TRANSFORMING LIFE CHANCES

Child first – Aspire – Challenge - Achieve Newsletter 20 – 7th February 2020

Dear Parents and Carers,

Today sees the school celebrate number day in conjunction with the NSPCC, although the children have been engaging in a variety of Maths activities all day to celebrate the day, I wanted to focus with parents and carers on the important work that the NSPCC provides, which comes under our Thinking Healthily curriculum area. Thinking Healthily teaches children about being healthy in mind and body, but also to make safe and healthy choices. The

NSPCC has a wide range of resources to support children and families regarding areas such as information on Children's mental Health, on-line safety and tips on how to stay safe in the home.

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/support-for-parents/ The resources are easily accessible and worth exploring. As you will be aware the NSPCC is a charity and there are

also ways in which the charity can be supported to continue to undertake the vital work that they do.

Continuing with our learning about our 'cultural capital’, this week we had a group of children sing at the O2 area with Young Voices. Children from New Horizons have sung and performed in the same arena as some of the most famous musicians and artists in the world - our children can say that they have achieved that too! The staff were

extremely proud to take the children as they displayed our thinking tools of managing their impulsivity, persisting, and responding with awe and wonderment well.

Thank you to parents and carers for supporting number day and therefore the NSPCC charity. Thank you to those

parents who waited to collect their children late on Tuesday evening when they arrived back from the O2.

Next week is the final week of term, I look forward to seeing the children's recent Cornerstones homework, as well as welcoming parents and cares to parents evening.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs J Murphy, Executive Headteacher

Diary Dates – Term 3

Year 2 - Monday 10th February – Sublime Science Workshop - £4.50 – please pay via ParentPay Year 3 - Tuesday 11th February – Temper Temper Chocolate Workshop - £15.50 - please pay via ParentPay

Year R to Year 5 - Tuesday 11th February – 4:00pm – 7:30pm -– Parents Evening Year 4 - Wednesday 12th February – Potion Workshop

Year R to Year 3 - Wednesday 12th February – 4:00pm – 6:00pm - Parents Evening Year 4 to Year 5 - Thursday 13th February – 4:00pm – 6:00pm – Parents Evening

Year R - Thursday 13th February – Reception will be celebrating the end of this terms topic with a dress up day! We would like the children to come in dressed as 'What they want to be when they grow up'. They can come to school in

their fancy dress or in their uniform, then change into their fancy dress. Whole School – Thursday 5th March – World Book Day – Information further on in this Newsletter.

Thinking Academically teaches our children to be their best self through the knowledge skills and understanding

of how to be literate and numerate. They are able to read a range of texts fluently applying a range of skills across the curriculum. Children’s, vocabulary, including speech and language, is developed through active learning which engages children in debate, drama and oracy activities. The basic skills of Mathematics are taught through recall,

reasoning, problem solving and fluency. Children develop their number agility effective to apply to range of situations with confidence.

Nursery

In Nursery this week, we have been focusing on the story "One Snowy night". The children have

been reading the narrative and sequencing the story. We have been using supporting props and

resources to act out the story. The children have been continuing to observe the change in state

and have enjoyed watching the Orbees beads expand with water. We have also extended our

phonics knowledge and have now introduce ‘I’. Children have been practicing the formations of

the letters alongside writing the letters in their own names. We have been consolidating

recognising numerals 0-5.

Year R In Reception this week we have continued to focus on our topic 'Are we their yet?'.

This week we went on a learning journey to the Vets. The children learned all about

the occupation of a vet. Children were able to recall facts they had learned about this

occupation. In Literacy this week the children practiced writing a question that they

would like to ask the vet. The children had to develop their question construction skills

and then use their phonics, segmenting skills, finger spaces, full stop and tricky word

knowledge to write the sentence. The Vet came to visit us on Wednesday with some

furry friends and the children had the opportunity to read their questions to the vet

and extend their knowledge and understanding. Reception were very lucky this week

to have a second guest speaker. We had a lifeboat speaker visit us and discuss safety

by the water and his role within the community. Children have continued to develop

their phonological awareness and have practiced blending and segmenting simple

words. Please remember our lending library is open on Monday at 3.00pm weekly.

