Waterfoot Primary School

P.E Days:

Tuesday Indoor PE - dance

Friday Outdoor PE - rounders

Please remember to come to school in full P.E uniform on these days.  Please refer to the Uniform Policy if you are unsure. 

If children wear earrings they should be removed for PE lessons.  If ears have recently been pierced and earrings cannot yet be removed then children should bring plasters from home to cover them up during PE lessons. 

Homework:

Homework is handed out on a WEDNESDAY and returned on a MONDAY.  Weekly homework consists of:

Year 5:

Spelling - this will be completed on Spelling Shed.

Mathematics - this will be tasks set on Sumdog.

Reading -  4 x 15 minutes per week.  

TimeTables Rockstars

Year 6:

Spelling - this will be completed on Spelling Shed.

Mathematics - this will be tasks set on Sumdog.

Reading -  4 x 15 minutes per week.  

TimeTables Rockstars

To support our UKS2 children in taking ownership of their homework and to ensure they have the resources or support to complete it; there is a Thursday lunchtime homework club (where children can choose or are directed to attend).

Topic Homework:

Each half term, a grid is sent out within each key stage which links with the topic, their learning and our school value focus for the following half term. Within each key stage the pupils are recommended to complete a number of their chosen activities and each completed activity is rewarded with dojo points.  At the end of the half term all classes showcase this homework to share and celebrate the children’s hard work and efforts. These homework grids will be available on our website in the 'Children' section or click the link below.

Home Readers:

Children are asked to read a minimum of 4 times per week for at least 15 minutes.  We ask that the children's reading records are signed and handed in on a daily basis to be stamped and dojo points given out.  Children who complete this will be entered into the Friday cushion raffle! 

We have had a very busy half-term in Birch class finishing with our school Harvest Festival.  Thank you to everyone who made donations.

The children impressed themselves when they completed their first ever French assessment where they completed speaking, listening, reading and writing tasks.  Well done to everyone!

This afternoon we made floofs - imaginary creatures that demonstrate how offspring inherit features from their parents.

No homework has been set over the holiday to enable everyone to have a good rest, but children are always able to use Sumdog, TT Rockstars and Spelling Shed to keep their skills up to date.

Please note that after half-term, our outdoor PE slot moves to Fridays as we have a PE coach coming in to join us.

Happy half-term everybody!

Birch kicked off anti-bullying week wearing their odd socks to celebrate diversity and inclusion.  We had lots of fun designing our own odd socks and then moved on to the more serious topic of thinking about when banter becomes bullying.  We enjoyed watching the BBC Live lesson and reflecting on how we can stand up to bullying and make our voices heard.

As part of our science work on light, we really enjoyed creating periscopes from drink cartons and mirrors.

Birch Class has had a busy term since coming back to school in September.  The Year 5 children have settled wonderfully into upper junior life and the Year 6 children are proving to be excellent role models to the younger children in school.  

In Spetember the Year 6 children were given their prefect jobs and have settled well into their many different roles.  We have prefects who help our office staff and prefects who assist in the dining hall at lunchtimes.  Some children are class prefects, helping in classrooms at breaks and lunchtimes, others are responsible for operating the computer and music system during school assemblies ... the list gores on. 

The Year 5 children have enjoyed spending time with their reception class buddies and have been doing a super job of helping them to settle into school.  This really is a huge help to our reception class teachers and something the recpetion children really look forward to. 

The children have been learning about the Anglo-Saxons in history and are building their knowledge ready for our Anglo-Saxon workshop next week in school.  We have also been having fun in DT making mobile phone cases which has been testing our sewing skills this week!  Watch this space for some photos of the finished cases in a few weeks time!  Some of you may have seen us practicing our golf skills on the all-weather pitch when you have arrived at the end of the day on Wednesdays.  We have been having lots of fun playign Tri-golf this term.  We have bene working on our chipping and putting and we are getting pretty good! 

We hjave had an exciting day, taking part in activities for Mental Health day this morning where we thought about the differences between small problems and big problems, who our trusted adults were, how to start difficult conversations and how to be a good listener.

This afternoon, we participated in an Anglo-Saxon workshop where we got to wear Anglo- Saxon clothing and explore the sorts of artefacts that would have been used by the Anglo-Saxons.  We had a really great time and especially enjoyed dressing up as soldiers!

We have reached the final lesson in our gymnastics unit where we have been looking at tension and counter-tension balances and creating sequences of movements using a range of rotational and jumping movements to allow us to transition from paired balances to group balances.  Here are some pictures of our fantastic work. Everybody not only demonstrated great gymnastic skills, but also showed good communication and co-operation skills.  Well done, Birch!

We really enjoyed creating these mixed media winter-themed pictures using colour mixing, ink and collage techniques.

We hope you all enjoyed our Christmas show 'Away in a spaceship!' The children had worked so hard to learn all the songs, their actions and the script for the show and I'm sure you'll agree that they did themselves proud! Thank you to all the family members who were able to come along and watch us! We celebrated in the afternoon with a Christmas party; playing Christmas corners, heads & tails and musical bumps before settling down for a bit of party food before home time. Here are some pictures of our Birch Class children! Lots more photos of all the Upper Juniors have been posted on the Waterfoot Facebook page. 

Welcome back to Spring 2 which will be a busy half-term in UKS2.  We kicked off our science work on forces by exploring how to make balloon rockets which whizzed across the classroom and occasionally exploded.  We enjoyed celebrating Mardi Gras today ,making carnival masks and learning to dance the samba which was a great warm-up for our indoor PE lesson on tennis!

We have had a busy couple of weeks in Birch with lots of hard work as we head closer to SATs tests, but also lots of fun celebrating World Book Day and British Science Week.

For World Book Day, we took part in a Book Bistro where the children were provided with a menu of book extracts from different genres which they could order from.  Their 'dish of the day' was defintely 'Stich Head'.

In British Science Week, the theme was 'time'.  In UKS2 we explored reaction times, animal speeds and .investigated how to make a pendulum timer.  We had lots of fun.

Welcome back to the Summer term - we are hoping that the weather soon warms up a bit.  We have made an excellent start to our work linked to the Amazon rainforest by using mixed media to create a range of images linked to our novel, Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson.  We then focused on using these pictures to write detailed descriptive sentences including nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.  In Design Technology we kicked off with a 'wow' lesson based around 'bushtucker trials' where the children tried a range of foods which had been given unappetising names (pomegranate seeds called fish eyes,  tinned mushrooms called slugs etc. etc.)  The children were very adventurous and and despite lots of shrieks and grimaces managed to try many different foods.  As this unit progresses, we will be looking at creating a healthy vegetable soup.  We also had our first session with the sports coach on cricket which everyone enjoyed.