Head Teacher Update

Although this has been a short half term, we’ve squeezed a lot in.  We’ve had visitors into school to supplement our curriculum, chicks have been born, a visit to Locomotion and also competed in several sporting events.  Special shout outs to our Y3/4 football team who were very competitive in their league and particularly to our cross-country team who made it all the way to the County finals.  Iris finishing in a hugely impressive 4^th place.  The entries into the Beautiful Durham art competition were absolutely exceptional, judging was incredibly difficult, I look forward to seeing the children’s work displayed in the centre of Durham.  As I write this piece, I’m also really looking forward to seeing the children’s creations for our egg decorating competition.

The children across the school have continued to work extremely hard.  Children in Year Two and Six are now preparing for their SATs tests which take place shortly after the Easter break.  This is always a tough time, but I’m confident that they’ll do their absolute best and with continued support from school staff in partnership with backing from you at home, they will achieve the results they deserve.

As I’ve mentioned previously, there will be some disruption to the normal running of the school during the summer term.  Our much-needed building work is scheduled to start in June, and will hopefully be completed before we return in September.  I’m keen to share the plans with you, to help you see the challenges we currently face and the difference I’m confident the changes will make to the quality of education we deliver as a school.  To achieve this, we’ve planned meetings for parents and members of the local community on Thursday 20^th April and also Thursday 27^th April. The meetings will run from 4pm to 5pm and will include a tour of the school, an opportunity to view the plans and also ask any questions.  This will be the same meeting twice, so there’s no need to come along to both.

As we move into the Easter break, I’d like to collect some feedback to gather your opinions on how we’re doing as a school, anything you think we do well and particularly anything you’d like us to do to improve.  To do that please follow this link https://forms.office.com/e/kT5PDftwHV

I hope you enjoy the content of the newsletter as usual I want to thank you for everything you do to support us at the school.

Class Two – Year One and Two

What a busy half term Class Two have had!

We started the half term off with a fantastic trip to the Locomotion Museum in Shildon. The day started by catching the train from Bishop Auckland to Shildon. This was very exciting as it was the first train ride for many of us! We had a great day at the museum continuing our learning all about George Stephenson and Timothy Hackworth. We were very lucky as we were also one of the first schools to see the real Rocket too! Class Two had some great questions for the staff at the museum and it was a great end to our History topic on inventions.

During Maths lessons this half term we have been exploring multiplication and division. We have started to do morning maths lessons during registration like class 3 and 4. During morning maths we answer a range of arithmetic and reasoning questions to help us recall our learning from throughout the year. Class Two have also loved using Times Tables Rockstars this half term and have focused on our 10- and 2-times tables.

In English this half term we have been reading Owl Babies by Martin Waddell and The Owl Who was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson. We have loved reading these books and have been writing our own non-fiction texts based on owls. We used dictionaries to create our own glossary pages and thought carefully about how to put words into alphabetical order.

In Science this half term we have continued our learning on animals and have been very lucky as Mrs Jackson has helped us to incubate eggs. We learnt all about the life cycle of chickens and found out about key stages in a chicken’s development. We used a calendar to find out more about what was happening to the eggs. During the second week we candled the eggs. This means that we used a special torch to investigate if the eggs were developing. We were very happy as on hatching day eight chicks hatched! Our favourite part was getting to hold the chicks, some of us even spotted the egg tooths still attached to a few chicks.

In Design Technology we have been focusing on healthy eating. We have investigated the different food groups and designed our own healthy wraps. We did a taste test to see which combinations of flavours would work in our wraps! Class Two are looking forward to our final lesson where we will make, taste and review our them!