This Term’s Virtues
This term we are trying hard to be
Curious and Active.
From Our Headteacher
Dear Parents & Carers,
The start of term has begun very well. It has been a pleasure to see so many familiar faces back on site after such a long break and to meet our new children in Tigger and Acorn Classes. The children have been brilliant, adapting to our new ways of working, showing patience and a very responsible attitude to caring for each other at this difficult time.
If you haven not already done so, I would encourage you to read our September Full Opening letter (click here) which sets out the protective measures we are taking to minimise the risk of infection. We keep our COVID-19 Risk Assessment under constant review and receive regular updates and advice from Public Health England, the DfE and Oxfordshire County Council.
Kind Regards, Tom Walker
CORONAVIRUS ADVICE
There is increasing coverage in the media about the ongoing Covid-19 situation around the World. At school we are contiuing to receive daily updates from Oxfordshire County Council, Public Health England and the DfE.
A copy of our full opening letter can be found here
Government Coronavirus Guidance
Latest guidance from the Government can be found here
Department for Education Coronavirus Helpline
Staff, parents and young people can contact the helpline as follows:
Phone: 0800 046 8687
Email: DfE.coronavirushelpline@education.gov.uk
Opening hours: 8am to 6pm (Monday to Friday)
Where to find the latest information
Updates on COVID-19: https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus
Guidance for educational settings:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-to-educational-settings-about-covid-19
Travel advice for those travelling and living overseas:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/travel-advice-novel-coronavirus
Latest Department for Education information:
https://twitter.com/educationgovuk
https://www.facebook.com/educationgovuk/
Breakfast and After School Club
Sadly we are currently unable to re-open Breakfast Club due to timings, staffing restrictions, etc.
We are hoping to be able to offer some form of After School Club from 5th October 2020. A parent survey letter was sent out on Wednesday 23rd September to gauge if there is a requirement for this provision. If you would like to take part in the survey, please complete the survey letter (send both in paper form and via Schoolcomms) or email Jo at office.3842@st-aloysius.oxon.sch.uk with the days you may require and any comments or suggestions you may have. A copy of the letter can be found here. Thank you.
This Term’s House Point Totals
Ashmolean
Bodleian
Radcliffe
Sheldonian
Sheldonian were the Spring Term House Point winners!
Dates For Your Diary – 2020
Autumn Term
Tuesday 10th
Friday 23 October Inset Day
Half Term – Monday 26 to Friday 30 October
Autumn Term Restarts – Monday 02 November
Some Future Dates
Autumn Term Ends – Friday 18 December
KS1 & 2 2021 SATs – click here for more information
Other Information
Payments to The School Office – PLEASE NOTE due to Covid-19 restrictions, we are no longer accepting cash or cheques as payment and have moved to a CASHLESS system. All payments should be made via the Schoolgateway (click here for further information). Permission slips can be either emailed or bought into school with your child and handed to the school office.
Tigger Class and Acorn Nursery – PLEASE NOTE parents do not need to provide a water bottle, water is given freely to children in class. Please also note, collection time is 3.00pm (Tigger Class) and 3.15pm (Acorn Nursery Class). Prompt collection would be appreciated.
School Meals
We are hoping to be able to expand our school meal offering to all parents soon, should you wish the school to provide a lunch for your child (all year groups with the exception of Acorn Nursery Class). Currently, the packed lunch provided by our school kitchen consists of a choice of sandwich, fruit, cake or cookie and yogurt or jelly.
We are proposing a more extensive menu but it will still come in the form of a packed lunch delivered to your child’s classroom. Please click here to see the proposed menu.
As usual, 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. As we are no longer able to accept cash or cheques, all payments must be made via the Schoolgateway (for more information please follow this link). If you had an outstanding balance owing (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.
Please note, 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 email Mrs. McIntyre admin.3842@st-aloysius.oxon.sch.uk .
CLASS NEWS
Acorn Nursery Class
Considering these strange times we are now in, our newest Acorns have settled especially well and the existing Acorns have been setting a wonderful example of good sharing and playing as well as showing how we follow our routines, which is lovely to see! As well as exploring all the classroom has to offer, we have been enjoying the great outdoors and thinking about the changes of Autumn. We have also been practising beautiful carpet sitting and enjoying lots of stories and puppet songs, for which there is never a shortage of willing volunteers! We have just started our first topic “Marvellous Me” and the children have painted amazing self- portraits. They have already begun to build some good friendships so all in all a great start to the new academic year!
Tigger Reception Class
The Tigger Class children are settling in well. They are getting to know each other and we them and getting used to their new environment. The children have been excellent at learning new routines and so enthusiastic about their learning so far, independently using resources and exploring the different areas in the classroom. We have started our term topic Marvellous Me and have been talking about family and home life, created self-portraits and made books about our families. The children have also begun to practise or refine their name writing. In Maths we have been singing counting songs, practising our careful counting and saying a number names for each object we are counting. We have also been making comparisons, checking if things like towers of blocks are taller, shorter or the same. The children have been enjoying their PE lessons with Mr. Edwards, learning ball skills, throwing, catching and bouncing balls and beanbags. In RE we have been learning the sign of the cross and the everyday prayers we say in our classroom, lunch time grace and our end of the day prayer. We have been learning about communicating with God through prayer and what we can say to God through our prayers. This week we have been using these skills in meditation. Mr. Walker has visited us for assembly and we have shown our new skills of sitting on the carpet and making the sign of the cross to him. What a great first few weeks and we are all looking forward to the rest of the term!
