Welcome to Calverley CE News issue #2. Here you will enjoy finding out what exciting and stimulating learning activities have been taking place throughout school. You will find other useful stories and have insights into other news items from this term too!
Competition Time!
For some of the older children in the school - why not start to learn our school's Christian vision statement? Draw a story board - play text tennis ... try to learn it, then live it! For younger children, learn our three key words - Love, Learn, Care!
If you feel confident you may want to begin the next worship by reciting the school Christian vision, let your teacher know, or Mr Curran directly!
Following the teachings of Jesus, we challenge and support all members of our community to love one-another, make the most of their God-given gifts and care for everyone in friendship. Allowing all to flourish; enabling heart, mind and spirit to soar. “I can do all this through Christ who gives me strength.”
Love, Learn, Care.
(Philippians 4:13)
Climate Action
On Wednesday 2nd February, Year 6 took part in an online virtual event hosted by Leeds Libraries and Georgian Stevens, an environmental campaigner and the author of Climate Action. She spoke to the children about her work, writing her book and key ways that we impact on climate change and what we can do to reduce our impact. It stimulated some very lively discussions afterwards, demonstrating the children’s passion for this subject area. In literacy, we will be linking our next writing unit to Georgina’s book and we are also starting to plan for our own Climate Action team in school!
It's Not Just The Force That's Strong...It's All Of Science
Last term there was a big focus on Science teaching and learning across the whole school. Children were asked their views about science...I like it when things explode was a popular answer! Another was that the children like learning outside and doing practical investigations and hands on activities. Many of the science lessons planned for are practical sessions and take advantage of our amazing outdoor environment when appropriate to enhance learning further! Further to this, as a staff we looked at children's work across every year group, moderating work to see if it matched up to desired outcomes for each year group. It was a pleasure to see learning from across the school for all the staff - you can see this in the science portfolio section of the web site. Why not take a look at the kinds of science work the children are doing?
Christian Value - Humility
This half term's Christian Value has been Humility. This value has formed the basis of whole school worship and class worship, enabling the children to explore their understanding and to put this value into practical use! The staff take every opportunity to discuss and find examples of children displaying the Christian Value. Have a look at the following clips to stimulate some discussion around the Christian value of Humility. Find out more and explore the value of Humility further here.
Dino-Mania
Reception have had such an exciting week so far, continuing their work on our Dinosaurs topic. The other morning we were thrilled to discover a letter from Mummy Dinosaur, explaining that she had lost her eggs! We had a labelled map of our Outdoor environment to look at and the children discussed where they thought the eggs might be. Then we read some decodable clues together and went outside to investigate. Butterfly class found some eggs in the shed and Caterpillars found some in the leafy den! We carried them back inside to talk about how we could keep the eggs warm and safe. We can’t wait to see what happens next!
Art-tastic!
In Year 2, we’ve been learning about the artist Roy Lichtenstein as part of our Art topic. Over three lessons we designed a comic strip inspired by his iconic style. We created a composition with figures, actions words and splashes before adding texture with torn up comic strips and different patterns. Next we added a white acrylic white wash around the outline before adding bold yellows, red and blues to emphasise the explosions Finally, we used oil pastels and a black shadow highlight to make the figures stand out. We hope you like our finished creations as much as we do
Go-VID!19
As Covid restrictions begin to be removed, it has great to see parents joining us in celebration assemblies again. We will be reviewing our risk assessment again shortly and I am hopeful that we will back to inviting parents in for more events to and to come and see the children at their work. We will be back in touch with you all after the half-term break.
Buggy Brilliant!
In Year 4, for the last 3 days we have been making sling shot cars. We used coloured card, PVA glue, sticky tape, lollipop sticks, straws, wooden wheels and paper clips. We enjoyed constructing them and designing the body.
Our favourite part was making the games, colouring the sides and making chassis. It was a bit hard but supporting each other we succeeded and completed the challenge. We had a good time and had lots of fun.
By Holly (Falcon) and Ella (Red Kite)
Worship Returns
We are now holding regular worship in the hall. At present, we are meeting with half the school at a time. It’s been especially good to welcome Reverend Rob Denton into school to lead worship. The children have really enjoyed welcoming him into school and we look forward to working in partnership together going forward.
Animal Adaptations
In Y6, we have been looking at how animals have adapted and evolved over millions of years. We also looked at how these adaptations are passed on through the parents’ genes. To do this, we had a bit of fun creating our own new Mr. Men and Little Misses through our work on inheritance.
Year 5 Have Sinking Feeling!
In Year 5 the children have been exploring the tragic story of Titanic's maiden voyage. The children created their own news paper front page telling of the harrowing events of that unfortunate night. They read first hand accounts of some survivors, analysed the facts, and came to their own conclusions as to who was to blame for the costly sinking of the infamous vessel.
In other learning, the children have explored Earth and beyond, finding out how night and day occurs, the phases of the moon and creating mnemonics to remember the order of the planets in the solar system. In computing they learnt about Binary code and how this is used to communicate with the Mars Rover - the problems and pitfalls faced by scientists and engineers in exploring the Red Planet!
It's A Myth
In Year 3, we have been learning about the features of Greek Myths. We have read ‘The story of Icarus’ and we used this as inspiration to write our own character descriptions about mythological creatures. The children have used powerful verbs and interesting adjectives to enhance their writing.
Year 1 Having Fun!
What a half term! We have been very busy learning about so many things that the time has flown by! Our journey began with animals, naming and identifying the different groups and types of animals on Earth. There were some we had never heard of! We found out that although penguins are birds, they can’t fly! We read the book ‘Lost and Found’ to help us find out more about penguins. In art we created animal sculptures using clay, junk modelling and paper. We have also found about historical nurses who changed the world, including Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole and Edith Cavell. Our computing work was very complicated, learning about algorithms. We all drew a picture following the same set of instructions and found that each of us drew it differently! We found out creating an algorithm means creating clear and simple instructions, step by step. We are looking forward to using our coding skills to direct the bee-bots next week!
Until next time...
I hope you enjoy the newsletter and we all look forward to continuing to work with you all you’re your wonderful children. If you have the time we'd really appreciate your feedback concerning the news letter - click here to go to our feedback page. Juts type into the subject 'Newsletter feedback' and it will be sent to the editor. God bless!