Parents please be advised that if there is any reason that your child’s arrangements for getting home from school change and your child normally attends the After School Club, you MUST ensure that you inform them as well as the school otherwise your child will not be released from their care to another parent or family member until authorisation is received.

If children bring in food for lunch that requires a spoon or a fork, can you please ensure that the cutlery is also provided for your child (disposable if possible).

If your child is off school for any reason can you please ensure that you inform the school office and not one of the teachers or other members of staff to ensure that absences are known about at the beginning of the school day.

Thank you

We started off the term on a high when the Lions had a Sikhism day! The children learnt about the Sikh beliefs and lifestyles! We also sampled traditional food that would be served in the Langar (the Sikh kitchen). The children loved it!

The children have enjoyed doing a literacy topic on ‘argument’, they have practiced their debating skills and I’m sure we have some budding politicians in our midst! The children have enjoyed Hugo Cabaret, the book our topic was based on.

We are now finishing off our term looking at poetry with a link to conservation. The children have enjoyed researching issues that they feel strongly about and are now looking at writing their own poems to express this idea.

Lions have also been working incredibly hard on their dancing over the past couple of weeks. They have made a routine for the song ‘Jai Ho’ from the film Slumdog Millionaire (a link with our India topic) and have worked hard to perfect it. We will be performing it during the last week of term at a dance festival at the Stamford Arts Centre.

There is a lot more to mention, a topic on water, fantastic batiking, excellent rugby skills, food chains and adapting to environments…the list is endless…

Before the end of term we have a French day to look forwards to, this will provide an excellent opportunity for the children to sample French cuisine, play French games and develop their knowledge of the French language.

Next term the our topic is based around ‘Our Wonderful World,’ this links very nicely to look at sustainability and Africa. We also have the almighty SATS testing to look forwards to as well as assigning parts and practising for our wonderful play.

We look forwards to seeing you in the summer term.

The children have learnt a great deal from our themed work on India – including researching their own topic using the Internet and books. Through constant practice they are all now improving their computer skills. We have worked very hard on newspaper reports in Literacy, and I am sure that we have some real journalists in the making!

In DT, Mr Winn has helped the children design and make monsters, using air to make various parts of their monster move. They have had some excellent ideas, and most of the monsters are now finished and in working order.

Tigers have been going to Witham Hall for gymnastics every Wednesday this term. Mrs Welch, the teacher from Witham, has complimented the children on how much progress they have made in every area of gymnastics. She says that Wednesday mornings are the highlight of her week!

I took a group of ten Y3/ 4s to Witham Hall for the annual Sing Up morning, a gathering of seven schools from the Stamford area. Our children did us proud – they were so confident and well- behaved! They all enjoyed the occasion and mixed very well with the other schools.

We look forward next term to starting our topic on Ancient Egypt – always a winner with the children.

The children have found out about the history of the first moon landing and began some map work both to locate planets in the solar system and the continent of Africa and countries within it, such as Mali where Baboon comes from. In Art, linked to learning about famous people such as Neil Armstrong, the children have learnt to print in the style of Andy Warhol.

Next term our topic will be Punch and Judy. I hope the children are looking forward to learning about the history of the British Seaside, as well as making their own Punch and Judy Puppets to put on a show for Cubs! Have a wonderful Easter.

As part of this theme we have made wanted posters for the big bad wolf, searched for numbers that he huffed and puffed and hid at The Spinney and investigated how to make a pig fly (I bet you didn’t know that pigs could fly!!!).

Next term the children will be thinking about all things ‘Spring’ in our theme called Baby Animals – this will be made really ‘egg’-citing with the arrival of an ‘egg’-stra special surprise delivery that will hatch out during the first week in May!

Many thanks to all of our families for the great work they are doing at home with jolly sounds books and reading as well as enjoying story sacks and writing in take home Ted’s diary. An extra special thanks to Donna Smith and Matthew Goring for looking after Dottie the chicken on her extended holiday since we lost poor Lottie the chicken. And another huge thanks to Mrs Cole and Mrs Jones for coming in to share some special individual reading time with the class every week. You are all twinkling stars!

Why not join us for the morning on 7th April 2011, where the Bythams Primary School will be proudly welcoming all members of the community, young and old for an open morning. Come along and visit the school, its fantastic team of staff and of course, the children.

Mr Shawley, the Head Teacher and our head boy and head girl would love to show you our school facilities, give you the opportunity to ask questions and see some of the fantastic work that is going on across the school.

During the morning, you will also have the opportunity to observe the youngest members of our school community learning through play in the Early Years Garden, whilst the older children will be actively learning and enjoying literacy, numeracy and French sessions.

We do hope you can come along and visit our small friendly school. Refreshments will be provided throughout the morning.

