: Blog items
Date: 29th Nov 2023 @ 2:18pm
The holidays are coming...
Friday brought festive cheer to all, here in Year 2! We were delighted to see the wonderful, festive decorations around the classroom on when we arrived at school, as well as a very cheeky elf! We could not believe our eyes when we saw what the elf had been up to, and cannot wait to see what they get up to over the weekend! We have been given the task, over the next few days, to name our elf and must all write a letter to Father Christmas next week, to let him know who is with us in class!
The fun didn’t stop there though, as that morning we ventured to our Christmas Extravaganza, organised by the wonderful Team TSP. We loved getting involved in all the fabulous activities, playing games and winning prizes with all our friends. The main event though was meeting Father Christmas, who gave us an early, sweet treat! What a fantastic start to the festive season we have had!
Christmas was firmly on our mind at the start of the week as well, when we travelled back in time to the very first Christmas in RE. We carefully explored the Nativity story and worked hard to retell the story. We also blew Miss Jones socks off as we all remembered that the Wise Men didn’t come until a while after Jesus was born, on the 6th January!
We have been working practically in Maths this week to finished off our final addition and subtraction topic; balanced number sentences. Using counters, tens frames and part, part, wholes we worked out how many more we needed to make them equal. Next week, we move onto our topic, Shapes and will start by revisiting 2D and 3D shape properties.
We finished off our DT project this week and made our final structure, Goldilocks chair. We connected our learning back to last week and identified that we needed to make our chairs stable and strong. Using paper and tape, we created our masterpieces!
Reminders
- Please can children come to school with a coat, especially in these colder days!
Key Upcoming Dates
Wednesday 13th December – Christmas Dinner Day
Friday 15th December – Christmas Jumper and Party Day
Tuesday 19th December – School Finishes at 1pm
Date: 29th Nov 2023 @ 1:30pm
What a very busy week we have had! The children have been working very hard learning lots of different Christmas songs for the sing-a-long, they can’t wait to perform them for you.
The children have continued to learn about ‘People who Help Us’. This week the focus has been on Doctors and Nurses, we were lucky to have a visit from Doctors - Dr and Dr Cosgrove. They talked to the children all about their job and what to expect when you visit a Doctor and what equipment they have in their doctor’s bag. We were also lucky to have a Facetime with Nurse Jess who told them all about the role of a Nurse within a Hospital, the children were able to ask lots of different questions.
On Friday the children were treated to a ‘Christmas Extravaganza’ in the school hall, there were lots of activities, games and stalls for the children to visit and enjoy. They were even able to visit Santa where he gave them a selection box as they chatted to him about their Christmas list. A ‘Big’ thank you to team TSP for organising this for the children.
Please can you ensure your child has a warm coat in school at all times and that it is clearly labelled with their name, thank you
Reminders:
Wednesday 6th December – 9.30am and 2pm - Nursery Sing-a-Longs
Wednesday 13th December - Christmas WOW service 2pm @ St Peter’s Church
Friday 15th December – Christmas Jumper and Party day
Tuesday 19th December – School Finish @1pm
Date: 29th Nov 2023 @ 10:28am
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…
We arrived to school on the 1st December to find our classroom full of festive decorations and a cheeky little elf hiding amongst our tree. With lots of deliberation and a few clues spotted around our room, we identified that the elf’s name was Sparkle and she had been awake all evening bringing festive joy to our classroom. Excitement filled the room when we discovered a note from Sparkle informing us that she had left the North Pole and made a new home in our classroom this Christmas. She informed us she will be on her best behaviour, if she can become part of our class. In typical Year 4 TSP style, we welcomed Sparkle with open arms.
Our festivities really took off, with a trip to the Christmas Extravaganza on Friday. We loved taking part in the various activities, spending time with our friends and singing along to our favourite Christmas songs. A big thank you Team TSP for organising such a fantastic event and helping us kick start our advent countdown in such a brilliant way. Our Christmas Service rehearsals are fully underway, with our excitement building to showcase our singing and acting talents in church.
We explored the symbol of light in the Jewish religion by finding out all about the Hanukkah festival and talking about the stories and traditions of Hanukkah. We used our black thinking hats to call upon facts we know about Christians believes about light and how this is similar and different to that of the Jewish religion.
In English, we ensured our sentences were using the correct tense throughout and verbs were used to describe the movements and actions of animals in a circus. We critically looked at how we spell words with the ‘ed’ and ‘ing’ endings, forming a table of evidence to suggest the rules associated with adding these endings to given words. Later in the week, we took a look back at the events that have taken place so far in our story Leon and the Place Between, before mapping the events out on a flow map. Next week, we will look at the key features of diary writing in a modelled text, before planning our own diary entries.
We recapped our understanding of negative numbers in Maths, ensuring that we always counted zero as a number before heading into the negative numbers. We identified how negative numbers can be seen on a thermometer – especially on chilly days like we have experienced this week! We took on mastery challenges to test our recall of the 4 times tables and reminded ourselves of how to use the Smile method to calculate two numbers first, in a multiplication where we have to times 3 numbers together.
Such incredible imagination and creativity were showcase din our Art lesson, as we were challenged to turn the components of an old train and clock into our own artistic piece. We also enjoyed a visit to the Scholastic Book Fair that took place in our school. We enjoyed taking the time to delve into books we hadn’t read before and discover different genres of interest.
Have a wonderful weekend, Year 4!
