 2022
Wednesday 26th:
Football match vs St. Catherines - 3.30 pm (Home)
Thursday 27th:
School Nurse visiting Reception and Year 6 for height and weight measurements
KS2 Movie Night - 3:00 - 4:30 pm
Monday 31st:
Netball match vs Churchill - 3.30 pm (Home)
February 2022
Wednesday 2nd:
Football match vs Sacred Heart - 3.30 pm (Home)
Monday 7th:
Children's Mental Health Awareness Week
Year 6 trip to RAF Museum
Activity Clubs for Spring 2 go online for booking at 8 am
Tuesday 8th:
KS2 Cross Country Competition
Wednesday 9th:
Girls Football match vs St. Catherines - 3.30 pm (Home)
Thursday 10th:
Year 6 PGL meeting for parents/carers and pupils (face to face)
Monday 14th - Friday 18th HALF TERM
Monday 21st:
Pupils return for Spring 2 term
Activity Clubs begin for Spring 2
More dates will follow...