In literacy we started off by looking at performance poetry. We looked at how poetry can be performed well and what poetic language is effective in performance poetry. The Lions performed and recorded their own performance poems.

Our second literacy topic was short stories with flash-backs. We looked at a lovely film clip called ‘The Piano.’ It was a very emotional clip which the children responded well to. The clip resulted in a lot of discussion and the children were able to discuss their feelings and emotions.

As a result of this literacy topic the children worked in groups to create a story about a flashback of school. They were incredibly lucky to have a film specialist come into school and help them make their stories into films! I know the children really enjoyed this experience and now we know how to make a film we can do it much more!

For the last two weeks the children have been looking at ‘dramatic conventions.’ This topic involves looking at scripting and performance. The children, Mrs Golby and I have all really enjoyed using Dr Who to fuel this topic. By the end of the term we hope to have made and filmed our own mini episode at the spinney!

The children have also enjoyed looking at shelters, they all managed to erect a tent and build shelters using the KNEX materials. The children enjoyed finding out about different types of shelters used in out locality and across the rest of the world.

In PSHE to Lions have also started to think about their goals- long and short term- the children have got some lovely targets to work towards and some fantastic dreams and aspirations.

Next term we look forward to a topic on India. We will be focusing on water, interdependence and adaptation, Indian dance and Sikhism. We also have our interim SATS week approaching in the second week of term.

One of the highlights of the term has been our first experience of movie-making. The children based their movie on an Indian traditional tale. We drew storyboards, painted the scenery, wrote the script and acted the story out in front of the cameras. Some of the children were then in charge of editing the movie and writing the credits. We have learnt a lot from our experience and look forward to including movie making in our work again next term.

We all enjoyed our trip to Aladdin early on this term – the best ever pantomime according to popular consensus. This, as always, gave us the opportunity to write reviews and letters to the theatre.

Tigers have also been enjoying their weekly visits to Witham Hall for gymnastics. We are incredibly fortunate to benefit from the generosity of Witham Hall in lending us not only their fantastic facilities, but also the expertise of their PE teachers. The children are gaining in confidence on the apparatus and have been very successful.

We look forward to continuing our India topic and starting our DT project on Moving Monsters next half term.

This included an Aladdin theme day with Cubs class, the children did genie doubling, experimented with materials to collage, designed and painted their own Widow Twanky costumes, wrote stories about magic carpet adventures and thought up and made a wish. I would like to mention three girls who won the competitions that day. The Widow Twanky costume design was won by Katie McCairn helped by Natasha Jessop and Ella Turner, and the magic carpet story competition was won by Ella Turner who created a book containing several different adventures.

The following week the children wrote a script for a daily news update broadcast about the Aladdin story, turning a fairy tale into an information text which was then recorded and made into a short film!

The rest of this term has been focused on the history of toys. We had a lovely informative visit from Mrs Revell who showed us toys from three generations of her family! We have learnt how to make moving pictures using levers and pivots and the children are currently designing their own. As well as testing the effects of pushes and pulls on toys, at the moment we are beginning to film a short movie about our findings to show to the rest of the school.

We began this term with a fantastic trip to the theatre to see Aladdin which became the stimulus for lots of learning through the topic ‘fairytales’. The children enjoyed making fairytale ‘shape’ palaces, dressing up for a fairytale ball, painting magic frogs, buying things from the fairytale frock shop and even making a ‘photostory’ movie of the story The Princess and the Pea.

To finish the term we have been exploring the world of penguins on our imaginary journey to the South Pole, just like in the story Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. We made a story board, wrote sentences, used drama to think about how the characters in the story felt, designed, made and tested boats and investigated ice balloon ‘ice burgs’. After the half term break we will focus on non fiction book making by researching and finding out penguin facts, locating where on the world map they come from. Please feel free to research penguins at home for fun for your child to share and add to our book in class!

I would like to say a huge thank you to Mrs Jones and Mrs Cole for their fantastic reading services. The children really look forward to you coming in and sharing a story and helping them to change their book for home reading. Keep up the hard work with home reading – just a few minutes of quality reading time together each night makes ALL the difference and sets your child off on an exciting reading journey that will last a life time. We have now introduced all of the letters of the alphabet plus ‘oa’, ‘ow’, ‘ff’, ‘ll’, ‘ck’, ‘ss’, ‘ee’… and the children are building words together using these sounds (ie: j-a-ck or p-i-g or qu-ee-n or c-r-ow-n…). We look forward to learning more phonemes and blending them to read as the year goes on.

Thank you for your continued support and if you have any queries, questions or anything at all please don’t hesitate to come along to chat to either me or Mrs Pyne – we’re here to help!