Date: 24th Nov 2023 @ 9:38pm
Another amazing, fun-filled week in Year 3!
In RE, this week the children discussed the significance of ‘Emmanual’ and thought about the meaning behind the name ‘God with us.’ We continued to listen to Christmas carols and enjoyed spotting the name Emmanual. The children solidified their learning by creating beautiful Christmas cards that demonstrated their understanding of Emmanual. Next week, we will continue our unit about “Christmas, God with Us” The children will discuss how Jesus has an impact on our lives today.
In English, we have continued our work on Winter’s Child. We had a great discussion about a new character we had been introduced to in the story. The children made accurate predictions based on what they knew from the text. The children were challenged to explain how we knew, and where the evidence was from for our thoughts and to ponder on questions and puzzling elements of the story. Drawing on our retrieval skills used to evidence opinions this week. We also focused on using conjunctions in our sentences and explored placing them at the start of sentences to vary sentence structure. We also had lots of fun coming up with similes using ‘like’ and ‘as’ to describe the winter setting.
In Maths, we have concentrated on estimating, using inverse operations, compliments to 100 and discussing strategies we can use to ensure our working out is accurate. The children are also growing in confidence each day using column addition and column subtraction across 100.
On Tuesday, Active Sefton taught the children all about saturated and unsaturated fats. They sorted foods into the correct categories and found out there are good and bad fats for our bodies. The children were able to see what can happen to our arteries over time if we eat too many saturated fats and the children learned that a balanced diet and exercise can help them be the healthiest version of themselves.
In Reading, we have been thoroughly enjoying our creepy book ‘The Ice Palace’. The children are on the edge of their seats, and we can’t wait to find out what happens to Ivan on his quest to rescue his brother from the evil Stajik. The children used their dictionary skills to search for new vocabulary they had been introduced to. Year 3 worked hard completing comprehension questions and were able to retrieve key information from the text to clarify their answers.
In History, the children were eager to delve further into evidence from the Stone Age. We looked at the incredible Skara Brae. The children were intrigued to learn about one of Britain’s most fascinating prehistoric villages. We learnt that archaeologists estimate that it was built and occupied over 3000 BC, during the ‘Neolithic era’ or ‘New Stone Age’. The children were able to use a range of different sources to make deductions about the Stone Age way of life by studying evidence of the buildings left behind.
During D&T, we continued learning about seasonal foods and we discussed the terms ‘Import’ and ‘Export.’ We then mastered our cutting skills using a vegetable knife and peeler correctly and safely. We can’t wait to put our new skills to the test over the coming weeks as we prepare to make a seasonal tart.
We hope you have a lovely weekend, and we are looking forward to Monday already!
Date: 24th Nov 2023 @ 4:45pm
What a fantastic week we have had!
This week in Maths, we have focused on subtracting 2-digit numbers from 2-digit numbers by exchanging tens for ones using Base Ten. It has been a tricky concept to get our heads around, however, with perserverance we have powered on have not given up. Next week, we will recap this concept once more before moving onto our next topic.
We started our DT project this week by first understanding stability. To do this, we used a card and plastercine to determine which shape would stay on a peice of card, tilted, at the highest point. We soon figured out that sphere would not stay on the card for very long as it had not flat faces, however, the pyramid was the best shape! We talked about how this is because it had more points touching the card. After this we looked how we could make resources stronger and stiffer in order to reinforce our structures and make it more stable. We identfied that a cyclinder was the best shape for this, testing our theroy by piling books onto top with the results showing that the cyclinder could hold an incredible 34 books compared to the cuboids 13! We then took this once step further by investigating if more 'legs' made or structures more stable, and, we were right! Together, we found that the more legs we had meant the more books we could support. Over the next few weeks, we will use this knowledge to build Baby Bear a new chair.
We finished off our Science topic this week, by investigating which material would keep Humpty Dumpty safe and also be comfortable to wear. Using a mixture of materials, we dropped Humpty (a boiled egg) from a great height and found that the soft material such as fabric protected our egg, and was comfier, compared to wood and metal!
In PE we have focused on developing our breathing in Yoga and have loved making different shapes based on animals around the world. We cannot wait to carry on this topic over the next few weeks.
You have all worked really hard this week Year 2, well done!
Date: 24th Nov 2023 @ 3:47pm
This week, continuing with our RE theme of ‘Special people’, we had a lovely visit from Police officer Tim, Gress and El who came to talk to them about their role in the community. The children had lots of questions to ask and even got to have a go at wearing their special hats. Thank you so much for coming in to see us!
On Wednesday we went to our 'WOW' service at St Peters church where Anne and Caroline talked to the children about Advent. Three of the Reception children then said three Advent prayers. You were amazing!
For Road Safety week, the children learnt about how to stay safe near roads. We talked about how to cross the road safely and made our own road in the outdoor area to practice. What fun we have had.
The children have also been enjoying the story ‘The Gingerbread Man’. We introduced a ‘Flow Map’ to the children explaining to them that it is a way to help us to retell a story. We worked with the children to help them sequence the pictures of the story and then encouraged them to create a simple phrase under each picture. The children worked so hard, well done everyone!
In Forest school, the children enjoyed working together to help clear the outdoor area in preparation for the winter time. We could not believe how many leaves there were, so we had lots of fun collecting them.
In Maths the children have been learning all about numbers 4 and 5 and different ways these numbers can be made. They then enjoyed learning about 1 more and then 1 less. The children then had a go at building with cubes to help with their understanding.
