Loading

Whitkirk News! 10th june 2022

A message from Miss Quarmby

What a super first week back! Our half terms always get off to such a positive start by launching our new themes with our WOW mornings, and this time was no different. In fact, it was possibly even more exciting as Mr Sadler was in role as Alexander the Great, and Miss Dougan had managed to organise a visit from Arthur France MBE. Unfortunately, he was unable to make it on the day, but Mrs Rudd stepped in to tell the children all about how she performed in front of the Queen at the Golden Jubilee celebrations. We're hoping that we may be able to arrange another visit with Arthur France MBE at a later date.

Today, all children will be coming home with a new book. Every child has been gifted a book 'Queen Elizabeth - A Platinum Jubilee Celebration'. We hope everybody enjoys going on a trip through time to explore the record-breaking reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Class Photographs - Monday 20th June

On 20th June, Braiswick Photographers will be in school in the morning to take class photographs. We ask that any parent or carer who does not want their child to be included on the class photograph to let their class teacher know beforehand. Thank you! Bring on the smiles!

Summer Fair - Saturday 25th June (11am - 2pm)

The Whitkirk Summer Fair is fast approaching and we have some exciting prizes up for grabs in this year’s raffle!

With the help of some fantastic local businesses, we are able to bring you an amazing Summer Raffle with the chance to win over 50 prizes! All prizes are detailed on www.pta-events.co.uk/whitkirkprimary (please see the link below) and there’s still more being added! The top three prizes are a Lenova Chrome Book, as well as meals out, family days, pampering, portraits and more!

Your child has brought home a book of 5 tickets for the raffle. If you would like to take part, please return the completed ticket stub with your details and payment to the class teacher by Tuesday 14th June. Tickets are £1.00 each. If you would like any further tickets please place your money in an envelope along with a note giving us your name and child’s details and we can send further tickets home with your child. We will also be selling the tickets at the Summer Fair on Saturday 25th June. If you do not wish to purchase the tickets, please send them back to school by Tuesday 14th June so we are able to resell them. Many thanks for all your continued support.

Attendance

Our attendance winners this week are 1JL with 100%! In second place it’s 2KDI with 99.4% and third place is 4CO with 99.2%. A big well done to all these classes. 2KDI are also the most improved attendance from last time, going from 90.5% to 99.2%. This is amazing Year 2. Our whole school attendance at Whitkirk this week is 94.4%. Let’s see if we can beat this next week! The only way to do this is for everyone to come into school as much as they can. See you all next week for another fantastic week of learning.

Community events - Whitkirk Co-op

Thanks to the generosity of the Whitkirk Co-Op who not only organised the event but also baked/provided all the buns, cakes, tea and coffee for the refreshment stall, we raised £83.50 for the PTA. Darcy in Year 2 sold her drawings on the day (which she'd spent hours/days doing during half term) and raised £6.50 which she's donated to the PTA taking the total to £90 and Finlay (Year 6) hosted the 'Guess the number of jelly babies in the jar' game on behalf of the co-op who were raising funds for St Mary's Community Centre.

Let's see what's been happening in our classes this week

EYFS

On Monday, Reception returned from half term to find lots of mysterious items in class! The children wrote sentences to describe what they could see and why they thought they might be there. They then discovered that this term, Reception's Big Idea is 'Where can we travel?' As a class, we then discussed places we have travelled around Whitkirk this year: St Mary's Church and Temple Newsam Farm. We then went on to share our family adventures and outings. The children found out that they would be going on an adventure to Halton Library to further explore our local environment.

We used Google-maps to plan route, planned what we would need, and identified that we would need lunch. The children then followed a set of instructions and made jam sandwiches to enjoy in the park on the way back from the library.

Following the highway code, we walked excellently to the library. While we were there, the children listened to two stories read by the wonderful members of the library team, explored the library books and received their very own class library card!

On the way back to school, the children enjoyed the sandwiches which they prepared themselves. We were extremely proud of the respect the children showed the library and staff and their behaviour while walking to the library. What an excellent start to the term!

Key Stage 1

What an amazing week we have had to kick start Summer 2! Our new Big Idea is “What was life like in Temple Newsam house?” The children answered the enquiry question on what the house looks like today and what better way to do so than visiting the house itself! We made detailed sketches of the huge building. The children were even trying to count the many windows to add onto their work!

We also had some cheeky visitors this week. The 3 Little Pigs entered our classroom and left us a story. We have been working hard to learn the story ready to use it for our writing. We have made some brilliant character descriptions of the big bad wolf! In Science, we are revisiting one of our favourite topics, looking at animals! We learned about what different animals eat, using some new vocabulary: herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. Well done Year 1!

Year 2 have had a super busy first week back after the holidays! We have been learning all about the Leeds West Indian Carnival. We even discovered that we have a star in our midst as Mrs Rudd has played in a steel pan band in the carnival before! The children were very excited to interview our Whitkirk celebrity; asking questions related to the carnival. We had great fun decorating our own carnival masks with colourful feathers and glitter!

In RE, we have been considering where things come from and looking closely at human and physical objects in school grounds. As mathematicians, we have been learning about unit fractions and non-unit fractions of shape. The teachers were all very impressed that the children had remembered the meaning of key vocabulary 'numerator' and 'denominator'!

Lower Key Stage 2

What a fantastic first week back it has been in Year 3! We launched our new big idea on Monday- 'How has life changed in Whitby Abbey?' We travelled through time all the way back to when Whitby Abbey was first built by St Hilda in 657 AD and the explored how the Abbey had changed. It was invaded by the Vikings, shut down by Henry VIII and even bombed during WWI! It really has an incredible history and we can't wait to learn more about it over the next few weeks! In Science, we are continuing to learn about plants and this week, we learnt all about the life cycle of an apple tree. We can't wait to learn about how plants disperse their seeds later on this half term. Well done Year 3! Keep up the hard work!

Year 4 had a very exciting first day of the half term. In order to launch our Big Idea (How did Alexander become Great?), we had a visit from a very special person - Alexander the Great himself! Making the most of this opportunity, Year 4 spent the morning researching him in order to ask questions to find out more about his life and significance within world history. The children were absolutely brilliant at using their historical knowledge to ask some really purposeful questions. Great work Year 4! In Maths, we have continued with deepening our understanding of decimals, focusing on ordering and rounding decimals to 2 decimal places. As always, we were very excited to launch our new class text - The Firework Maker's Daughter by Phillip Pullman. We can't wait to find out all about the adventures that the characters go on! A super week Year 4, well done.

Upper Key Stage 2

What an amazing week back we have had in Year 5! We started the week with our wow day discovering how equality has changed over the last 100 years; the children contributed to some amazing discussions. In Science, we began looking at materials and how we can separate them - we used sieves, magnets, and various other pieces of equipment to explore the best ways to separate materials! We have also been learning about Rosa Parks and English and we have been so impressed by their presentations to the class about her life!

Year 6 have been incredible in their last first week back of primary school! Starting with our WOW morning on Monday, they threw themselves right into the Early Islamic Civilisation, travelling back in time to 750 CE. We compared the world map from their time period to our modern day satellite images, examining the similarities and differences that were evident. Year 6 have also been extremely fortunate to receive coaching from Leeds Rhinos to build their team work skills and sportsmanship! Finally, preparations are fully underway for the Year 6 production as we get stuck into the songs and dances, showcasing our amazing voices and moves! Well done year 6, we can’t wait to see what you create!

Stars of the Week

Have a fantastic weekend, see you on Monday!

Created By
Rachel Martin
Appreciate