Newsletters

George Spicer Newsletter - 19th April 2024

MOVING FROM PARENTPAY TO ARBOR PAYMENTS 

We are pleased to announce that we have officially moved to Arbor Payments from ParentPay.

Arbor brings all core school data and workflows into one system, saving school time and money on administration. Arbor also makes paying for school items easier and more flexible for parents.

Trouble logging in? It may be because we don’t have your current email on record. Please contact the school office to update the details on their system.

We hope that you will find Arbor to be a fast and easy way to pay for school items.

For further guidance, please use the link below.

Payments

If you haven't already signed up for Arbor please see below to get started: 

Nut-Free School – Children who suffer from nut allergies can develop severe reactions and potentially life-threatening.  We do have children in school with dangerous nut allergies and for this reason, we cannot have nuts in school in any form. We are asking to help keep these children safe and that is to ensure no nut products in lunch boxes or snacks are brought into school.  If you have any queries please contact the school office.

EMS Music lessons:

Monday - Flute and Saxophone

Tuesday - Violin/Viola

Wednesday - Piano

Friday - Piano/Guitar/Ukulele

Book Fair - On Friday 3^rd May, up to and including Friday 10^th May, we will be holding a book fair for you to buy books for your children after school at both the Sketty Road and Kimberley Gardens sites. Please put the dates in your diaries and there will be more details to follow.

Important Dates for Diary

Thursday 25th April - Heracles class assembly 2:45pm

Thursday 25^th April - Year 6 PGL School Journey Information – Parent Meeting 5.30-6.15pm

Friday 26th April - Reception Family Reading Sessions 9-10am

Monday 29th April - NHS Hearing Screening for Reception

Tuesday 30th April - NHS Hearing Screening for Reception

Attendance week ending 19/4/2024

Overall school = 93.53% Lates = 86

Best attendance: 1st Snowdrop 98.41% 2nd Elm 98.15% 3rd Osiris 97.5%

Punctuality: Well done to Robin and Defiants with 100% for punctuality.

Playground Additions

As many of you coming to Sketty Road will have seen, they playground has had a bit of an upgrade during the holiday.  A huge thank you to FoGS for buying the tables and to Mr Spong, Mr Mangiapane and Mrs Wade for building them.  Hopefully the children will enjoy playing on them and developing their ping pong skills for years to come – we already have one former pupil representing Team GB, hopefully many more to follow!

Reception

This week we have been reading 'My shadow is pink' by Scott Stuart. It is an uplifting story about daring to be different and having the courage to be true to yourself. It touches on the subjects of gender, identity, equality and diversity. 

The children have enjoyed exploring shadows in size and shape and have been creating their own shadows puppets for mini theatres in the classroom.  

"I like to play with people. It doesn't matter what they look like and who they are" Muhniroh says 

"When something is in the way of the sun, it makes a shadow" Juno says 

Year 1

In Year 1 Science, the children have been investigating the properties and uses of materials.  This week, they conducted an experiment to find out which materials were absorbent or waterproof.  They discussed and compared their results and then recorded their findings on to a table.  Leo observed “The fabric we were using held the water, but after a few minutes the water got absorbed.”

Year 2

Year 2 have had an exciting start back to the Summer Term. We have started our History Topic all about The Stone Age and learnt how to tell the time using o’clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to. In Science we took part in a scavenger hunt outside and looked at classifying things into ‘Alive, once alive and never been alive’.

Year 3 

Year 3 have had great and also busy start to the first part of their summer term this week. They have been using inspiration from the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl to inspire their sentences in their writing. The have been looking at words within words as part of their spelling lessons. Also, in PE they have been improving on their running skills for longer distance running and sprinting.

Year 5 

This week Year 5 have been learning facts and information about the life of Nelson Mandela for our biography writing. We learnt about his life from an early age starting in the small village of Mvezo in South Africa culminating in him becoming the first black president of South Africa. An interesting fact is that he was actually not named Nelson – this was a name given to him by a teacher. His birth name was Rolihlahla which is a Xhosa name that means “pulling the branch of a tree”, or “troublemaker”. We have started by writing about his early life in his African village using formal language and time adverbials to make the chronology of his life clear.

As part of our new topic about the Ancient Egyptians we have been researching the history of the Ancient Egyptians, their Gods and relics. We learnt that the Ancient Egyptians were polytheistic which means they had many Gods – the most important of which our classes – Anubis, Thoth, Ra and Osiris are named after. We are also learning about the geography of Egypt and the River Nile and why it was so important to Egyptians past and present.

Year 6 

The Blitz

This week, Year 6 have learnt all about the Blitz during World War Two. We learnt that Blitz means lightning in German and referred to the speed of attack as well as the bombs destruction lighting up the sky. 

We analysed primary sources from this period and discussed bias. We decided to see if the photos/text we were looking at showed if Britain was coping or struggling during this time. We also discussed how the different sides of WW2 would want to present this information. 

We then created mind maps to show more of our understanding of what happened as well as help us to recall certain facts. We added small icons and some colour to help them look appealing to our minds. We will have some time to finish them later this topic. Building from this, we have begun to write a 3rd person narrative of a child living through the Blitz who didn’t get evacuated. We thought carefully about how we could entertain our readers through our use of emotive language. 

Reception Family Reading Mornings

After the Easter holidays, Reception would like to invite their families to our Family Reading Sessions, which will be every Friday from 19th April, up to and including Friday 24th May 2024. These sessions will run from 9am-10am each week. The purpose of these sessions is for you or a family member, to join your child in their classroom to share stories. If you wish, you can share stories with your child's class in your home language or bring in your favourite book to share with your child and their friends. You do not have to attend every Friday but we would be very grateful if you could please attend at least one session.

 We look forward to seeing you there!

We are thrilled to announce that Scholastic BookFairs will be taking place at both Sketty Road and Kimberley Gardens sites from;

Friday 3^rd May - Friday 10^th May 2024 after school. More details to follow...

We hope that your children are enjoying Oxford Reading Buddy and are reading a variety of books that are on offer through this free platform. If you have not had the opportunity to login yet, please get your child to do so as you will see a wealth of reading material for them to enjoy! If you do not have your child's login details, please speak to your child's teacher. We look forward to seeing all the books and quizzes that they have completed. 

Happy Reading!