Reminders:
Friday 1st December - Team TSP Christmas Movie and Christmas Extravaganza
Friday 8th December – Reception Nativity 9:20am and 1:20pm
Wednesday 13th December - Christmas WOW service 2pm @ St Peter’s Church
Date: 23rd Nov 2023 @ 9:34pm
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What another fantastic week we have had with December fast approaching!
In Maths, we have continued our grand, class times table battle with this current tournament approaching a very dramatic conclusion. With just two rounds left and one point between the two teams, we have a very tense wait to find our eventual winner in the coming weeks. Both teams have given their all…but there can only be ONE winning team. Good luck to all involved!
We have also been busy completing some Maths assessments to check our understanding of our learning throughout this term so far.
In our RE work, we continued our focus on the birth of Jesus as told in the gospels of Luke and Matthew. We analysed how these two versions of the nativity have some key differences and we compared each story using a double bubble thinking map. We then sorted a variety of pictures according to their appearance in each particular bible story.
Following a very successful Book World Cup competition last week, we have started reading our winning book: ‘Millions’ by Frank Cottrell-Boyce. There has already been plenty of laughter in the opening pages and we’re already very keen to read more.
Thank you, Year 5 for a brilliant week and enjoy the weekend!
Reminders:
- Year 5 school trip to British Music Experience on Thursday 7th December.
-Year 5 Swimming lessons will begin on Wednesday 29th November. Please ensure that children wear PE kits on Wednesdays and Fridays going forward.
Date: 23rd Nov 2023 @ 5:00pm
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Year 1 have had another brilliant week! We began our week finishing our fantastic windmills in Design Technology. We have thoroughly enjoyed developing new skills and putting them into practice, we are so proud of our structures, and cannot wait to share them with you at home!
In PE this week we continued our beautiful underwater themed dance! We had so much fun recreating under water creatures. We loved practising to one of our favourite songs too! We have been building upon our technique and now feel more confident dancing the whole routine as a class.
We explored the country of England this week in our Geography topic, by delving into the features of England as a part of the United Kingdom. 'Where in the world are we?' allows us to focus on different parts on the United Kingdom and discover some of the key features of each country. This week we discussed that the United Kingdom is made up of 4 countries, we then explored England in detail. We had a great afternoon learning about the English flower, national animal and cuisine. We then made a visit to the English Cafe and tried some scones!
We focused on Road Safety this week as we discussed how we can be safe on the road. We explored some of the most important rules on how to be cautious when crossing roads, we then created our own stop signs to encourage road safety. We even had a practice at using them on our playground! This was a fun way to enhance our understanding of roads and how we can be careful when crossing.
Have a lovely weekend Year 1! Thank you for all of your hard work.
Date: 22nd Nov 2023 @ 2:36pm
Another great week in Year 6!
As mathematicians, both Mr King and Mrs Martin’s group have been working on how to find percentages of numbers before moving onto adding and subtracting fractions. Next week, they will be continuing with fractions; in particular, how to multiply and divide them. Outside of Maths lessons, we also entered another Sumdog Contest...this time, the 'England Contest'! After a closely fought battle with nearly 2000 schools, our Year 6 pupils decided it wasn't enough to just be the North West champions and on Thursday they were announced as the national champions! The first TSP class to ever achieve such a victory - amazing!
On Wednesday, the children entered the classroom to the sound of some eerie noises with candles lit all around. They thought carefully about what they could hear and the images that came to mind before thinking of expanded noun phrases would help describe their thoughts. Having been informed of their writing objective for the week, the children then immersed themselves in the horror genre in the subsequent lessons, focusing on attention to detail when describing a setting.
In History, we have started to focus our research into the world wars more specifically on the impact they had on Formby. We must thank Formby Civic Society and Merchant Taylors Boys’ School for providing us with so many incredible resources, including yearbooks from 1916 and 1918 to an online version of Formby’s Roll of Honour, which have allowed us to make our own lines of enquiry about particular soldiers and areas of Formby.
The children are aware of how to access their homework for next week – either on SATs Companion or in their books. Spellings have also been set. If your child is accessing their homework through SATs Companion and needs additional support, please remind them to watch the video input first. They can also revise any topics through the ‘Practice’ section of the app / website afterwards.
We hope everyone has a great weekend. You may want to tune into The One Show this evening…you know why! ;)
Date: 22nd Nov 2023 @ 9:48am
Another great week in Year 4!
In RE, we connected our understanding of what light means to Christians with the song ‘My Lighthouse’. We took the time to reflect on what the lyrics in the song mean and how they can support our understanding that Jesus is the light of the world. Thinking about our Collective Worship value of Justice, we watched the Kid President clip ‘For the Heroes’ and discussed what sort of heroes are the real heroes today.
We are thoroughly enjoying reading ‘The train to impossible places’ by the fantastic Peter Bell, as part of our Guided Reading lessons. This fast-paced fantasy adventure is supporting our prediction, retrieval and inference skills. When writing, we are enhancing our sentences with the use of verbs and adverbs and utilising a range of subordinating conjunctions to join two sentences together. We even played our own version of Scrabble this week, connecting our knowledge of sounds to create words from a selection of letters. This game really did help us to remember the importance of sounding out and breaking down our words into their smaller sounds.
