Friday 10th January 2025
Dear Parents and Carers,
Welcome Back! I know that I have seen many of you already, but I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy New Year filled with peace, love and prosperity. Here in school, we travel into the new year with Hope – hope for our children, our families and for the continuity of our much loved school. We have heard from the School’s Adjudicator this week to let us know that they have begun work on our case and that we will be given the opportunity to provide them with further information during the process. This is positive and the fight to save our school continues!
On Monday we celebrated Epiphany here in school, recognising visit of the Wise Men to baby Jesus. We spent some time thinking about why the Wise Men, who would have been considered ‘outsiders’ coming from a different country, speaking a different language and looking very different to the folk of Bethlemhem, were included in the Christmas Story and we came to the conclusion that they symbolise God’s love for all people, no matter who you are or where you come from. There inclusion in the story and our remembrance ‘reveals’ this afresh. On the back of this, we have been thinking of ways in which we can ensure everyone is included in our little corner of Camberwell, through demonstrating our value of the Month, Kindness.
As is tradition, in the first week of a full term we hold a themed week. This week the children have been learning all about ‘Terrific Transport’ as they have been developing their Science and Design and Techonoloigy skills. The children have learned more about leavers, cams, pullys and computer programmes that are used to create motion and they have all crafted a moving vehicle of their own. I do hope that you were all able to pop in to our exhibition at the end of the day today to see the children’s wonderful work.
Next week the children will be starting their new topics for the term, hopefully by now you will all have a had a chance to look at the Welcome Letter and Overview sent home and you will be familiar with what is to come in the weeks ahead.
Below is a summary of the learning that has taken place across the school this week.
| Early Years | |
| Early Years have had a busy return to school. We welcomed two new children to our class – Lissabeth and Ayanah. They have had a great first week in school! Nursery and Reception have been very busy learning about different forms of transport and even created their own train! We have enjoyed learning all about trains, buses, cars and trucks. | |
| Year One | |
| We have had a fantastic week in Year One. We were delighted to be back in school after the Christmas break and to be seeing all of our friends again! The children worked very hard all week to design and make a moving car with wheels and axles. We had a great time building, painting and decorating our own cars. We then evaluated our car against given design criteria and showed our creations to the school. We are very proud of our craftsmanship and our hard work. | |
| Year Two | |
| Year Two made moving pictures this week. The children had to decide who they were making their pictures for and they chose children in the lower year groups. They then had to design their pictures, try out the techniques for making the moving parts and then make the picture. They showed their pictures to the children in Year One, Reception and Nursery, then they wrote evaluations of what went well and how they would improve their designs next time. The end results were very impressive. | |
| Year Three | Year Four |
| This week Year Three designed greeting cards for our Terrific Transport themed week. As our Design and Technology project, these cards had a unique difference: they all contained a lever system so that our forms of transport really moved. The children learned about how different combinations of levers and pivots would create different types of movement. In English, we began our unit on fairy tales by writing a version of ‘The Three Little Pigs’. In maths, we have been making and using arrays to aid our understanding of multiplication. We also began our new science unit on light. | This week in Year Four we have been learning all about pulleys and developing our understanding of electrical circuits – a week full of STEM!
We began with learning what a pulley is and how it works and then we experimented with making our own. We did the same with circuits before designing our own vehciles. Constructing them was not as easy as we thought it would be; we had to be precise and very careful when making our cars so that the pulleys and the motors would fit. Some of our cars have been more successful than others, but we managed to make them move and we have been able to evaluate the success of our finished products too. |
| Year Five | |
| Year Five has been learning how cams mechanisms change rotary movement into linear movement, a feature which many toys have, and they have designed and built their own cam toys. The children really enjoyed the making process; we have some future engineers in our midst! | |
| Year Six | |
| This week in Year Six we have been getting to grips with designing and building cars and then using a computer to programme them. We cannot tell a lie, it has been tricky at times, especially when using the language of computer programming, but we have been successful in making our cars move! Along side this, we have been doing some maths, reminding ourselves of the importance of place value when working with decimals, and we have been doing some singing too…we learnt a wonderful song with Phoebe which we think might just feature in a future performance. | |
The house point totals for this week are:
| GARRISON | 29 | AUGUSTINE | 30 |
| FRANKLIN | 19 | DICKENS | 20 |
On a final note, below you will find a list of dates for the term ahead; do please keep them somewhere safe. As new events are added to the calendar, they will be posted on our website so do please visit the site for updates.
Kind regards
Mrs Warland
Head Teacher
Dates for the Spring Term
Monday 6th January Term Begins
Themed Week – Terrific Transport
Thursday 9th January Spring One Welcome Letters sent home
Friday 10th January Terrific Trasnport Exhibition for Parents
Wednesday 15th January Year Six – Black Cultural Archives Visit
Monday 20th January Year One – London Transport Museum Trip
Wednesday 29th January Year Five – River Dipping Trip
Monday 3rd February Children’s Mental Health Week
Tuesday 11th February Safer Internet Day
Friday 14th February Term Ends
Monday 24th February Term Begins
Wednesday 26th February Year Five – Black Cultural Archives Visit
Thursday 27th February Spring Two Welcome Letters sent home
Friday 28th February Year Six Class Assembly
Tuesday 4th March Shrove Tuesday
Wednesday 5th March Ash Wednesday
Thursday 6th March World Book Day
Friday 7th March Year Five Class Assembly
Thursday 13th March Year Five – National History Museum
Friday 14th March Year Four Class Assembly
Monday 17th March Assessment Week
Spelling Bee
Thursday 20th March Year Four Chelsea Physic Gardens
Friday 21st March Year Three Class Assembly
Monday 24th March Year Three Chelsea Physic Gardens
Friday 28th March Year Two Class Assembly
Tuesday 1st April Open Evening
Wednesday 2nd April World Autism Awareness Day
Open Evening
Thursday 3rd April Open Evening
Friday 4th April Year One Class Assembly
Monday 7th April Easter Week
Friday 11th April Term Ends
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