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27 February 2019
You really can’t beat school days when they sun is shining like it has been so far this week. Driving to work in the daylight and driving home as the sun is setting makes us all happier, doesn’t it? As I’m sat typing this, I can hear the Reception children doing the hokey kokey! How wonderful!
I hope you all have had a nice week. My baby turned 12 on Saturday. Having a 12 year old girl is a test of one’s patience. The perfection of the eye roll and the flounce has been significant over the last seven days. I await the coming years with joy in my heart.
CHANGES TO OUR CURRICULUM
The children have arrived back after their week off with determination and are ready to learn. This week we have launched our new WOW curriculum with an assembly today – WOW stands for Wonders of (the) World and three times a week, for twenty minutes we will be learning key knowledge and facts through songs, games, puzzles etc.
We have been planning this change since the autumn term and have spent our time reviewing the curriculum and identifying the knowledge that we need to learn and planning how we can learn the facts in a fun way. By having our WOW sessions regularly, our main lessons can focus more on learning how to be an active learner and applying our WOW knowledge to investigations and problem solving situations.
Over the next few weeks, the Reception children will be matching produce to animals. They will be using the England map on the playground and doing a skipping song to learn the names of the British Isles, and will use a timeline to plot the pathway from a baby to adult.
In Year 1 they are making and completing jigsaws of the United Kingdom. They are ordering and sequencing events and are doing sciences quizzes on parts of a plant.
In Year 2 they have learnt a song about the continents. They will be ordering space travel events on timelines and in science they will play bingo and learn about every day materials.
In Year 3, the children will be learning about the UK, capital cities and flags and European countries using the game show Countdown to unscramble anagrams. They will learn facts about the human body and skeletons and order events in Stone Age history.
In Year 4 they are testing their Great Plague knowledge by creating their own quizzes to test each other. They are making paper chains to revise their animal and plant food chains knowledge and they are orienteering outside - matching and ordering the digestive system.
In Year 5, they have been playing the game ‘million pound drop’ using flags of Europe as a kick starter for their focus on countries and cities of Europe. They will be exploring the properties of the planets in our solar system by trying to find matching pairs and will do a chronology of the different ‘ages of civilization’ by ordering them in a timeline.
In Year 6 they have been doing a historical investigation game with WW2 artefacts from the library loans service. They have been matching electrical symbols to their images for science and cracking codes using grid references on maps to find locations.
We’ll keep you posted on how it is all going!
PSHE WORK (personal, social and health education)
In our PSHE work we have been learning about relationships this week – who we have relationships with, how we know they are good relationships, how we greet people who we have a relationship with and also what we can do if we think there is a bad relationship in our life. The key message to the children has been ‘It’s ok to tell’ is someone upsets you in some way.
FRIENDS OF WHITEFIELD – PTFA (Parent, teacher and friends association)
I enjoyed a great evening with some of the Friends of Whitefield team last night in the Brown Hare. Having a lack of social life of any form, I felt like I was proper ‘out out’ with my diet coke and finishing off Alyx’s fish fingers. Lots of great planning and good laughs. Thank you FoW.
Some great events coming up:
Friday 8th March – Wear What You Want Day and bring £1 or an Easter Egg for our BINGO event the following week
Tuesday 12th March – BINGO in the school hall. 6.30pm to get you table and hot dog, eyes down at 7pm. £3 a ticket / £10 for a family of 4. Flyer coming out asap!
Tuesday 26th March – DISCO! More details to follow.
If you can help us organise any of these events on the run up to them, please get in touch with Nic Simpson 07823 880832 or Jess 07545 245242 or leave a message for Nic, Jess and Mrs Foster at the school office.
We’re also in full planning mode for Penwortham Live and the Whitefield Summer Fair – we really need support in organising both of these events, so if you can offer time or resources or have links to other amazing people, let us know!
The next Friends of Whitefield evening is on Tuesday 30th April, 6.30pm at The Brown Hare – come along and join us - we’re having tea too.
RECEPTION FOOTBALL CLUB
What a great club for our Reception children - Si Halliwell (Just Kick It), you are amazing! An hour of football training, after school on Mondays. It was lovely to sit in the sunshine after school on Monday and talk to parents and watch the children absolutely loving it.
SCHOOL AFTER 6PM
As a community school, we are so proud of how we can bring our community within our four walls and support others. We are proud to have events on within school after the 6pm normal closing time.
For information our current timetable is:
Monday – UpFit with Heather at 6pm heather@up-fit.uk
Tuesday – Yoga with Sandra, 6pm yogicsas@gmail.com 07983876041
Wednesday – Zumba with Natasha at 8.15pm, just turn up! First class free!
Thursday – Slimming World with Yvette at 7pm, just turn up
Saturday – Slimming World with Libby, 8.30am and 10.30am, just turn up
Sunday – Jubilee Ministries Church, service at 10.45am
EVENTS COMING UP
The Whitefield Choir and guitar players are all at Preston Guild Hall to perform at the annual WRIST Celebration of Friendship. WRIST is a cluster of 22 schools in Penwortham and the surrounding areas who work together to provide professional development training for school staff and collaborative opportunities for the children at our schools to work together. (When it was first set up WRIST stood for West Ribble In-Service Training). The children performed for us in school on Tuesday afternoon and were amazing! It’s going to be a great show!
DATES FOR YOUR DIARY – more information to follow on all these events
Thursday 7th March – World Book Day (letter coming out this week. No dressing up this year!) Don’t forget to get your extreme reading photographs in to school!
Friday 8th March – Wear What You Want Day and bring £1 or an Easter Egg for our BINGO event the following week
Tuesday 12th March – BINGO in the school hall. 6.30pm to get you table and hot dog, eyes down at 7pm. £3 a ticket / £10 for a family of 4. Flyer coming out asap!
Friday 15th March - Comic Relief Day (bring a pound, wear what you want)
Tuesday 19th March and Wednesday 20th March – Parents Evening
Tuesday 26th March – DISCO! More details to follow.
w/c 1st April – Autism Awareness Week (further information will be sent out soon)
Wednesday 3rd April – Friday 5th April – Year 6 residential to Tower Wood
Tuesday 30th April – Friends of Whitefield evening at The Brown Hare, 6.30pm