This Term’s Virtues
This term we are trying hard to be Attentive and Discerning.
From Our Headteacher
Dear Parents & Carers,
Thank you to all those who attended the PTA Christmas Fair last Friday and all the parents and friends who organised and ran the event. It went extremely well and raised more than £1,000. These funds are helping to provide additional music lessons for the children, new books and much needed playground equipment. Thank you for your continued support and generosity.
Thank you also for all your cards and gifts, the staff really appreciate them. Have a lovely peaceful and enjoyable Christmas. We have loved working with your children this term and look forward to seeing you all again on the 7th January.
Kind Regards, Tom Walker and All The Staff
St. Aloysius Breakfast & After School Club
Breakfast Club – there is no need to book, just turn up! From 7.45am the cost is £4.00 and from 8.00am the cost is £3.50.
After School Club – please remember to book your After School Club sessions online via the Schoolgateway app. No bookings after 2.30pm. Dates are available for the whole of this academic year.
If you would like any further information about either Breakfast or After School Club, please speak to Jo or Chris in the school office.
PTA Present Wrapping
This Christmas our PTA teamed up with Oxford Food Bank to provide Christmas Presents to children.
The response from you was amazing and all the presents have been wrapped and sent to Oxford Food Bank in plenty of time for the big day.
Paying For School Meals
School meals must be pre-booked and paid for in advance preferably by term. The cost of a school meal is £2.40 per day, so next term will be £69.60 (29 days @ £2.40). Please make cheques payable to “Oxfordshire County Council”. Money should be placed in an envelope clearly marked with your child’s name and class and then posted in the blue box outside the office. If you had an outstanding balance (or credit) from last term it will be carried forward. You can also check your child’s balance and make payments via the Schoolgateway app.
From January, if you want your child to have a school meal and you do not have any credit in your account, you will receive a telephone call from the office asking you to provide a packed lunch for your child.
If you have any queries regarding school dinner money or require a statement, please speak to Mrs. McIntyre in the School Office.
The current School Dinners Menu is available via the school website.
This Term’s House Point Totals
Ashmolean
Bodleian
Radcliffe
Sheldonian
So Sheldonian are the Autumn Term House Point winners!
Dates For Your Diary – 2020
January 2020
Monday 6th January – SCHOOL CLOSED – INSET DAY
Tuesday 7th January – 8.35am – Start of Spring Term
Tuesday 7th January – 10.00am – Epithany Mass at The Oratory
Thursday 9th January – NO SWIMMING
Tuesday 21st January – Plastic Free Day – wear blue
February 2020
Week of 3rd February – Find Your Brave – Children’s Mental Health Week
Wednesday 5th February – NCMP Measuring Programme – Reception & Year 6
Friday 14th February – 3.05pm End of Spring Term Pt 1
Monday 24th February – 8.35am, Start of Spring Term Pt 2
Wednesday 26th February – 10.00am, Ash Wednesday Mass at The Oratory
Beauty and The Beast
The human walking train stretched almost into the city as all our children made their way to the Oxford Playhouse for the annual trip to the panto.
Without exception, everyone had a great time (especially the staff).
Thank you to all the parents who joined us to make this a really special event.
CLASS NEWS
Acorn Nursery Class
It has been a very busy few weeks in Acorn Class as we prepared for our Nativity play. The children did a fantastic job as stars and animals. A special mention goes to Charlie Sondai for not only learning every song by heart but also taking to the stage as an angel with the older children and singing an extra song! Acorns were also given some speaking roles which they delivered so well. I could not have been more proud of them all!
We have been learning about Advent and preparing for Christmas, also role playing a post office with The Jolly Postman as a focus book. We have met all the numbers up to 10 in Ten Town and so will be recapping and strengthening this knowledge in the New Year. We are continuing with our sound of the week ‘d’ this week having already looked at ‘m’, ’a’ and ‘s’ and have been exploring rhyme and alliteration through stories, games and songs.
Acorns have really excelled themselves this term in what they have achieved and I hope they all enjoy a well-earned holiday wherever in the world they are! Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Tigger Reception Class
Fir Year 1 Class
Fig Year 2 Class
Over the past few weeks in Maths we have been focusing on using different methods to subtract. This has included mentally in our heads, partitioning the number and subtracting the tens and ones, using a 100 square, a blank number line and we have begun to use simple column subtraction using exchanging. Perhaps your child could show you different ways that they enjoy subtracting at home. Alongside this, we have made clocks that we will bring home over the holidays to practise finding o’clock, half past, quarter to and quarter past. You might also like to challenge your child to find five minute intervals too!
In English, we have enjoyed reading ‘The Pencil’ and have enjoyed identifying different sentence types within the text. We have played number games to differentiate between statements, questions, commands and exclamations, even using an online Kahoot on the new laptops. We have also developed our text detective skills with a range of comprehension questions, sharing our answers with peers.
In RE, we have been preparing for Christmas with a unit focused on Advent. As part of this, we have been looking at the role of John the Baptist, including the Angel’s visit to Zachariah. Following this, we reflected on the job of the Angels in the Christmas Story to bring Good News. We also made an Advent wreath as a class, discussing the symbolism of the different parts and have been hard at work creating our class stained glass window.
We have continued to enjoy our music sessions with Jo, a music specialist, where we have been developing our listening skills and looking at pulse and rhythm. She has also taught us a number of fun games and songs to practise these skills. I wish all of Fig Class a happy and restful Christmas break and hope you all enjoy spending time with family and friends.
Oak Year 3 Class
In Maths, we have continued looking at column addition and subtraction representing the calculations using maths equipment including base ten, place value counters and pictorial representations to support understanding; we are now moving on to multiplication and division.
In English, the children have been using their knowledge of the unrest between the Romans and the Celts to write a newspaper report about a battle at Hadrian’s Wall. Using headlines to grab the reader’s attention and the 5W’s – who, what, where, why, when- to ensure the report had the correct information in sufficient detail the children composed their reports and I think we have some budding journalists in the class.
Over the last term, the children have been learning about banking – staff from Metro Bank have been visiting the class and involving the children in discussions and activities to help them understand about savings, investments and interest rates and on Tuesday we visited the bank to see how it works. We learnt about how to open an account, how a cashpoint machine works and went inside the vault.
Ash Year 4 Class
Our numeracy focus has now turned to multiplication and division. The children have been using their knowledge of the multiplication skills and improving their speed as they excel on the multiplication rock stars programme.
They have been creating some wonderful stories using our class text Around The World In 80 Days and old folk stories as a stimulus.
The children have been bringing our RE lesson, on the theme of Advent, to life with some modern interpretations of the role of angels in the Christmas story.
Our first term of swimming has drawn to a close. It has been wonderful to watch the skills and confidence of each child grow throughout the term. Those children who were scared to enter the water or to take on the challenge of the big pool are now moving and swimming confidently in the water. The Class have supported and celebrated each other’s success throughout the term.
Our topic next term will be the Stone Age to Iron Age and we will be creating some fantastic cave art.
We would like to thank Mrs O’Connell who has helped in our class each Tuesday morning this term and wish you all a Merry Christmas.
Bay Year 5 Class
This week Bay Class have been imagining that we were inside the Trojan Horse, writing stories recounting the battle of Troy. The children’s descriptive writing has been outstanding and they were inspired by Odysseus’s great adventures and cunning plans!
In Maths, we have been studying area and perimeter, while also completing daily times table challenges. The competition is fierce on Times Table Rock Stars at the moment!
We are also putting our finishing touches to our Christmas carol concert ready for our performance on the 17th!
To see photographs of the Carols By Candlelight rehearsal, please go to Willow Class News.
Willow Year 6 Class
The class have finished their writing on first person narrative and moved on to writing poems based around the T’was The Night Before Christmas. They focused particularly on rhyming couplets for this.
In Maths, they finished the unit of position and direction. One area that still needs to be worked on here is mainly translating shapes correctly.
In Science, they made periscopes out of cereal boxes and worked out how the light travels to our eyes.
In Art, they have been making their sky-ships. Children have used the book Brightstorm to help them design their own, that would challenge Eudora Vane’s Victorious.
Lastly, I hope that you all have a fantastic Christmas spent with family and friends. See you in the New Year.
