Newsletter Issue 11
ferncumbe Friday
Friday 28th February 2020
sensational science week 2020!
Unfortunately, the start of Science week was interrupted by a most concerning theft. The clock in the hall was stolen! 5 teachers were seen in the area at the time and they are all under suspicion. At the time of writing, the classes are testing the evidence found at the crime scene using various forensic techniques. Reception has studied the crime scene white powder and dissolved it to see if they can match it to a powder they know. Year 1 are measuring and comparing footprints to see if any of the teachers' shoes match the crime scene print. The soil is being tested by year 2 for its composition and by Year 5 for its pH. Year 4 are working on fingerprints and Year 6 have used chromatography to match the ink found on a note at the crime scene with the ink of a pen belonging to a teacher. We will compare results on Friday to see if we can catch the thief!
The school has been decorated in the most magnificent way by over 150 project boards. Ideas range from food air miles and DNA, to replanting the rainforest and making electromagnets. The range was incredible and the effort even more so. Thank you so much for your support and help at home. The children have shown obvious pride in themselves and each other when sharing and exploring each other's projects. Matt Jones, a visiting engineer from DCA designs in Warwick came to talk to the school about the process involved from an initial design idea, right through to the final product on the market, including self-driving cars!
Sublime Science came in to inspire KS1 on Tuesday and 'Kinetic Katie' wowed the children with so many experiments and amazing demonstrations. Next week, KS2 are looking forward to a coding drones workshop!
And if that wasn't enough, each class are also running their own topic-based investigation too! I'm sure they will tell you all about that at home! The buzz around school has been wonderful to see and we hope the children have had an inspiring week.
Mrs Grier
It was fantastic to see so many of you in school getting involved in your children’s Science lessons yesterday. Thank you for coming in and for your much valued support with making the week so successful.
safer internet week
Before half term, we celebrated Safer Internet Day, firstly by turning it into Safer Internet Week and secondly, by exploring more about privacy and security and what that means to us as Digital Citizens. In class, children learnt about the importance of a good password, how to keep their accounts safe, how to report concerns and what information is safe to give out when talking to others or signing up for things online.
Miss Forbes also tasked us with writing an acrostic poem that showed our understanding of E-Safety and set out some rules to keep us safe online. This is what we came up with!
On top of this, each class also wrote their own class charter to agree what they were responsible for when using technology and the internet in the classroom. We will revisit these at the beginning of each term and they’re up in the classroom for us to refer to in our Computing lessons!
I am really proud of what the children achieved during this week!
Miss Forbes
Newsletter from our Shakespeare Ambassadors
governor monitoring report
As a parent it was lovely to be able to take part in Science week yesterday and in particular see some of the amazing projects that the children have done at home with their families and carers.
As a governor, I stayed on for the whole day with two other governors to carry out one of our monitoring days. We took the opportunity to spend time in a variety of lessons and speak to staff and pupils individually. This is something the governors do a couple of times a year and we then produce a report to the other Governors and discuss our observations with Miss Morris and Mrs Webb.
What was clear from the day was how much effort had gone into Science week from the pupils themselves through to the staff who had to pull this together over and above their usual daily tasks. On behalf of all the governors I would like to say thank you to everyone involved.
Feedback from all levels is vital and I hope that you have all received an email about our questionnaire. Please can I encourage you to take a few minutes to complete it, by following this link… https://18434798.survey.fm/parent-questionnaire-2019-20. The deadline for submissions is Sunday 8th March.
Donna Bothamley
Vice Chair of Governors
With very best wishes for a lovely weekend,
Tracey Webb, Deputy Headteacher