This Term’s Virtues
This term we are trying hard to be
Intentional and Prophetic.
From Our Headteacher
Dear Parents & Carers,
The end of another busy week here at school. In assembly this week, we have talked about how November is the month of the Holy Souls. We have been remembering those people who have died and Jesus’s message of hope – that God’s love is so great, even death cannot separate us from Him.
Have a lovely weekend.
Kind Regards, Tom Walker (Headteacher)
Dates For Your Diary – 2020
Autumn Term
Parent Interviews – week beginning 23rd November
Autumn Term Ends – Friday 18 December (1.00pm)
INSET Day – Monday 4th January 2021
Spring Term Starts – Tuesday 5th January
Some Future Dates
February Half Term Holiday – Monday 15th to 19th February
Spring Term Ends – Thursday 31st March (1.00pm)
KS1 & 2 2021 SATs – click here for more information
Parent Interviews
Our Parent’s Evening meetings will be held online this year.
We would like to invite parents to attend the week beginning Monday 23rd November. This is an important evening and provides you with an opportunity to speak to your child’s class teacher about their progress since September.
The school has introduced a new intuitive and easy to use online appointment booking system – Schoolcloud. Schoolcloud allows you to choose your own appointment times with teachers and you will receive an email confirming your appointment.
The booking system is now live and will close on Sunday 22nd November. Should you wish to make any changes after this date please contact the school office.
Please click HERE to book your appointments. Click HERE to view a short parent guide. You will need the following information:
- Student’s First Name
- Student’s Surname
- Student’s Registration Group
- Student’s Date of Birth
All video appointments are 10 minutes long and by their nature less flexible than face to face meetings. Meetings will have a fixed start and end time. We would suggest parents choose a quiet space to speak to their class teacher. Please remember that meetings are confidential and both teachers and parents should be able to speak freely about students.
If you do not have access to the internet, please contact the school office to make arrangements.
CEF Emergency Foodbank Donations
I would like to once again thank your school for the wonderful collection of tinned and dried food that the children donated to the Community Emergency Foodbank during your Harvest Festival celebration this year. The food will be given to families in Oxford who are going through a period of crisis and find themselves with not enough money to buy food for themselves and their children. This year has obviously been particularly difficult for so many families because of the financial difficulties caused by the COVID 19 pandemic. Would you be so kind as to pass on our sincere thanks to all those involved and assure them that every tin and packet donated will be much appreciated by the families that receive it.
Kind Regards, Mrs Jane Benyon, The Community Emergency Foodbank www.cefoxford.co.uk
Breakfast and After School Club
Sadly we are still unable to re-open Breakfast Club due to timings, staffing restrictions, etc.
Thank you to the parents who are continuing to support our After School Club.
Do you have any suggestions as to how we can continue to increase the numbers attending? If so, please email Jo on the school office email address.
Please keep spreading the word that the ASC is now up and running and hopefully numbers / demand will increase.
Thank you.
This Term’s House Point Totals
Ashmolean
Bodleian
Radcliffe
Sheldonian
Sheldonian were the Spring Term House Point winners!
Prayer
We ask God our loving Father to bring his love and compassion to those people who mourn the death of someone they love. May they be comforted by their family and friends.
Lord in your mercy, Hear our prayer.
CORONAVIRUS ADVICE
There is continuing coverage in the media about the ongoing Covid-19 situation around the World. At school we are continuing 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
Updated Guidance for Parents and Carers
What parents and carers need to know about early years providers, schools and colleges in the autumn term 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
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/
Other News
PTA News – Help at Home – a huge total of £1,061.45 has been raised with Oak Class raising the most at £281.00. All the children of Oak Class received a medal of achievement from the PTA. The Movie and Mufti afternoon raised £576.00. In addition, the PTA have received a large anonymous donation and would like to thank the family for their generosity. We will be holding a Christmas Jumper and film day on 11th December and again, we will be asking for donations of £3.00 to be made via the Schoolgateway. We will let you know how much the Christmas cards raised as soon as possible. Thank you to all the parents and carers who continue to support our school via the PTA, it is truly appreciated.
Class Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser – these can now be found under the CLASSES tab where you can easily click on your child’s class.
Residential Visits – We are still waiting for dates next Spring to reschedule our residential visits… Hopefully, we will hear something soon.
Swimming – The earliest we will be able to restart swimming lessons will be January 2021.
Payments to The School Office – PLEASE NOTE 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.