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.
Fir Year 1 Class
Fir Class have made a good start to Year 1, they have adapted well to the more structured way of teaching in Year 1 and are all working very hard on their phonics both in reading and writing sentences from dictation. The class have read Goldilocks and The Three Bears and done some storytelling work based on this. In RE, we have read The Creation story and linked it to learning about Autumn and how our environment changes during the seasons. In Art, the children have painted some lovely self- portraits. In Maths, we have been practicing counting forwards and backwards starting and finishing on a variety of numbers. The children have also done various sorting activities, some maths investigations and been ordering numbers and matching them to groups of objects. It has been a busy few weeks but we have been very lucky with the sunny weather and so have enjoyed time playing outside.
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.
Fig Year 2 Class
What a wonderful and positive start to Year 2! We are pleased to be back in school with our new Fig Class children. Thank you for supporting school measures to keep us all safe on our return to school. The children did well over the past couple of weeks and have happily settled back into school routines in their new classes quickly. They are learning well already, and lessons have started in all subjects. In English, children have been enjoying a variety of dragon stories to inspire their own descriptive sentences about dragons focusing on adjectives. We followed instructions to learn how to draw our own dragons, with delighted children surprising themselves with their amazing artistic abilities. In Maths, we have been building on our existing knowledge of counting forwards and backwards within 50. We have been learning about grouping in 10s and understanding 1 ten being equal to 10 ones. Following this, we have been working with part-whole models focusing on partitioning numbers into tens and ones. Then to challenge our mathematical thinking further, we have been using a variety of reasoning and problem-solving examples to develop our written explanations. In PE, children were very excited and were actively engaged learning football skills. We put our technique skills to the test using ball control, dribbling skills, throwing and passing accuracy.
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.
Oak Year 3 Class
It has been a joy to teach the new Oak Class and have us all back in school. We have settled into our daily routine well, wasting no time in challenging ourselves and learning new skills. In Maths we are developing our understanding of the place value of numbers to 1,000. We are revising all our mental strategies and practising our number bonds, patterns and times tables. Our literacy work has focused on creating well-crafted and interesting sentences. Focussing on grammar, vocabulary and imagination. We have explored descriptive language creating wonderful character descriptions of Horrid Henry. I have been amazed by the children’s enthusiasm, research skills and creativity which they have demonstrated as we endeavour to build our knowledge of life on board the Titanic and the society and cultural traditions which life on the ship represented. The children have created their own drama performances and personal stories of many of the ships passengers with great empathy and skill. More than all of this we have laughed, worked hard and overcome challenges. What a fantastic and promising start to a new academic year. Mrs Lavety
In RE we have been talking about Belonging. We thought about all the different groups that we belong to and enjoyed a lesson with Mr Walker learning about Baptism to welcome children into the Church and God’s family, as a sign of belonging. In Science, we have started our topic on bones and nutrition by imagining we are on the Space Station and discussing how we need to ensure healthy bones and muscles. Last week we were NASA engineers and designed an invention to keep bones and muscles strong in space and explained why this is important to Astronaut Duncan. Miss Duncan
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.
Ash Year 4 Class
So, we are finally back with a full class and it has been great to see the children’s excitement over the past few weeks. They have become used to routines quickly and have glided back into work well. We have been looking at the Stone Age in our topic and our English work has been based around this. They are starting to produce some of their own stories using ideas from the book Stone Age Boy. We have also learned about the different types of conjunctions (coordinating and subordinating). If you ask them about FANBOYS they should hopefully be able to explain. In Maths, we have worked on Roman numerals, where they have looked at the rules that are used within it (up to 100). We have now moved on to rounding to the nearest 10 and 100, so this could be something to practise more of at home. In RE, we have started at the beginning in the book of Genesis and most recently wrote prayers of thanks from the perspective of Abraham. Our weekly lessons in Science have been very enjoyable. They are learning about our teeth and how they decay. We managed to do an investigation using eggs and different liquids to see what would happen to the shell of the egg as it is very similar to the structure of our own enamel. They made predictions and used the learning in class to make some brilliant scientific explanations as to why they thought one would affect the shell in a certain way. Lastly, we completed and learned about Stone Age paintings. They learned how the first humans created paint and what techniques they would have used. I have included just a couple of designs to show you the creations they made from this.
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.
Bay Year 5 Class
The children have shown great engagement and curiosity during the beginning of term. In Maths, they have been looking at place value, representing and comparing numbers to one million. In English, the children have begun to explore Greek Mythology, learning about Creation Myths and the Greek Myth Hercules. The children really enjoyed creating their own Creation Myths and retelling them through drama performances. In Science, the children have begun looking at space, learning about the planets, stars, moon and asteroids in our solar system. They have begun to look at Ancient Greece in Topic, discovering where the Ancient Greek civilisation was located and creating a timeline of the main events in the three periods of time. In RE, the children have been looking at the story of creation as well as exploring the story of Josephine Bakhita the class saint.
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.
Willow Year 6 Class
It has been lovely catching up with Willow Class over the last couple of weeks. The children that prepared presentations for the class did a really good job. We revised expanded noun phrases in grammar last week and looked at how they add interest to sentences. In Maths, we revised a range of arithmetic problems but focused mainly on column multiplication. The enthusiasm for maths within the class was great to see. Our Science topic began with the children making up their own classification systems for an imaginary zoo and trying to work out the ‘odd one out’ of three microorganisms – a virus, bacteria and fungi. Lots of well-reasoned ideas and suggestions from them.
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.