It was time to recall the 9’s, 7’s and 11’s in Maths, identifying numbers that are within each of these times tables and connections we can make to support our understanding. We even played board games with our friends to test our times tables knowledge of the 11 and 12 times tables and also looked at what happens when we multiply and divide a number by 0 and 1. Next week, we will use the smile method to support use in multiply 3 one-digit numbers.
Our Scientific vocabulary vastly expanded this week, as we discovered what the Digestive system was and the purpose it has in our body and compared the system to that inside another animal. In Spanish, we learnt how to talk about our brothers and sisters, remembering the all-important Spanish difference we need to make when referring to a man or a woman. Our Swimming lessons have sadly come to an end, but the improved stamina and fitness we have gained has been beneficial in our Fitness lessons this week. We completed a range of fitness tests to gain our personal best score and we are determined to use our school value of Hope to beat our PB next week!
In recognition of Road Safety Week, we headed out onto the playground to give our guidance to Year 2 on how to identify road signs and the meaning behind them. As they whizzed around on their scooters and bikes at speed, we reminded them of the importance of slowing down and looking out for signs to guide them to what dangers may be around them.
We are starting to get into the festive spirit with the arrival of our Christmas Present Room! Thank you to the incredible Team TSP for helping us with our Christmas gift shopping.
Have a lovely weekend, Year 4! Keep shining!
Date: 21st Nov 2023 @ 7:13pm
What a busy week we have had in Nursery!
On Wednesday we attended our ‘WOW’ service at St Peter’s Church. Anne and Caroline talked to the children all about Advent and how Jesus is the light of the world, they also talked about how we will be preparing for his birthday in the coming weks. Thank you both so much and we look forward to seeing you for our Christmas WOW on 13th December.
This week we began our new theme ‘People who Help Us’. On Tuesday the children were excited to find a crime scene, they had to look at the different clues and decide who they would need to call to help them. The children decided the Police were the right people for the job! So, we decided to become the police for the day to help solve the mystery of how Humpty Dumpty was hurt. On Thursday we were lucky to have a visit from a Community Police Officer Tim and Police Constable Gres and El who talked to the children about their job and also about ‘Stranger Danger’. The children were able to ask lots of questions and even try on some uniform.
As part of Road Safety Week, the children have spent some time learning to cross the road safely. They spent some time in the outdoor area first and then took their new skills to the road outside of the school. Here they demonstrated how sensible they were and that they remembered the simple rules; to make sure they are always holding a grown-ups hand and to stop, look and listen. What super stars!
Please can you ensure your child has a warm coat in school at all times and that it is clearly labelled with their name, thank you
Reminders:
Friday 1st December - Team TSP Christmas Movie and Christmas Extravaganza
Wednesday 6th December – 9.30am and 2pm - Nursery Sing-a-Longs
Wednesday 13th December - Christmas WOW service 2pm @ St Peter’s Church
Friday 15th December – Christmas Jumper and Party day
Tuesday 19th December – School Finish @1pm
Date: 17th Nov 2023 @ 8:42pm
What a wonderful week Year 3 has had! So many kind words have been shared during the celebration of Kindness Week. Seeing the children being extremely kind to their peers, teachers, and staff around the school has been wonderful. We had lots of fun visiting the children in KS1 demonstrating how to be kindness role models. We created motivational posters and ended the week by decorating scrumptious kindness biscuits.
In RE this week, the children have been continuing with our topic "Christmas: God with Us." We looked at the Christmas story and focused on understating how and why we prepare for special guests. We had a fantastic discussion with the children talking about times they have been a part of preparing for a celebration. To summarise our learning, the children created a ‘My special guest book’ where they chose someone from the Christmas story and explained what preparations they would make for their guests’ arrival; how the guest would feel and why we have chosen our special guest. Next week, we will look at the Christmas story and the retelling focused on the angels' and the shepherds' point of view and the part they played when Jesus was born.
In most English and Maths lessons this week, the children have been completing their autumn assessments. They have all given their best efforts and demonstrated excellent focus. Next week we will return to lessons as before. In English, we will be continuing with Winters Child. During our maths lessons, we will begin looking at multiplication and division.
Have a fantastic weekend Year 3!
Reminders:
- Please remember to bring a healthy snack for the morning break.
- We are learning about the Stone Age in History, if anyone has any interesting topic books at home, that they would like to share with the class please bring them in.
Date: 17th Nov 2023 @ 1:43pm
What an AMAZING week it has been!
The Year 6 class (and staff!) had some incredibly exciting days on Wednesday and Thursday…but more about that after next week!
We hope everyone enjoyed watching our Celebration of Kindness music video last weekend…particularly those Year 6 parents who also featured! It has since been a ‘celebration of kindness’ every day in class. The Year 6 children had previously discussed our school value of Nurture and how its intents are for us to be kind to each other, but also ourselves. We talked about how this was our final year of primary school and soon we would be going to secondary school, where our moods may change more frequently and we may feel like we are having more ‘down’ days as ‘moody teenagers’. As a result, we have ensured that every day this week we focused on our own wellbeing and paid extra special attention to our emotions, thinking of ways we could maintain our positivity and activities we could do to boost our mood when we are not feeling as positive as usual. Such activities have included mindfulness practice, creating gratitude journals and releasing endorphins through dance! We considered how others can affect our mood and on Friday, we had a morning of board games - thinking about we communicate each other and how we should aim to ensure everyone around us is also in a positive mood.