School Meals
Please click here to see the current lunch menu.
As usual, school meals must be 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
Acorns are now well settled, forming some great friendships and have begun to explore role play games. We have been learning about people who help us in the community such as the police, fire fighters and doctors and the children have very much enjoyed developing their language, knowledge and friendships through play. We even made our own police car and fire engine and played with them until they fell to pieces! The children also enjoyed making firework pictures very much and have shown themselves to be very creative, making the most beautiful pictures in class!
We continue our weekly maths group times and shape of the week and have visited Ten Town to meet King One, Tommy Two, Thelma Three, Freddie Four, Fiona Five and the Zero Pond. The children love joining in with counting games, which we also continue through stories, provision and songs – these also help to deepen their understanding of number. In phonics we have been exploring rhythm and rhyme through group games as well as listening for and learning initial name sounds. It’s been a busy few weeks! Keep up the good work Acorns!
Tigger Reception Class
Tigger Class has been a very busy place over the last few weeks! We have continued to learn new sounds and have been using them to read new words. We have begun to learn red words – for example, Fred a red. The children have also started to learn the concept of nonsense and real words. In Maths, we have been getting a deeper understanding of numbers 1, 2, 3 representing and composition. We have been recapping the Ten Town numbers and discussing where the number sits in the number line, which number is one more and one less and how the number can be made up of smaller numbers. This week we have been looking closely at shapes, naming them and looking at their properties. We have then used the shapes in art and to make pictures and investigate them on the light box.
We had a week of bonfire fun, learning about safety and toasting marshmallows on our very own bonfire. We made our own fireworks in a jar, looking closely at the change as the fireworks developed. We had great fun making our own representations of fireworks on a large scale, using different tools to paint with. We used string to make firework pictures and our own bonfires using a collage of handprints.
Who knew that cooking could be so exciting? After making our gingerbread last week, we came into school on Monday to find a letter from Mr. Walker telling us that the gingerbread man that the Tiggers had given him, had run away! The children embraced the search, making traps and posters trying to capture the elusive Gingie.
After the results of our Tigger Survey we have looked this week at dinosaurs and the environment they lived in including volcanoes. We have been busy cooking again and made rice crispy volcanoes this week.
In RE we have been thinking about people who care for us and learning about weddings and how two people care for each other and how God cares for them too. We did some great role play of a mini wedding. Tiggers have started to learn about Jesus’ early life and how it was similar or different from their own.
In Music, the children have been learning some new songs. We have started to use instruments as a group. The children are excellent at listening to instructions and using the various instruments sensibly.
Finally, all of the children have been working REALLY hard at zipping up their own coats and becoming more independent.
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.
Fir Year 1 Class
Fir Class have made a good start to the new term. Phonics continues to be a priority and we have started learning the speed set 3 sounds. All the children are trying to become more confident in having a go at independently writing. In RE, the class have been learning about The Mass, the liturgical colours and key prayers. In Maths, we have continued to use part whole models to solve problems focusing on addition and number fact families. In Geography, the class have looked at a map showing the four countries that form the United Kingdom and the seas that surround them. In Art, Fir Class drew some lovely pictures of their skeletons which linked to part of our science topic. They also enjoyed creating brightly coloured glittery firework pictures. Playtimes continue to be important and many of the children have loved searching for bugs hiding under the leaves in the playground and then placing them in magnifying observation pots and drawing and writing about their findings. Days continue to be busy in Fir Class!
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.
Fig Year 2 Class
Welcome back! We hope that you had a restful half-term. It has been an exciting return going off with a bang! On 5th November, children enjoyed crafting their own rockets to celebrate fireworks night (see photo below). In English, some of our dragons have become too mischievous in our class, so we have been designing, planning, and writing instructions of our own about how to trap a dragon. As mathematicians, we are learning column addition. We have been adding numbers by lining up the digits in their place value columns tens and ones and remembering to always start adding with the ones first. Children have been looking at common misconceptions in column addition with children recognising and reasoning calculations that have gone wrong. Then, as a class we have unpicked and adapted our calculations by building our knowledge and understanding of previous maths learning to solve the misconception. An example being a child may have forgotten to understand the place value of the digits in the calculation by placing their answer in the incorrect place value column. In PE, it was match day as our previous scheduled game was rained off before half-term. It was a delight to observe all children enthusiastically taking part in the match, incorporating all their ball skills and football training into the game. Both teams played extremely well, remembering to pass to all players before they could score. As a result, our amazing goal keepers on both teams saved all the shots and the game ended 0-0.
