Friday 29th April 2022

The Eastnor Express

"To Inspire and Achieve"

Summer Term Diary Dates (Covid restrictions permitting)

Monday 2nd May: BANK HOLIDAY MONDAY

Tuesday 3rd May – Young Voices Concert

Thursday 5th May – Tag Rugby

Monday 9th – Thursday 12th May – KS2 SAT’s Week

Friday 13th May – Tag Rugby Tournament

15th to 21st May - Christian Aid Week

Wednesday 18th May – Guide Dog Visit – Class 1 and 2

Thursday 19th May – Guide Dogs Assembly

Thursday 19th May – Swimming starts for Year 3 and Year 6

Friday 27th May – Last day of Summer 1

Wednesday 8th June – Team Photos

Thursday 9th June – Phonic Screening

Sunday 12th June - PTA Summer Fair

Monday 13th June - Friday 17th June - Year 4 Multiplication Check

Thursday 16th -JMHS Year 5 Information Evening

Friday 17th June – Father’s Day Celebration 2.30pm

Monday 20th June – End of Year Performance Dress Rehearsal at JMHS

Tuesday 21st June – End of Year Performance Matinee 2pm at JMHS

Tuesday 21st June – End of Year Performance Evening 6pm at JMHS

Thursday 23rd June – Class 3 – Lifepath

Thursday 23rd June - JMHS Year 5 Taster Day

Tuesday 28th June – Sports Day

Thursday 30th June - Pyramid Prom

Thursday 30th June – Rounders Tournament

Friday 1st July - Monday 4th July - Isle of Wight Class 4 Residential Trip

Thursday 7th July – Year 6 day at JMHS

Friday 8th July – Final Attainment Reports Home

Wednesday 13th July – Leavers Disco

Thursday 14th July – Eastnor Adventure Day

Friday 15th July – Leavers Day Out

Wednesday 20th July – Leavers Service

Wednesday 20th July – Last Day of Term

Pupil Voice

Class 1 - Julia: "I knew my numbers and wrote them by myself."

Class 2 - Millie: "I try really hard with my reading and I read all the time."

Class 3 - George: "For answering all the questions on the Platinum sheet"

Class 4 - Joe: "I tried really hard with my sketching and am proud of the shading I did."

Reading Raffle Winners!

Many reading raffle tickets were given out across the school this week! Raffle tickets are awarded to those children who read 3 or more times during a week. A child from each key stage is then selected at random and, as our reading champion of the week, they get to choose a book to take home.

Our winners from last week are pictured below. What a fantastic achievement.

Well done to those children who received raffle tickets this week. Keep up the fantastic reading, as not only will you be in for a chance of winning the raffle next week but you are helping yourself to become a confident and competent reader!

Has anyone got a troublesome Dog?

Class 4 hope their new pets stick around!

Just before the holidays, Class 4 had a very exciting delivery of 10 Indian Stick Insect eggs. As part of their Science learning in key stage 2, pupils need to be able to compare the life cycles of mammals, insects, amphibians and birds, so it was decided that it would be a good idea to do some of this learning by observation (and we wanted some class pets!).

We were lucky enough to have a nymph hatch very quickly and the children aptly named it Woody. Having learnt that the eggs can take months to hatch, the children were very excited to have a baby stick insect so quickly! However, then Miss Watson took the net, the eggs and Woody back to her house over the holiday, where 7 more hatched in quick succession, much to her surprise!

After a rather bumpy return to school from Malvern on Monday morning, the 8 nymphs are now safely back in the classroom where they enjoy hiding from adults and children alike for most of the day! We anticipate the remaining eggs to hatch soon and look forward to watching the insects mature over the next few months. It is likely that the children will all become experts in insect life cycles in no time at all!

Thrive

As always, our Thrive Thursday was in full swing this week with groups, activities, challenges and stories occurring all over the school. During group sessions we read the story “The Colour Monster”, which introduced the concept of feeling muddled and how, if we allow ourselves to feel our feelings, they are much easier to understand. We talked about how different people have different feelings and how everyone can react in different ways. We shared our thoughts on what might make us happy, sad, cross or worried and then thought about techniques we could use to help us with these feelings. The children as always, were very supportive of one another and enjoyed sharing strategies and techniques which work for them. We then gave each feeling a colour and thought about the physical symptoms these feelings might have, which will help us to identify how we are feeling when we are in the moment.

All classrooms now have a new set of Thrive challenges to work on and complete over the next term and it will be wonderful to see the children working on those key tasks related to their development stages such as making choices, beginning to think about cause and effect and beginning to show determination and resilience in the face of challenge – a very tricky thing to do but one we instil in our children from the very first day they start at Eastnor.

If you would like any more information about the Thrive Approach and how we use it at Eastnor to ensure every child thrives and reaches their full potential, please speak to Mrs Tart or Miss Fisher, who will be more than happy to help you.

A warm welcome to Mr Williams

Hello, my name is Mr Williams and I will be on placement here at Eastnor until the end of this term, and the school year. I have enjoyed my time with Class 2 immensely this week and look forward to seeing what the rest of the term has in store.

Staffing Updates for September 2022

Miss Patchett has made the difficult decision to seek a new challenge in her career (outside the classroom!) which will mean she will be saying goodbye to us at the end of the summer term.

After completing her teacher training year and two further academic years at Eastnor, Miss Fisher has also decided the time is right for her to find her next teaching job in a larger setting to further enhance her experience.

We will shortly be undertaking a rigorous recruitment process. There has already been a lot of interest from some extremely high quality applicants. We will update you when we have further news.

Class 4

It has been so lovely to welcome the children back into school this week. It sounds like they all had a lovely Easter break filled with fun!

The start of a new term is always an exciting time as we begin new topics across the curriculum and a new core text.

In English, the Year 6 children have been doing lots of important grammar revision and the Year 5 children have begun to explore our new core text 'Love That Dog'. In Maths, we have begun our next unit of work on Volume.

As ever, links are made where possible between subjects in order to make learning memorable and to enable children to make meaningful links. This term, lots of our learning is linked with space and I am looking forward to venturing out into the depths of our solar system and beyond with the children. In Science, our topic is ‘Earth and Space’ and the children have begun the unit by highlighting and sharing what they know already about the solar system. I have already been so impressed with their knowledge and recall and am sure that, by the end of the half term, they will have learnt a great deal more. The Mars Rover, ‘Curiosity’ is our focus for our Computing learning this half term as we try to answer the question: “How can we gather data from space?”. In our lesson on Wednesday, we watched an exciting video representing the rover’s long journey to space and found out about how it is equipped to gather information. We will be moving on to learning about binary code in the weeks to come and find out how quickly data can be transmitted from space.

In French, the children have begun their learning on the topic ‘Les Planètes’ in which they will explore their knowledge of space using French vocabulary. The main focus of this unit will be ensuring adjectival agreement when speaking and writing in French. This week, in their lesson with Mrs Young, the children compared the names for the planets in French and in English and found that they were quite similar but sounded different when said in French.

In History, our new topic is Ancient Greeks (a firm favourite of mine as the children know!) and this week we began by locating Greece on our world map and placing the Ancient Greek Empire in its chronological context. Understanding that this was a complex time in History and that the Roman Empire, the Egyptian age of the Ptolemies and the Ancient Greeks all overlapped is something that can be tricky and so it is important to ensure that children understand this at the beginning of the topic. We will be going on to explore Ancient Greek language, art, religion, politics and mythology, before considering the legacy that this great civilisation left behind.

In Art, this week, we have begun our new topic on ‘Still Life’ by sketching some objects and looking at how important it is to frame our compositions. Next week, the children will have the chance to bring in some objects from home that our meaningful to them in order to compose and sketch a still life study.

In PSHE, our focus for the half term will be on ‘Safety and the Changing Body’ as we explore how we can look out for our own safety and the safety of others. This week, in our lesson, we discussed alcohol and the effects that it can have on people, both in the short term and the long term. The rest of the topic will cover puberty, pregnancy and first aid.

In RE, our new topic was introduced and the children discussed the way that the Gospels are structured in The Bible. We looked at our enquiry question together: “How do Christians decide how to live?” and talked about the links that these decisions have with The Bible and Jesus’ lessons.

After a busy and fun-filled week, I am so looking forward continuing with our learning adventures in Class 4 this term!