To be kind to those we have a responsibility of looking after, we invited our Reception buddies to create a piece of artwork with us on Tuesday afternoon, which our younger friends could then use to gift to others and spread kindness around the school. This was a lovely activity to observe, as the children needed to guide their buddies through the task, modelling how to create colourful hearts with messages of positivity attached. All the Year 6 children were excellent role models and we are sure the Reception children are very appreciative.
In Writing, the children have finished up writing their ‘Star of Fear, Star of Hope’ narratives in their author book. As mathematicians, Mr King’s group have been working on ‘Order of Operations’ (BIDMAS) and will be moving onto percentages next week. Mrs Martin have consolidated their understanding of rounding.
The children are aware of how to access their homework for next week – either on SATs Companion or in their books. Spellings will now roll over to next week, following the rather busy week we have had! If your child is accessing their homework through SATs Companion this week and needs additional support for long division, there are support videos and websites on Google Classroom this week.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Date: 16th Nov 2023 @ 4:38pm
On Friday Caroline came into Reception to talk to the children about Kindness and the different ways we can be kind to one another. She talked about how God wants us all to look out for one another and show care and kindness to those around us. Thank you to Caroline for a lovely Godly play session.
It was ‘Kindness week’ in school this week and we listened to a lovely story called ‘Kindness is my superpower’. We discussed the different things we could all do to show kindness to others. This week our school kindness video was launched. The children have thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the production and watching the final video. If you haven’t already seen it, please follow the link .The children enjoyed working with their year 6 buddies to create a special ‘kindness heart’ which they added notes for kindness to and they decided between them who they would give them to. What a lovely time we had with our Year 6 friends. We also had a very special surprise visit from some of our friends in Year 3 who came and played games with us outside. What kind friends we have in our school.
In Maths we have been looking at different ways to show ‘4’ and ‘5’. The children went on a hunt around the room to find things that they could find and we discovered that there are so many different representations. Well done everyone!
On Friday we talked about 'Children in Need' and how we raise money to help children all over the UK. We talked about how 'Children in Need' works very hard to make children smile.
We hope you have a lovely weekend and see you all next week.
Miss Dalley and the Reception team
Please can you ensure that all uniform, coats and belongings are clearly labelled with your child’s name.
Reminders:
Wednesday 22nd November – WOW Service 2pm @ St Peter’s Church
Thursday 23rd November – Team TSP Christmas Present Room
Friday 1st December - Team TSP Christmas Movie and Christmas Extravaganza
Friday 8th December – Reception Nativity (9:20am and 1:20pm)
Date: 16th Nov 2023 @ 1:18pm
What an exceptional week we have had celebrating all things, Kindness!
This week, we have worked hard to spread, love, fun and kindness by completing a series of activities. We created kindness boxes, for people to open when they need a smile, hugs in an envelope, for people who need a hug when they feel sad and posters, to remind people to be kind, always. We have loved being kind and spread love and hope, and hope you have all loved receiving it.
As well as spreading kindness, we have also been completing some assessments in school, focusing on our resilience, determination and also, being kind to ourselves even when we found it tricky. We talked about how, trying out best was the best way we can be kind.
Have a lovely weekend, Year 2!
Reminder
- Please, where possible, ensure your child bring a coat to school each day especially as the weather is getting colder!
Date: 15th Nov 2023 @ 10:43am
We have had another fantastic week in Year 1! We began our week continuing with our Design Technology project. We enjoyed creating the turbine and the roof for our windmill. We used our cutting and sticking skills to create the turbine, as well as our designing skills.
In RE this week we discussed how we can take care of God’s amazing creation. We began by looking at the ways in which humans have ruined our world such as littering and pollution. We understood that we should take care of our world by respecting its wonder and beauty. We discussed how we could use our efforts to care for God’s creation, we had some brilliant ideas! We highlighted the importance of picking up litter wherever we go, we also discussed how crucial it is to encourage wildlife by planting more trees.
We had so much fun this week as we celebrated Kindness Week! To begin we focused on the importance of understanding bullying and how we respond to bullying in school. We discussed the features of bullying and highlighted how our school value of ‘Nurture’ encourages us to be kind to one another. We then celebrated how kind our classroom is by discussing the ways we support each other to thrive in every way.
We then designed our very own kindness stones, we decorated a stone with kind words and beautiful drawings. We thoroughly enjoyed this activity! We then went on a walk around our local area to drop off our stones. This was our way of celebrating and spreading kindness as we hope people in our local area can spot our stones and feel a sense of happiness and hope. If you find one of our stones please tweet us!
Have a great weekend everyone! We can't wait to see you all for another fantastic week on Monday.
Date: 15th Nov 2023 @ 9:52am
With so many events to celebrate and recognise this week, it sure has been a busy one!
We arrived to school ready to celebrate Kindness Week on Monday, following a delightful weekend showcasing out Kindness Video to our loved ones at home. With the understanding that this week marked Kindness Week, Anti-Bullying Week and also Children in Need, we knew spreading kindness was our top priority throughout our week.
We love to nurture others in Year 4, so this week we decided to spread kindness in the community by donating our unwanted toys, games and books to Barnardos Children’s Charity. On Friday, we headed into the village to deliver our donations and we overwhelmed by the grateful response we were given by the volunteers in store. We are thrilled to see our unwanted items displayed on the shelves, ready to be purchased and given to a loving home. We truly hope our donations bring joy to other children in our community. We also arrived at school in our Pudsey ears in aid of Children in Need. After designing our own Pudsey eye patches, we reflected on those less fortunate than us and the gratitude we have for the lives we live.
In support of anti-bullying week, we designed our own image of a heart filled with bright colours and all things that make us smile. It was a shock for us to see how our hearts can become crinkled after hearing unkind words and even after attempts to smooth other the paper, the crinkles are always there. This reminded us of the importance of nurturing those around us and ensuring our choice of works leave footprints on others hearts and not a crinkle. Continuing our focus on kindness, we used a Diamond 9 thinking strategy and our yellow thinking hats, to organise statements about friendship to show those that are most important to us and those that are least important.
The children have worked extremely hard this week to complete assessments to showcase their learning so far this term. Our school value of Hope was certainly achieved by all as they tried their best and were determined to complete their assessments to the best of their ability.
Our Spanish knowledge is greatly developing with the understanding of how a phrase changes to suit a male or female person, we unpicked what the term ‘revolt’ means in History and recognised the causes and consequences of Boudicca’s revolt against the Romans. After exploring the components of the body that make up the digestive system, we used a double bubble map to compare and contrast the system inside a human and a cow.
We are so proud of all your achievements this week, Year 4! Have a wonderful weekend.
Reminders:
- Our final swimming lesson takes place next week. Following this, our PE lessons continue to take place on a Tuesday and Wednesday.
- As the colder days are upon us, please ensure your child arrives to school with a coat to wear on the playground.
- Weekly spellings continue to be uploaded onto Google Classroom every Friday and tested the following Thursday.
Date: 14th Nov 2023 @ 4:12pm
On Thursday we welcomed Caroline into class for our Godly Play session, Caroline talked to the children about Kindness and how God wants us all to be kind and look after each other. Thank you, Caroline, we do enjoy our Godly Play dates.
The children have enjoyed taking part in World Nursery Rhyme week. They have enjoyed singing different Nursery Rhymes and then completing various activities linked to them. Ask the children if they can sing any to you?
It was ‘Kindness week’ in school this week that was launched with our very own school video, please follow the link if you have not already seen it! The children enjoyed talking about the different people around the school who help them like Mrs Meredith and Mrs Higgins who work in our office. They decided they would like to say ‘thank you’ to them by inviting them to the Nursery classroom and giving them a nice cup of tea and a piece of freshly baked cake, everyone certainly enjoyed themselves. We ended the week by talking about ‘Children in Need’ and how they raise money for children across the country to help them thrive and be the best they can be.
Please can you ensure your child has a warm coat in school at all times and that it is clearly labelled with their name, thank you
Reminders:
Wednesday 22nd November – WOW Service 2pm @ St Peter’s Church
Thursday 23rd November – Team TSP Christmas Present Room
Friday 1st December - Team TSP Christmas Movie and Christmas Extravaganza
Wednesday 6th December – 9.30am and 2pm - Nursery Sing-a-Long
Date: 14th Nov 2023 @ 2:09pm
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We have had the most amazing week following the release of our ‘Celebration of Kindness Week Video’ for 2023. This jam-packed week tied together Kindness Week, Anti-bullying Week and Children in Need, which we have LOVED being part of!
To mark Celebration of Kindness Week, our main project was to spread kindness across our local community. To achieve this, we each designed an inspirational poster in class that contained a message of kindness. The aim for our posters was to impact positively upon whoever read it by motivating; lifting spirits or even just bringing a smile. When the posters were designed, we headed into Formby Village to display them. So many local businesses were so accommodating and were more than happy to display the posters when the children had described their aims for the project. We have received a few tweets already about our posters and we would absolutely love it if you could all keep an eye out for our posters and tweet us too when you find one.
A particular highlight this week came in the form of the ‘Book World Cup’. This involved 32 different books which all had the opportunity to be voted in as the next class novel for Year 5. The decision was entirely in the hands of the class! Before the voting could commence, the children had to familiarise themselves with the various books in the competition. This involved the children spending time exploring the different books, reading the blurbs and extracts to each other, looking at the covers and chatting generally about how they felt about them. Next, it was time to vote. After some close battles as each book went head-to-head, we were able to narrow down the 32 books to just one winner. As chosen by the children, our new class novel was crowned!
In Maths, we focused on finding the perimeter of rectangles and rectilinear shapes. Next week, we will be continuing to focus on the perimeter of compound shapes and will extend to problem-solving activities relating to real-life scenarios and the visualising of shapes. As it was also assessment week, we recapped all of our learning so far this term.
So our Celebration of Kindness week reaches an end but we are sure the messages from this week of positivity and kindness will be carried forward both within our school community and beyond.
Have an amazing weekend and see you on Monday!
Reminders:
-Year 5 school trip to British Music Experience on Thursday 7th December.
-Year 5 Swimming lessons will begin on Wednesday 29th November. Please ensure that children wear PE kits on Thursday and Friday next week (w.c. 20/11/23) as normal.
Date: 11th Nov 2023 @ 1:03pm
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We started our week by discussing the significance of Remembrance Day. The children designed some poppies which became a poppy wreath laid on the war memorial. As we created our poppies, it allowed us to pause and reflect and remind ourselves of the importance of this month’s value Justice and everything we have to be grateful for.
In English, we have continued to investigate our new story ‘The Winter’s Child’ and were intrigued by our new creepy, pale character and his mystical abilities. We compared him to our main character Tom, discussing not only how they look but also what their personalities are like. We have also been reading our new book ‘The Ice Palace’ written by Robert Swindells. To help us understand the story, we first had to unpick the language used with the help of our dictionaries, especially the word ‘celandine’, who knew it belonged to the poppy family? Next week we will continue to look at the 'Winter's Child' and will start by writing a letter.
