We very much enjoyed our Reception children leading our assembly on Thursday. The children did brilliantly, retelling some of their favourite stories and treating us to some excellent dancing! Well done London Class!

Also on Thursday, a group of Year 3 girls represented the school brilliantly at a local Richmond schools' football tournament. A huge well done to Alexa, Clara, Anastasia, Mila, Elsie-Lou, Monika, Amelie and Millie-Jayne, who showed excellent teamwork and attitude in their four games. Thanks also to Mr Johnson for organising and coaching another successful tournament. Picture below. 

Thursday was a busy day! In the afternoon, our School Council travelled up to St Paul's Cathedral for the annual LDBS Church School's New Year service. We used the train and the bus to get there and back - the children were so sensible and really looked after each other. The children were brilliant at the service itself, representing the school amongst a myriad of others at the service, which we all enjoyed. Thanks to our new governor, Mrs Jodi Timbou, for accompanying us. Pictures below. 

On Friday, we finished the week with a whole school 'Rocksteady' concert, in which around 4o of the children performed their songs on various instruments for the rest of the school! Picture below. 

Strike action

As per the email earlier this week concerning strike action, please do make plans for childcare on Wednesday 1st February, as the school will be closed to all classes. I know that class and school closures are both inconvenient and disruptive for working parents and thank you for your patience and understanding. I will keep you updated if there are any changes and will let you know about the three further dates as soon as I can.  

Please note that the final two days of possible industrial action (Wednesday 15th and Thursday 16th March) coincide with parent meetings on those two evenings. To avoid any potential disruption, it is our intention to move the parent meetings to Monday 13th and Tuesday 14th March instead. The staff INSET day remains on Friday, 17th March, when school will be closed. 

Parent internet safety workshop

We have organised for our Richmond Council online safety expert, Mr Peter Cowley, to come and lead a parent workshop for us on the morning of Friday, 10th February, from 9-10.30am. Please strongly consider coming along to the session, aimed at helping parents to ensure children are safe online. Please can you let the school office know if you plan to attend, so that we can plan seating accordingly. 

St Mary's prayer group

Every Friday morning after drop off, a group of parents meets in the bungalow, to pray for the needs of the school. Anyone is very welcome to join, from 9am. We are very grateful for the prayerful support this group offers every week. 

Class Assemblies 

You are warmly invited to come along and watch the children lead collective worship on the dates below. All the assemblies take place straight after drop off, at 9am in the school hall:

Thursday, 23rd Feb - Year 3
Thursday, 2nd Mar - Year 5
Thursday, 9th Mar - Year 2
Thursday, 23rd Mar - Year 1
Friday, 31st Mar - Year 4 leading Easter service at St Mary's Parish church
(Year 6 to follow next term)

Have a great weekend and God bless you all,

Matt White

Headteacher 

Weekly Curriculum updates
 

Year 1

This week in Year 1 we have been reading 'Man on the Moon' by Simon Bartram.  Our focus has been on punctuation and correct use of capital letters.  The children have been explaining events in the story using simple and extended sentences, remembering to end with a full stop, exclamation mark or question mark and then to start the next sentence with a capital letter.   In maths we have been working on word problems and then on subtraction within 20 e.g. subtracting 12 from 19 by taking away ten and then taking away 2.  In history we have been writing about Neil Armstrong.  In science we have been learning about night and day and beginning to discuss seasonal changes in day length. 

Year 2

This week in Year 2, we have been reading the book ‘Winter Sleep’. We planned and wrote a letter home from the child in the story to a member of their family. The focus was on high level vocabulary and using exclamatory sentences. The end result was great! In maths, we have been focusing on statistics. We learned what tally charts, pictograms and bar charts are used for and how to interpret them. In science, we learned about hibernation. We found out how animals prepare themselves for a winter sleep and how they change their heart rate and breathing. We investigated how our own heart rate and breathing was affected by exercise. In computing, we used Google Docs to type facts to compare how firefighting worked in 1666 with how fires are tackled today.

Year 3

This week, Quito Class have started learning all about volcanoes and volcanic eruptions. They are now confident at labelling the different parts of a volcano and tell you how and why volcanoes erupt. The children have become confident at using this geographical vocabulary like 'volcanologists', and created their own split section of a volcano.  Year 3 have transformed into authors this week and have written their own version of 'The Mousehole Cat', where they have independently included key grammatical features such as expanded noun phrases and personification to make their writing come alive.  The children have been working incredibly hard in Maths this week and they are feeling much more confident with division now.  In Science, the children explored and classified which objects have magnetic properties around the classroom during their magnet hunt. In computing, the children have learned about input and output digital devices and why they are categorised as such, for example the children were surprised that a microphone was an input device rather than an output device (this is because the microphone takes in the voice and the speaker amplifies it as an output!).

Year 4

This week we finished our maths unit of multiplication and division and started to learn about area. In English, we continued reading 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' and wrote a report about Charlie winning the final ticket. In French, we learnt the names for different items of clothing then we labelled our drawings of clothes describing the colours they were in French too. We had a bit of a gruesome science lesson to investigate how our digestive system works! We mashed up (teeth) crackers and bananas with water (saliva) put them in a plastic bag (stomach) with orange juice (stomach acid). Then, we poured them into a pair of tights (small intestine) to squeeze out the nutrients before finally pushing what was left through a cup with a hole at the bottom (large intestine) leaving us with the waste. Pictures below! To end our week, we visited forest school for another fun session of outdoor learning.

Year 5

This week in Year five the children published their poems in a class anthology and we then moved on to looking at science fiction stories. In maths, we finished our division and multiplication topic and started looking at fractions. We concluded our work on the miracles of Jesus in RE, focusing on the story of Lazarus. In computing, the children created vector diagrams using Google drawings. Our science work this week involved looking at time zones and how the rotation of the Earth affects day and night time around the world. In art, the children tried letter printing and in French we looked at ordering from a menu. PE involved more ball game practice, handball and football.

Year 6

This week in English, Year 6 typed up their silver ant dangerous journey recounts on the Chromebooks showing precise and adventurous vocabulary, and creating atmosphere and tension for the reader as well as applying their newly-learnt skills to create cohesion. Later on in the week, we learnt tips on how to proofread for spelling and punctuation errors and then applied this to our big write on Friday: writing a 'Lonely Hearts' advertisement for a six-plumed bird of paradise in search for love and companionship! In maths, we finished our decimals unit; we now know how to use all four operations with decimal calculations and started our new unit on percentages. In RE, we learnt what the eight-fold path means to Buddhists and created our own to reflect on the life values we believed were the most important to us. In music, we started devising our own Victorian street seller cries, using glockenspiels to turn this into a tune. Finally, in science, we learnt about Linnaeus' contribution to classification and how twin Latin names of living things were derived (Genus and species) - we had great fun devising our own Latin names for living things following this naming system!

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