Year 1 In Thinking Academically this week, Year 1 have really enjoyed measuring different

objects in Maths. We have learned how to use a ruler properly and to record our

answers in our books. It was very exciting today when we measured different lengths

of spaghetti and strawberry laces and then ordered them from the shortest to the

longest. In English this week, we have continued our learning of Superheroes but have

been looking at different types of comic strips before we create our own ones, using

speech bubbles and exclamation marks. We are all looking forward to wearing our

superhero T-shirts next week when we take part in our superhero assault course!

Year 2 This week in Year 2, we have been building on our knowledge of counting in 2's, 5's and

10's in order to learn our times table facts. We worked as a class to chant out the

sequences and then translated this to multiplication facts. We even managed to work

out the missing numbers in the sequences and apply our new knowledge to more

complex facts and problems. In English, we have been continuing to write our letter to

George from George's Marvellous Medicine trying to persuade him not to give the

medicine to grandma.

Year 3 This week, Year 3 have been persisting and trying their hardest during assessment

week. For our writing task, the children enjoyed writing a diary entry as one of the

three little pigs, sharing the true story of what happened when the wolf was boiled.

They were able to combine all of their learning from this term to produce a fantastic

piece of writing to showcase their skills as authors and read these out to the class!

The children have also been learning about how to calculate the speed that a journey

will take in OAA; the miracles that Jesus performed in RE and practising their sewing

skills in Art to produce a new product for Willy Wonka. Overall, it has been a very

creative week in Year 3!

Year 4 This week Year 4 have been working hard on their assessments, showing off

everything that they have learned this term in Maths and English. In the afternoons,

they have been creating mystery stories, drawing on their experience at the show

‘Wicked!’ last week. They have all been given the same starting point, their characters

must fall down a hole, but they have started to produce very different and unique

stories that we look forward to sharing with you! In our Guided Reading assessments,

we have been persisting with our inference skills and imagining how a character

might be feeling from the actions they are showing.

Year 5 This week in Year 5, the children have taken tests in Maths and English. We have

worked hard to give our best on each paper and have shown resilience throughout. In

between tests, we have revised key elements in each subject and looked in-depth at

tricky questions to know how to approach them. We have continued to read ‘Tom's

Midnight Garden’ and we are looking forward to exploring the text further. Well done

for persisting this week, Year 5. Keep up the amazing work! Year 5 also had their Time

Traveller workshop, which they really enjoyed. The children all came away with a

bank of useful knowledge.

Year 6 We have been continuing our work on Sky Song by creating our own snowy

story with the key characters in the book. We have been carefully

considering how to create tension in our stories, using techniques like 'show

don't tell' to keep the reader hooked. We are keen to finish our stories and

send them off to BBC Radio 2's '500 Words' competition! In Maths, we have

been looking at algebra and have realised it is nowhere near as tricky as it

seems! We have also been working on the order of operations using

problem solving and reasoning. We completed our sponsored activity!

Thank you to all who donated - we will announce our charity totals once we

have collected all the donation money in! Well done to year 6 for their

careful planning and enthusiasm when completing each event.

Spelling shed: The top three spellers this week are all from Year 1. Well done to Alexander L, Noah and Gabrielius. The top year group was also Year

1, with Years 2 and 5 second and third respectively. Timestables Rockstars:

Kairan, Zohaib and Hasan continue to dominate the leader board. Poplar had 82% accuracy, with Conifer at 83% and Hawthorn out front with 88%. Well done Hawthorn.

Buster’s Book Club: Buster's Book Club: this weeks winners are Year 5 with the most number of minutes read. They were closely followed by Year 1. It's

nice to see it spread across the key stages this week. Lexia:

The following children completed their minutes for last week: Isabella, Louie, Millie, MJ. Austeja. Alana, Ethan M, Ethan C and Layla.

Thinking Task…

One of our thinking keys is the Invention Key. This is where children have to devise an invention from the use of unrelated materials. For example, if they are learning about Time Travel, like we are in year 5, pupils could have

a tray of materials that they must use to try and invent a time machine. Get your green hats on and see if you can create a new invention this week!

Next week’s Habit of Mind… One of the habits of mind is gathering data through all our senses. This is about using all of our senses in order

to learn about a new topic. Rather than just thinking about what we can see, we can consider what we can smell, feel or taste. When writing, our descriptions are so much more interesting if we can consider all our

senses. If we take the time to appreciate and notice the things around us using all our senses, it can really help us to notice the things around us.

Tool of the Week… One of the thinking tools we use at New Horizons is different thinking maps. One of these maps is the bubble map, which you can see above. This map is used for adjectives. We use adjectives to describe nouns so you could put any noun in the middle of your bubble map. It could be: a place, a topic, a character, a person -

anything! You could choose a character in your story to put in the middle and use the bubbles of the bubble map to write an adjective describing that character - remember one adjective in each bubble. In the space

around the bubble map, you could write quotes from the book to justify how you know that character is how you've described or any questions you may have.

Next week’s Thunk is… Do numbers have a colour?

Following on from last week’s message about Packed Lunches, it has been wonderful to see the change in some

of the packed lunches and we are looking forward to seeing an increase in the interesting and wonderful themes

through them. The children’s Eco-Committee has been looking into packing litter and plastic free lunches and

have queried how we can, as a school, reduce the amount of plastic and throw away contents of our lunch box.

Our challenge this week is to start to say goodbye to old, warped plastic contains and flimsy plastic sandwich

wrap and to move on to a more environmentally friendly lunch box, starting an item at a time. Which one do

you think you could change this week?

On 5th March, it is World Book Day. We have chosen to adopt the theme of Inspirational Women to coincide

with International Women's Day, which is on Sunday 8th March. Each year group will be using a book about, or

written by, an inspirational woman to inspire some fantastic writing and art activities. We are asking for a £1

donation for your child to dress as a favourite book character. All proceeds will go to Action Aid, which provides

education for girls around the world.

https://www.actionaid.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/womens-economic-empowerment/girls-education

Parents are reminded that children are not permitted to bring toys into school. There have been an increasing number of incidents involving objects brought in from home where they have become distracting both in class

and on the playground. Thank you for your support with this matter.

This term we are learning about developing a Healthy Mind. Having a healthy mind means that the children will

know what determination looks like, sounds like, feels like, and that strategies such as talking, breathing

techniques and diary writing can help manage worries. Having a Healthy Mind can also help children to

understand how their behaviour affects other people and how they contribute to a positive classroom. We are

proud that these children have demonstrated excellent Habits of Mind and as such have been rewarded the

Golden Tie or have their work presented in Achievement Alley.

TEAM POINTS This week the ‘Holcombe Cup’ has been awarded to River.

Attendance Ace Pine with 100%, Damson with 98.9% and Juniper with 99.4%.

Punctuality Penny Beech, Poplar and Sycamore with 0 lates.

Golden Tie

Ash – Patrick for listening with empathy. Elm – Swayley for thinking independently. Oak – Brooke for persisting in all areas. Beech – Tess for remaining open to continuous learning. Hazel – Harrison for questioning in Maths. Maple – Bella for questioning and posing Birch – Esmae for thinking about thinking using keys. Pine – Nia for remaining open to continuous learning. Spruce – Kennedy for always persisting in her learning. Apple – Kai for persisting with learning. Cherry – Ethan for remaining open to continuous learning. Damson – Lewis for remaining open to continuous learning.

Conifer – Libby for persisting with her writing. Hawthorn – Dylan for showing persistence during assessments. Poplar – Henry C for standing up for what is right and for taking responsible risks. Juniper – Arjun for questioning and posing problems. Laburnum – Adara for persisting and managing impulsivity during tests. Sycamore – Jasmine O for remaining open to continuous learning. Aspen – Dinev for responding with wonderment and awe. Cypress – Elona for persisting in her learning. Elder – Jake for thinking interdependently.

Achievement Alley

Ash – Ava for thinking flexibly. Elm – Oliver for thinking flexibly. Oak – Jenson for persisting. Beech – Tyler-James for striving for accuracy in Maths. Hazel – Finley for persisting in his writing. Maple – Jack W.J for responding with wonderment and awe in Science. Birch – Tommy for applying past knowledge to new learning. Pine – Jesse for striving for accuracy with telling time. Spruce – Mihails for striving for accuracy in Maths. Apple – Alfie for striving for accuracy in Maths. Cherry – Oliver for striving for accuracy in his thinking globally work.

Damson – Dunni for thinking flexibly. Conifer – Riley for striving for accuracy with her presentation. Hawthorn – Varvara for striving for accuracy in her PSHE. Poplar – Daisy for remaining open to continuous learning in her French work. Juniper – Chloe for fantastic creative development and presentation. Laburnum – Jack I for excellent use of a double bubble map. Sycamore – Hope for great use of a circle map RE. Aspen – Max for responding with wonderment and awe. Cypress – Praise for thinking flexibly in Maths. Elder – Charlie–Maddison for persisting with algebra.