Newsletter
March Week 4
Friday 26th March
We are very happy to announce that as we are coming to the end of this very short term, for the vast majority of the pupils, the return to school has been very positive on their physical and mental health. On an equally positive note, the assessments carried out by the teachers have revealed some small gaps in learning but overall the work done over the lockdown period has sustained attainment.
We hope that during the holidays we get some sunny weather and everyone will come back fully rested for an action-packed Summer term.
Parent Notices
Thank you to all the parents for following our COVID rules around the site. We have seen an improvement in parents 'picking up and leaving quickly', more parents wearing masks and keeping their social distancing.
There have been a few minor issues with parking, so please be considerate when parking outside school and take notice of yellow lines (please do not park on them), help us by not dropping children directly outside the gate and please do not park on drop down curbs. Our neighbours are very patient but their driveways need to be kept clear. Thank you to everyone for this team effort that keeps our pupils safe.
There have been a few low level incidents recently where children have felt unsafe travelling to and from school. These types of incidents are quite rare, however, this is a good opportunity to talk with your child and make sure that they understand how to keep themselves safe.
Staying safe rules:
• Walk on main roads whenever possible
• Stay alert and have no distractions – talking or texting, listening to music etc
• Do not play fight or act unsafely
• Walk in a group or with a friend
• Never talk to strangers
• Always seek a place of safety like a shop and tell the adult in charge
• Always tell a trusted adult if you feel unsafe
Primary School Pupils and Rapid Asymptomatic Testing
On advice from Public Health England (PHE), pupils are not included in the rapid asymptomatic testing programme.
PHE advises that there are currently limited public health benefits to testing primary-aged pupils with lateral flow devices (LFD). Therefore, pupils should only be tested if they are symptomatic, in which case families should follow the guidance for households with possible or confirmed coronavirus (COVID-19) infection and book a PCR test for their child.
We will request that a PCR test is conducted for pupils with symptoms of Coronavirus and require confirmation of negative result before returning to school.
Rapid LFD tests should not be conducted if Coronavirus symptoms develop, regardless of age.
Please remember if your child/ren test positive over the Easter Holidays please let the school know via the office email so that we can notify the relevant year groups to follow test and trace protocols.
Nursery
Nursery are getting ready for Easter!
Ethan has spent so much time colouring and decorating his Easter egg - ready to cut out and mount. Well done Ethan, what a colourful Easter egg!!
Chris is busy cutting out a template to make an Easter chick card. He will arrange and glue all of the pieces on the card himself. Well done Chris, you are concentrating so well!
The awards go to Chris and Ethan for their amazing work!
Reception
Reception have been making the most of our outside pond area. Every Wednesday we have been putting on our wellies and going off to explore in our wooded pond area. We have been looking for treasures in nature and looking at all the signs of spring. This week we found a very unusual looking frog in the pond!
We have been thinking of ideas together on how to make fairy dens and this week we decorated stones and sticks; we even had our story time over there. We are so excited to develop this more and the children (and staff) are really enjoying our Forest School time over there.
Class awards this week go to Eli for trying really hard in his phonics sessions and Milo for his fantastic independent Easter adding and subtracting with chicks.
Year 1
We have had a great week back in the classroom in Year 1! We have been weighing in Maths, using balancing scales to measure and compare heavy and light objects. In DT, we have learnt about where some food comes from and how to prepare food carefully and safely.
On Tuesday we learnt to grate, chop, peel and prepare some vegetables. Then Miss Purse boiled the veg and whizzed it up into a delicious smooth soup. We even got to try some!
A great effort and lots of fun this week. Well done year 1!
Class awards this week go to Eva for challenging herself and always trying her best in every subject . Also to Dotty for her fantastic contributions to our discussions in our Design & Technology lesson.
Year 2
In Year 2, this week we have been focusing on Transport around our local area. On Tuesday, we went outside to do a traffic investigation and notice road signs. We walked through Victoria park, saw a big roundabout, many local buses, different vehicles, shops as well as trains going to Central London.
This week awards go to Medina for her fantastic effort into her maths work and Charlotte for her exceptionally good inference skills in reading comprehension. Well done!
Year 3
Our English writing piece this week has been associated with our History topic, Ancient Egypt. Despite being a bit squeamish at first, the children have loved hearing about mummification. Read our instructions to learn how to make a mummy!
Year 3 have also been learning about how to have a healthy lifestyle. This links to our D.T topic, 'Healthy Snacks.' The children had a blast in the kitchen as we got to make our sandwiches.
In our afternoon lessons, we have been learning about Abstract Art. We have just started creating a piece of art work inspired by Sonia Delaunay. Stay tuned to see the final master piece!
This week's awards go to Diya for her excellent behaviour towards learning and Anastasia for her improvement in our arithmetic tests.
Year 4
This week, year 4 have continued their fantastic work in art, taking all their inspiration from last week to create their final pieces. The theme for their art work this term was 'Explosive Art' and it's fair to say they all blew Mrs Craddock and I away!
In English this week, year 4 looked at poetry. We used volcanoes as our stimulus and wrote kenning poems (a two word per line poem made up of nouns and verbs) to describe them in creative and unusual ways.
Here are some examples from Aaliyah, Lois, Katerina and Aidan
Mantle-mover, Fiery-fountain, Ground-scorcher,
Crust-cracker, Ash-billowing, Town-obliterater,
Mountain-shaker, Molten mountain, Atmosphere-polluter,
Earth-rumbler, Lava-flooding, Life-changer.
This week's awards go to Alex and Zach for their fantastic effort and work in art. Well done!
Year 5
This week Year 5 have continued their work on fractions in Maths, focusing on finding fractions of amounts and multiplying fractions by whole numbers. The pupil's confidence and understanding has grown so much. In English, they have spent the week drafting their narratives based on Beowulf. For their first long piece of writing since lockdown, they’ve done incredibly well and used wonderful language and description. In History, they have learned more about how the Vikings lived and how their language has contributed to place names in England.
This week’s awards go to Benyamin and Charlie, who both used fantastic language in their writing and worked more independently. Well done, boys!
Miss Smith and Mrs Kwan
Kingfisher
We have had a busy week in Kingfisher 1! We have spent the mornings working on our assessments, all pupils have worked really hard! Pupils had fun learning about algorithms and following a sequence of instructions to complete their own algorithms. We have also been looking at plants and getting creative making pictures!
This week Kingfisher 2 have worked very hard to complete their assessments. We are very proud of their efforts.
In the afternoons there has been time for creative learning as well. Pupils have been learning about the planets and made paper mache planets. They have been baking and making beautiful music. They even made their own musical instruments.
This week's Kingfisher 1 award goes to George for concentrating and working really hard to complete his assessments!
Kingfisher 2 awards this week go to Jotham for contributing to class discussions well all week and Jack for completing his first sticker chart to earn his bronze award, well done boys!
Year 6
In RE, Year 6 are currently looking at Christianity. In this lesson, we looked at the story of Jesus and Maja (6B) demonstrated all of her learning and knowledge in her work. Jordan and Hailey's (6L) rewrites of the story were lovely. They included all of the events that they learnt about.
This week, Year 6 have been learning about different artists and the way they depict landscapes. Their final task was to produce a piece inspired by one of these artists:
Anna-Louise Felstead, Monet or Stephen Wiltshire.
Tyler (6B) has demonstrated brilliant sketching and shading techniques with excellent perspective.
Here are some more excellent examples by Arbri, Sammie, Hunkar and Gabriela (6S)
6L's awards
The awards this week goes to Andra and Jordan. Jordan's work in RE was excellent and we really enjoyed reading it. Andra is a model student and is always kind to everyone. She shows the qualities of a good samaritan and is constantly looking to include anyone who feels lonely or upset.
6B's awards
This week's achievement awards go to Andreea and Derman. Their hard work during lockdown has been demonstrated in their assessments this week. Well done!
6S' awards
The first achievement awards go to Adon and Lillie for doing exceptionally well in their assessments and making excellent progress. Great job!
The final award goes to Scarlett for always being such a kind, considerate member of the class: she is always thinking of others and will go out of her way to ensure their happiness.
Mobile Phones
It has been brought to our attention that some of our pupils have not been using their mobile phones responsibly. Unkind messages have been posted and equally concerning, pupils have been inviting older children into their messaging groups which have exposed our pupils to inappropriate language.
Please be mindful of your child/ren's phone use. Smart phones are in effect mini-computers, so the safeguarding rules which apply to laptops and tablets need to be applied to phones. All phones brought in to school are always collected by the teachers and kept until home time. However, we are mindful of phone use out of school, so are looking to schedule some workshops on safer phone use for the pupils as part of the year 6 transition. We are also exploring the possibility of including parents in safeguarding and phone use, if we are able to in the next academic year.
Skincare Related Items
Please can parents not send in lip salve and hand creams with the pupils as the younger children have been sharing them with their friends which could potentially could cause allergic reactions.
If pupils are having problems with dry skin please inform the teacher and the creams will be stored safely and the pupils can use them safely under supervision.
Red Nose Day
What a fun packed day we had! There were balloons everywhere, cakes being sold and high levels of excitement. Thank you for all the generous donations, we raised a whopping £330 which is an incredible achievement considering everything that is going on! Well done to 6B who won the 'Keepy-Uppy' challenge for an amazing 43 minutes. They definitely have some Harry Kanes and Alex Scotts in 6B! Thank you Mrs Depala and Sainbury's for donating cake ingredients. Also, thank you to Mr Sudbury for blowing up hundreds of balloons, to Diane for using her creative magic to make Red Nose merchandise and to Mrs Tate for coming in extra early and who did an amazing job making hundreds of cakes. They were key to the success of the whole day!
Downs Syndrome Assembly
This week, Miss Nicholson led an Assembly on National Downs Syndrome Day. It was really informative; the children learned about 'extra' chromosomes and how to communicate effectively with someone who has Downs.
This year’s fantastic World Down Syndrome Day video from CoorDown has a simple and joyful message at its heart…and it’s sung by the 17-Time Grammy Award winning artist Sting! The film’s message to employers all over the world is that hiring a person who has Down’s syndrome not only changes the life of the person concerned, but can trigger a virtuous circle of new opportunities for everyone. Have a listen at https:// youtu.be/SKku4RAWa4M
Extended Services
We are pleased to announce that next term some of our popular activity clubs will be re-introduced to our extended services timetable.
After a long period of 'staying at home', the importance of and need for extra-curricular activity is significant in supporting physical and mental well-being. Our clubs can provide pupils with fun, engaging and enriching activities.
Our activity clubs will operate in key stages, in socially distanced year groups and will be delivered safely by our club leaders. Planned participation will ensure social distancing guidelines are adhered to.
Activity clubs can be booked for Summer 1 online via School Money on Monday 29th March from 8am. Each club costs £21.00 for six weeks provision.
See the timetable below to find out what clubs will be available to book for your child/ren.
All clubs will begin the first week back after the Easter Holidays.
Our extended services will be under periodic review and will depend on pupil numbers and Local Authority and Government guidelines.
Breakfast Club
Breakfast Club will continue to operate in the Dining Hall. Pupils will need to be dropped off outside the atrium entrance near the ICT Suite. The Dining Hall will be set up for pupils to sit and eat breakfast in their class ‘bubbles’. Once pupils have eaten and weather permitting they will play in an outside area.
Cabin Club will operate for the main part of the session in key stage ‘bubbles’, in socially distanced year group ‘bubbles’. However, their snack time will take place in the Dining Hall. Again, the Dining Hall will be set up for pupils to sit and eat in their class 'bubbles'. After snack, Cabin will split into two ‘bubbles’ for play, EYFS / KS1 in the Cabin and KS2 in the ICT Suite, collection of pupils will be from these areas.
Barnet.Active.Creative.Engaging.Holidays
BACE Holidays is an inclusive programme for children and young people who are in receipt of free school meals. Designed to experience active and healthy activities with an emphasis on physical, emotional and nutritional wellbeing during the school holiday. Check out https://barnetyouth.uk/BACEHolidays to register!
Open Spaces Scheme
Diary Dates
March 2021
Monday 29th March
Activity Clubs go online for booking at 8am
Wednesday 31st
End of Term - School closes at normal year group times (No Cabin Club)
April 2021
Easter Holidays: Thursday 1st April - Friday 16th April
Monday 19th:
Summer 1 term begins - pupils return to school
Activity clubs begin
Coming Soon ... Toddlers 'Woods and Wellies!'
May 2021
Monday 3rd:
May Day Bank Holiday - School closed
End of Summer 1 Term - school finishes normal time
Half Term: Monday 31st May - Friday 4th June