Newsletters

George Spicer Newsletter - 19th May 2023

Punctuality - The school gates open at 8.45am for a soft start to support a calm arrival to school. All our pupils are expected to be in class for registration by 09:00 am. The school gates are then locked at this point.  Pupils need to be in school by 09:00 am for registration. If your child arrives after 09:00 am, they will receive a late mark (L). If your child arrives after 09:10 am, they will receive a 'U' code (missed session) on their registration certificate which will impact on their overall attendance percentage.

Absences - must be reported in writing by email or by phone by 9am daily. Please leave a brief message with your child's name, class and the reason for their absence.  It will be recorded as unauthorised if you do not leave a reason or say your child is 'unwell'. 

Lateness - 

Important Dates for Diary

Monday 22nd May - Friday 26th May - Year 6 Residential

Tuesday 23^rd May at 3.30pm - Meeting for current Year 3’s regarding the residential trip to Cuffley Camp that they can take part in when they go to Year 4.

Wednesday 24th May - Navajo Maths Workshop

Thursday 25th May - Cheyenne Maths Workshop

School Trips Coming Up:

22^nd - 26^th May - Year 6 School journey to Boreattan Park, Shropshire

22^nd - 26^th May - Year 6 Activity week for those not attending the school journey

13^th June - Year 3 Trip to Whipsnade Zoo

15th June - Thoth and Anubis will be visiting the Nanak Darbar Gurdwara

19^th June - Ra and Osiris will be visiting the Nanak Darbar Gurdwara

21^st - 23^rd June - Year 4 Cuffley Camp residential 

11^th July - Year 1 Trip to Walton on the Naze

Attendance week ending 19/05/2023

Overall school = 94.71%   Lates = 63

Best attendance: 1st Sioux 98.18% 2nd Sparrow 97.88% 3rd Woodpecker 97.81%

Punctuality: Well done Elm, Odysseus, Sioux and Anubis with 100% for their punctuality

Rainbow Class

In Rainbow Class we have been looking at some of the paintings by an artist called Kandinsky. Discussing what we like or dislike about his paintings, the choice of colours, shapes and the view.

While looking at one of his paintings we noticed that it resembled a cinnamon swirls, so being inspired by this we decided to make some biscuits and named them after Kandinsky.

Instead of cinnamon we choose to flavour our biscuits with cocoa and orange. To make these biscuits we had to work as a team to read the recipe, listen to one another, weigh the ingredients and mix them into two flavoured doughs, taking turns to roll out the dough and to shape it before cutting into biscuits.

Making the biscuits also involved using our gross and fine motor skills for mixing, rolling, shaping and cutting. Not forgetting our phonic skills to read and follow the recipe and an opportunity to use our mathematical skills by counting, measuring and following a sequence of instructions. A sense of accomplishing something they have worked on together as a team helped to build our confidence and self-esteem.

Update on our seeds, as you can see some of them have started to sprout and will need to be re-potted soon into bigger pots.

Reception Class

Reception have been busy this week, reading a lovely book called 'Errol's Garden. It is about a boy named Errol who loves to plant seeds and grow flowers so he decides to create a garden on the roof of his apartment building for everyone to share. This book has inspired the children in Reception to design their own gardens, grow some plants and observe their changes.  Some classes have even experimented with growing vegetables using the top of a carrot or potato! We are looking forward to measuring how tall the stems grow and seeing if a new carrot will grow in the soil! 

Z said, "My Daddy likes to grow plants, they are getting taller and taller! E knew that we need to water the plants and place them in the sunshine.

Year 1

This week Year 1 have started their new topic on the artist Kandinsky. Kandinsky is known to be the first artist to create abstract art. On Monday, we explored “taking our pencil for a walk” to create our own abstract artwork.

Throughout the week we will be writing a critique on different pieces of Kadinsky's art. Here is a critique from Wednesday's piece of art... 

Over the week we will be continuing to review pieces of art and we will begin to create our own versions of abstract art with paint, with a huge focus on colour mixing. 

Year 2

As part of our topic on Australia we have been looking at Aboriginal artwork. We have created Aboriginal dot paintings based on characters from a dream time fable called Tiddalik. In science we have been looking at Australian habitats and have started to create information booklets. 

Year 3 

In Writing this week, Year 3 familiarized themselves with the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. They have begun to write a narrative with an alternative ending.

Our focus has been on including conjunctions, where adverbials, time adverbials and speech to bring our writing to life.

An example of two days' worth of our writing is shown below. 

Year 5 

This week in English, the children wrote a 3^rd person narrative, which retold the story of Ra reluctantly surrendering his position as King to Osiris.  From an ageing decrepit God (Ra), who refused to surrender his throne to Isis, who was cunning and power hungry, the children were completely immersed and produced some fantastic stories as a result. 

Year 6 

Year 6 – Stalingrad poetry

This week, for the topic of World War II, Year 6 has been focussing on the Battle of Stalingrad. There was even a chance to work with a poet to make some poetry on this event. With the poet, the pupils started with harvesting words and ideas about The Battle of Stalingrad, and then they developed these ideas into a poem. The pupils had opportunities to create  whole class poems as well as individual ones. Some of the pupils had the opportunity to recite or read their poem out to the rest of the year group.