In Maths, we have been working hard to develop our addition and subtraction skills in column form. We have been mastering the skills of borrowing, and working with tricky 3-digit numbers. Next week we will finish our addition and subtraction topic and will move on to multiplication!
In History, we started our exciting new topic Stone Age to Iron Age. This week we began to understand that Britain was once covered in ice and that the earliest settlers were hunter gatherers and lived in caves. The children made deductions about the lifestyle of Stone Age man from images. We also learned that Stone Age man was interested in art and ceremonials.
During Science, we continued to explore simple pushes and pulls. We used our new scientific vocabulary ‘variable’ to plan a fair test to investigate how an object's texture or surface can affect how an object moves. The children will carry out the investigation next week and record the results.
In Design and Technology, we learned that fruits and vegetables grow in different countries based on their climates. Next week, the children will understand that ‘seasonal’ fruits and vegetables are those that grow in a given season and taste best then and that eating seasonal fruit and vegetables has a positive effect on the environment.
The end of the week couldn’t have been better, the premier of the ‘Celebration of Kindness Video’. We loved watching all the year groups, and staff, and this year our fantastic TSP parents even made an appearance! The children cannot wait to dive headfirst into Kindness Week next week.
Have a super weekend Year 3!
Date: 10th Nov 2023 @ 1:50pm
What a week!
Firstly, we welcome Miss Osborne to Year 6. She will be supporting the children in class alongside Mr King and Mrs Martin.
As authors, the children are now on their final piece of writing, having finished the story, ‘Star of Fear, Star of Hope’. The children have now gone back to the start and are writing a recount of the initial events in the book, but this time from the perspective of the secondary character, Lydia. Next week, the children will then be able to link together all the shorter pieces they have written from Lydia’s point of view so far and use them to write up an extended piece in their author books. We can’t wait to read them!
In Maths, Mr King’s group has worked incredibly hard on a number of tricky topics. They have not only revised their understanding of long multiplication from last year, but this week had to apply it to difficult reasoning problems, which certainly tested their mindsets and resilience levels! They have also learned new concepts and methods, including long division (using the chunking method). Mrs Martin’s group will be learning this later in the term; this week, they have focused on rounding.
Our History topic continued this week – now focusing on WW2 - with the children firstly learning about the reasons for the outbreak of the war in Tuesday’s lesson. We were able to re-visit some of last half-term’s STAR vocabulary (such as trigger, factor and ultimatum), as well as learn some new terms in the lesson, including ‘reparations’ and ‘colonies’. On Tuesday, we were very fortunate that John from Formby Civic Society was willing to visit us to talk about how the wars impacted Formby. He showed us photographs taken at the time in Formby; local newspaper articles describing the war, and also explained what some of the shops and buildings we see today used to be. We may never look at Formby in the same way again! The children were so engaged that John ended up staying until home time…and he still had to cut his presentation short! The children asked brilliant questions throughout the session and it was wonderful to see them thinking like historians, asking questions about his sources and how he found lots of his information. Well done, Year 6!
On Wednesday, our young historians learned about all the key events of WW2, exploring a range of resources such as newspaper articles, maps, textbooks, local documents and equipment such as ration books and medical boxes. Next week’s lessons will see the children consolidating their learning by summarising what life would have been like in Britain during WW2.
A particular highlight was our visit from Callum from The Hammond, a renowned institution for performing arts education. On Thursday afternoon, we enjoyed a very active, theatre workshop, which explored storytelling, drama and some key elements of acting and adopting the role of different characters.
To conclude our week, the children were very excited to attend a special, whole-school assembly in the hall to watch the launch of our sixth ‘Celebration of Kindness’ music video! There were plenty of laughs in the hall as we watched ourselves, our peers, staff (and even parents!) dancing around school last week and having fun. This is always a great way to launch our Celebration of Kindness Week and we hope all the children have fun watching the video again over the weekend with their families. Remember, the video can be found on our Youtube and Vimeo channels!
The children are aware of how to access their homework for next week – either on SATs Companion or in their books. Spellings have also been set. If your child is accessing their homework through SATs Companion this week and needs additional support for long division, there are support videos and websites on Google Classroom this week.
We hope everyone has a fantastic weekend and is excited for the week ahead - celebrating kindness!
Date: 10th Nov 2023 @ 8:25am
Well done for another amazing week Year 1! We have had a great week.
We started the week by continuing our Maths topic on ‘Addition and Subtraction’. We introduced the subtraction symbol and focused on our STAR vocabulary – minus and subtract. We used a variety of practical resources to support us in subtracting numbers within 10.
In DT this week we created stable structures for our windmill project. We had so much fun designing and creating the bases. We then made some mice to go inside our windmills when they are complete! We can’t wait to see the finished result.
We started our new PE units this week as we focused on Dance and Target Skills. We began exploring the importance of teamwork, positive support and developing a good technique. We loved developing new skills as we practiced underarm throws and used our kindness to encourage our peers.
In Geography we had a great afternoon exploring our local area as part of our topic ‘Where in the world are we?’. We discussed that we live in the United Kingdom and located it on a world map. We then explored our local area and discussed some of the local features within Formby. We then explored the area by going on a local walk to pinpoint some of the physical and human features in our school surroundings.
Have a lovely weekend everyone, you have all worked so hard..jpeg)
Date: 9th Nov 2023 @ 9:27pm
Time certainly does fly but what a week we have had in the Year 5 classroom!
A particular highlight was our visit from Callum from The Hammond, a renowned institution for performing arts education. We were treated to an engaging and interactive theatre workshop which explored storytelling, drama and some key elements of acting and adopting the role of different characters. The workshop included various games and activities to achieve these aims and there was plenty of laughter throughout.
In our RE learning, we completed our focus on the Bible by linking it to other holy books in different faiths, such as the Torah in Judaism and the Guru Granth Sahib in Sikhism. We recorded these connections within a circle thinking map before then answering a range of 4C questions to demonstrate our understanding of our learning to date. Next week, we will begin our new RE focus…Christmas and the gospels of Matthew and Luke.
In Maths, our focus has been square numbers, cube numbers and prime factors. Next week we will move onto perimeter, including finding the perimeter of rectilinear shapes. It is also assessment week where we will recap all of our learning so far this term!
Take a breath now that a brilliantly busy week has reached an end. Though we wouldn’t have it any other way! Enjoy your weekend and see you all on Monday!
Reminders
-From Wednesday 29th November, the children will commence swimming lessons at Formby Pool. A letter with further information has been sent via School Spider.
Date: 9th Nov 2023 @ 4:27pm
As part of our theme ‘Special People’ we talked about different people in our community who help us. We discussed how the police, doctors, nurses, vets, dentists, teachers and people that deliver the post are such important people in our community for many different reasons. The children then thought of ways that we could thank these special people for looking after us.
This week we have also started our theme ‘The Gingerbread Man’, we were very excited to find the home corner had been turned into ‘Gingerbread Cottage’. We have enjoyed listening to the story and identifying the different characters whilst retelling the story through our play.
The children have enjoyed learning about ‘Remembrance Day’ and why we celebrate it. The children enjoyed lots of different activities such as making poppies from loose parts and paper plates, creating a soldier out of different pieces of paper and making poppy biscuits. The children also took part in a 2 minutes silence where they had time to think about and remember all of those who have been injured or died at war.
In Maths this week, we recapped what sorting meant and the children have been learning all about circles and triangles. The children had to describe the shapes and the different properties of them. We learnt that a triangle always has three sides and three corners. The children also began to recognise that a triangle can come in various forms. Well done everyone!
We hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you next week.
Miss Dalley and the Reception team
Reminders:
Friday 17th November – Children in Need – more information to follow
Wednesday 22nd November – WOW Service 2pm @ St Peter’s Church
Date: 8th Nov 2023 @ 10:46am
What a wonderful week we have had in Year 4!
We connected the value of Peace with Remembrance Day this week, as we created a WW1 newspaper article background and lay a mosaic poppy to rest on our created backgrounds. We then discussed how the poppy is a sign of both remembrance and hope for a peaceful future.
On Monday, we casted our votes at the TSP polling station using our very own polling card. We are so proud of all the children who put forward themselves forward to be nominated as a committee representative and the incredible speeches they delivered. Our school value of Hope truly shined through and with recognised the British Value connection we made to democracy by casting our votes.
In English, we have been focusing on ensuring we are using the correct tense in our writing and selecting whether it is best to use ‘was’ or ‘were’ in a range of sentences. Using a thesaurus, we located synonyms to uplevel our writing and focused again on the importance of precise detail to give the reader a detailed picture of the environment and characters we are writing about. We thoroughly enjoyed illustrating the high street outlined in our text ‘The shop from nowhere’, only able to draw what was heard in the given descriptions. Inspired by this text, when then designed our own, writing a descriptive piece to detail the shops that made up our high streets. Next week, we will be focusing on using an adjective and an adverb to describe the appearance of movement of different acts in the circus.
It has been all about the times tables in Maths this week. We first looked at the 3 and 6 times tables and the correlation between them, learning some catchy songs to help with our recall of multiplication facts. We created fortune tellers and used times tables wheels as methods to also support of recall and learnt a handy trick on our fingers to help us remember the 9 times table.
Using some real-life teeth moulds, we identified the names and functions of teeth in Science and even showcased our missing teeth along the way! We moved on to look at the parts of the digestive system and the primary function of this system within our bodies. In History, we created a conscious alley, to give our opinions on why Claudius should invade Britain and used our knowledge of feminine and masculine spelling in Spanish to distinguish sentences.
We also had our first Healthy Habit session this week, led by Active Sefton. We thought about eating a balanced diet and leading a healthy lifestyle. We discovered that foods we thought were healthy, turned out to have excessive amounts of sugar in them!
Our trip to Laurel’s Wood was simply INCREDIBLE! From roasting marsh mellows on a fire, building shelters and learning lots of survival methods, our smiles never stopped beaming throughout the day. We are so thankful to the wonderful instructors who taught us wood carving, how to signal for rescue, and some essential outdoor first aid skills.
On Friday, we had the delight of watching the premier of this year’s TSP Kindness Video. We cannot wait to get home tonight and share the joys of our filming and exceptional dance moves with our loved ones at home!
Have a lovely weekend, Year 4!
Reminders:
- Year 4’s last swimming lesson is Wednesday 22nd November. Following this, PE lessons will remain on Tuesday and Wednesday. Children should continue to come to school in their PE kit on Tuesday and Wednesday.
- Donations to Barnardos Children’s Charity, as part of our Kindness Project, should be in school by Friday 17th November.