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.
Oak Year 3 Class
The children in Oak Class have been recreating some fantastic pieces of writing using their understanding of the roles of key characters in the sinking of the Titanic, creating emotional letters and factual reports around the disaster. Our topic is now in its final weeks and it has been so rewarding to enjoy the children’s enthusiasm and knowledge of every detail surrounding the event. Over the next two weeks, we will be building our shoe box cabins, re-enacting the drama and creating our own musical theme. We continue to focus on addition and subtraction and spent this week developing mental strategies that strengthen our use of number bonds. We will be moving on to multiplication and division soon and I would greatly appreciate if you could practise counting in 2’s, 3’s, 4’s and 5‘s at home. We will extend this knowledge using both the 6 and 8 times table. I would also like to congratulate the children for working as hard at home as they do in school. They raised the greatest amount through their Help At Home fundraising during half term. Mrs. Lavety
As you know from the last newsletter entry, in RE we had been learning about Prayer and prayer traditions. As part of this, just before half term we learnt about the Jewish festival of Sukkot and we built a Sukkah in the classroom. We discussed how this Jewish prayer tradition is similar to the Harvest Mass led by Fr Dominic that we participated in virtually. We have started our new RE topic of Listening to The Word of God. As part of this we acted out the story of Samuel and thought about what a Christian can learn from this story. We then considered what God calls us to do and discussed vocations. This week we have been exploring the Scripture that we listened to during Mass each week. In Science, we have started a new topic on Rocks and Soils. We have been rock detectives using our observation skills and have been practising our scientific vocabulary to discuss what we observed. We have also been using our scientific skills of forming questions to find out more about our topic. Miss Duncan
Please ensure that your child has a jacket each day at school. We do try to make the most of every opportunity to enjoy the fresh air and go outside.
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.
Ash Year 4 Class
Since returning from paternity leave, it has been great to see children’s enthusiasm for learning is still in abundance. We have been looking at the picture book The Whale in English. First, they did some research about different whales and watched some of David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II to take notes on these incredible animals. We have started to plot our story along with coming up with some lovely descriptive writing, looking specifically at expanded noun phrases, rhetorical questions and exclamatory sentences. Their writing has been to a very high standard and I have enjoyed reading their excellent work so far. In Maths, we have started a new unit on addition and subtraction using the column method. Their understanding, so far, has come easily to them but they do need to work on double checking their answers to avoid small errors. In RE, we have looked at the story of Martha and Mary. We discussed who was doing the right thing and put Jesus first as the most important choice at that time. In Science, we have created our own mini water cycle using cress seeds (see below). This was used to show how it is a continuous cycle that never stops. They have loved looking at their own creation growing as the week has gone on. Finally, for Remembrance Day, we looked at why we wear a poppy and the symbolism behind it. From this, they then created some artwork from inspirational pictures that link to Flanders Fields.
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.
Bay Year 5 Class
The children have begun the term with great drive and enthusiasm. In Maths, they have been learning to read, draw and interpret a range of graphs including line graphs, table graphs and bar graphs. In English, the children have written their own Greek Myths based on their own hero and monster. The children have begun to look at the features of newspaper reports and they will write their own reports based around a mythical character appearing in modern times. In Science, the children continue to explore our topic on space, looking at the lifecycle of a star and constellations. In RE, the children are exploring parables in the bible and reflecting on the meaning behind them. In music this term, the children have been exploring pitch, rhythm, pulse, and tempo through a range of singing, listening, and composing activities, linking to our topics on Space and Ancient Greece.
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.
Willow Year 6 Class
This week in Willow, the children have been studying kennings and poetry by Pie Corbett. They have produced some excellent poems that are based around a recipe for their favourite animal. The children have really enjoyed guessing each other’s animals and I have been impressed with the ambitious vocabulary and descriptions they have used. In Maths, we have moved on to our unit on fractions and the children have been simplifying and converting different types of fraction. In Topic, the class really enjoyed our Day of the Dead celebration after half term, building ofrendas (altars) to remember those who have died and making traditional clay skull decorations (see picture below). We also had a great time cooking corn tortillas and guacamole from scratch – particular thank you to Mateo and Christel’s mums who helped with ideas, decorations and equipment.
Click here for this term’s Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser.