Headmaster's Welcome
Headmaster's News - 31st March 2017
Mar 31, 2017
31 March 2017
Dear Parents
Easter Egg Raffle
The noise of rustling raffle tickets could be heard around the school on Wednesday as the children awaited, with GREAT excitement, the Easter Egg Raffle! The children have been eyeing up their favourite eggs all week in the Office and they were pointing out their preferred egg to their friends as they entered the dining room for the Infant draw and the sports hall for the Junior draw. As the raffle got underway, the excitement built as each child’s number was called to claim their egg. By the end of the draws we had two rooms full of very contented children. This morning, we held the draw for the first prize, a large Thornton’s egg which was won by Tim in 2M. I hope he is going to share that egg with the whole of his family!
Celebration Assembly
Celebration assemblies were held for Infants and Juniors this week. It was lovely to see the variety of activities that the children have been taking part in outside school. We celebrated certificates, medals and trophies gained in dance, skiing, music and many others. There was a special surprise award for Oliver C from the Olympic medallist and World Champion, James Guy, for Oliver’s amazing achievement of beating James’ national record at the Olympic Pool. Definitely a star to keep an eye on in the future! Thank you to all the children for bringing in their certificates and awards. What a talented group of children you all are!
Out and About with 3M
I visited an ICT lesson with 3M on Wednesday. Hamza said they had been working on databases. Nandini added that they had been introduced to the topic by talking about Top Trumps and how each card lists the data for an individual or a machine. Tia said she had played the game with Khadija and now she understood about data. The children had created their own database in the last lesson to record data about their classmates such as the colour of hair and eyes. Alaia had created a detailed database with a very effective personalised title. Hiba and Inas were busy asking their classmates questions and quickly obtained and entered the pieces of information they needed to collect. Edie had also realised the importance of pressing the addition sign to add new data each time which she shared with the rest of the class. Stephen and Alexander were interested in why they were adding numbers for dates rather than names of the months. Mr Turner explained that this was easier for the computer to use and cut down on mistakes when inputting data. When that data had been collected, the children were asked to find a number of answers to a list of questions. The first was to ask how many children in the class had black hair. Arjun quickly worked through the questions methodically, completing the tasks quickly and successfully. The class were really enjoying the lesson and were interacting well with each other. They all created an effective database that could be used to record other data. Mr Turner used the example of the DVLA database that records cars and licence details from all over the country. This really helped the children to understand the benefit of using a database and at the age of eight they had created one. Thank you Year 3 for a very interesting lesson. In the next lesson, I am told you are going to use a database to answer questions about items held in the warehouse of a snowboard equipment retailer. This shouldn’t pose any problems for you with your new-found skills! Good luck!
Orienteering with Year 4
Tuesday saw Year 4’s annual visit to Lever Park to complete their orienteering course. The children were split into three groups and had to find letters on posts on a 4 mile course throughout Lever Park. The children’s map skills really developed as the day progressed taking it in turns to read the map and use the landscape and map to pinpoint locations. The children also became more adept at working out the distance between each point by using the map’s scale. The group I was with managed to find a post surrounded by what was described on the map as impenetrable vegetation! They found their way in and out all in one piece much to their delight, especially when they were nearly tricked by another post that they found in the vicinity. It was a great afternoon in which the children really had the opportunity to develop their problem-solving skills using the facts and evidence in front of them to locate some very well-hidden posts. Congratulations to all of Year 4 who completed the course and thank you to Mrs Jones and Mrs Parsons for organising the event.
Year 6 Reading Stars
It is great to see the enthusiasm for reading among our Year 6 children this year and they have been especially keen to read books recommended to them by their teachers. Among these has been ‘Harry and the Wrinklies’, by Alan Temperley. Isabelle enjoyed the story so much that her mum wrote to Mr Temperley to let him know this and also to tell him about our World Book Day Junior Mastermind competition. Thank you very much Mrs Duckett!
Just before the Mastermind competition, Mr Temperley sent the Year 6 children a good luck card to which they replied with a thank you card and lots of letters asking lots of questions! We have just received his reply and were astounded to see that he had written seven A4 pages in answer to all our questions. He told us how he comes up with ideas for his stories and gave us some tips for writing too!
Some of the Year 6 children have chosen to write a further letter to Mr Temperley – these were sent off today so we are eagerly awaiting a reply! Mrs Haythornthwaite
House Point Trophy
Congratulations to the children in Fylde who are this term’s house point winners.
Merit Awards
RD: Lyla 1D: Haya 1W: Thomas 2F: Nadia 2M: Arianna
3M: Alaia 4H: Hannah 4S: Kavya 5D: Evie 5M: Charlotte 6H: Faheema 6J: Jemima
Monitors of the week: Ahmed and Zara
Thought for the Week
No winter lasts forever, no spring skips its turn. Hal Borland
Yours sincerely
J M Duke
Headmaster
