This Term’s Virtues
This term we are trying hard to be
Eloquent & Truthful
From Our Headteacher
Dear Parents & Carers,
It has been lovely to welcome new families and those families that we already know back to St Aloysius’. The term has started well with calm and focus in lessons and chatter and laughter on the playground. We have had an emphasis in our assemblies this term on our school motto ‘be ambitious for the higher gifts’, talking about how we can be loving, hopeful and faith-filled as we start this new school year and how we can demonstrate ambition in our learning and relationships in school.
This term our virtues are ‘eloquent and truthful’. We have spoken in assemblies and in class collective worship about these virtues and how we can demonstrate them in both how we speak and in our actions towards others. This links well to the children’s learning in class and being ambitious for their best; widening their vocabulary and deepening their language. We have also encouraged the children to both speak the truth and seek the truth in all that they do, asking for God’s guidance in doing so.
I am looking forward to the term ahead and working in partnership with families.
Kind Regards, Hannah Duncan (Acting Headteacher)
HUGE APOLOGIES
The two articles below were missed from the last newsletter in July. I apologise for the omission. Jo.
GOODBYE
Sadly, we are saying goodbye to four staff members at the end of this term.
Maria Clare Houston is leaving us to start training to become a secondary school History teacher. Lucy Marshall is moving to China to teacher English. Ben van den Berg, our lunchtime supervisor, is leaving to join another school. And finally, after 27 years at St. Aloysius’ School, Ann Vermeulen (or Mrs. Vermwellen as some children call her) is retiring. She has plans to spend more time in her garden and with her grandchildren. We wish them all the very best for the future.
READ FOR BOOKS UPDATE
As a school we read for 15,777 minutes which is 262 hours or 11 days! The children have raised £2,250.22 SO FAR! Helena Thomas read for 1,192 minutes and will receive the prize for most minutes read by an individual. Ash Class had the highest total minutes read by a class and Tigger Class raised the most sponsorship money. Class winners will be choosing the reading books for their shared reading area next year.
Please continue to return your donations into school or you can pay them directly into our Metro Bank account. Details are available from the school office.
Do you (or anyone you know) work in a bookshop and have access to a discount? If so, please contact the school office.
We now have a Twitter presence! Fly on over and have a look … 
Breakfast and After School Club
Breakfast Club is now open every morning from 7.45am until start of school. Booking is essential and should be made online or via the school office. This is important to ensure the right staffing, bubble planning, etc. Bookings close at 5.00pm the previous evening.
After School Club will continue to run Monday to Friday until 5.00pm. Again, booking is essential to ensure correct staffing, bubble planning, etc. Bookings close at 2.00pm on the previous day.
Thank you for supporting our After School and Breakfast Clubs!
School Meals
Please click HERE to see the current lunch menu.
If you wish the school to provide a lunch for your child (all year groups with the exception of Acorn Nursery Class).
School meals should be paid for 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 communication 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.
This Term’s House Point Totals
Ashmolean
Bodleian
Radcliffe
Sheldonian
Sheldonian are the Summer Term House Point winners!
Prayer
God is the source of all wisdom and knowledge. Let us ask him to bless those who seek to learn and their teachers. For students, that the Spirit of God may grant them the gifts of wisdom of understanding. For teachers, that they may share their knowledge with gentleness, patience and concern for their students.
Amen.
Dates For Your Diary
AutumnTerm
October Half Term Holiday – Monday 25th to 29th October 2021
NOTE – there is no October INSET day – see the updated Term Dates HERE
Autumn Term Ends – Friday 17th December (1.00pm)
Some Future Dates
INSET day – Monday 4th January 2022
Additional Holiday – Monday 6th June followed by INSET day Tuesday 7th June 2022
Governor News
Our Governing Body is now complete with the appointment of Fr. Nicholas as Foundation Governor. To see what our governors do and who they are, click HERE.
Swan School
We are delighted to start welcoming applications to The Swan for year 7 students starting in September 2022.
Parents are invited to come and visit us to find out more about how we help our students to achieve “more than they ever believed possible”. Our open evening is on Wednesday 6th October and we will also be holding a series of open mornings, starting on the 28th September. Please visit our website – www.theswanschool.org.uk – to express interest and book your space.
We look forward to meeting you soon!”
General Information
Welcome – we would like to welcome the following staff to our school. Jessica Ment (Year 1 Teacher), Olivia James (Teaching Assistant) and Jemima Clarke (Teaching Assistant, Nursery). In addition, Alex Cadle is now working as a full-time TA and Maryna Albasri has returned to work in our After School Club. Please also welcome Kiah Conroy who is working in our Acorn Nursery Class for the Autumn term.
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. Acorn Class Curriculum Information can also be found there.
Admissions – we have places available for all children across all year groups!
Swimming – Swimming lessons are currently postponed due to the Ferry Pool being closed for urgent maintenance work.
Payments to The School Office – PLEASE NOTE we can no longer accept 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.
CORONAVIRUS ADVICE
If you are visiting our school site, please always wear a facemask, follow the one-way-system and observe social distancing. HANDS – FACE – SPACE.
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
Covid-19 Tier 2 High Alert Information
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/
CLASS NEWS
Acorn Nursery Class
Welcome back to the Acorns who joined us last year and a warm welcome to our newest Acorns! All the children have settled in well and I am already seeing wonderful examples of good sharing and playing as well as helping to tidy up and following the routines of our day, which is great to see!
As well as exploring all the classroom has to offer, we have been enjoying the great outdoors and making the most of the last of the summer sunshine. We have also been practising beautiful carpet sitting, switching on our listening ears and enjoying lots of stories and puppet songs, for which there is never a shortage of willing volunteers!
We have started our first topic “Marvellous Me” and the children have painted wonderful self-portraits to decorate the classroom! They have already begun to build some lovely friendships and are growing in confidence every day so all in all, a great start to the new year!
Tigger Reception Class
Tigger’s have had a wonderful start to the school year. They have coped well with the new routines and expectations. We have enjoyed getting to know them and learning about their skills and interests. We have covered lots of topics and areas of learning in the process. The children have enjoyed singing counting songs and exploring some of the maths equipment in the class. We have enjoyed reading the Gruffalo together joining in with the repeated refrains and looking at the characters and settings. The children have been learning how to use the provision in the classroom and what our expectations of how to use it.
The children have been exploring the outside area playing with the water, mud, sand, P.E equipment, bikes and learning the expectations.
The children have learnt about the sign of the cross, what we might do when we pray and how we might speak to God. We also did some meditation.
The children had their first P.E lesson and played some fun games.
The children have impressed us in the dinner hall eating up all their lunch and understanding that a full tummy helps their brains to work better.
The children have enjoyed getting to know each other, and some new friendships have been made.
Mrs Hendry and Mrs Feller
Fir Year 1 Class
We have had a great start to the term in Fir Class! We have all settled in well and have been very busy, doing lots of exciting things! We have been practising writing the days of the week and sitting properly when we are on the carpet. In English we have been creating our own potions and writing about them. We have also written a recipe for jam tarts which we made last week. They were very tasty. In Maths we have been doing lots of counting to 20 and back. We have also been practising writing our numbers. We have been learning about how we can sort objects into different groups! In Topic, we have been practising our map skills and learning the different compass points. We have also looked at buildings in Oxford and where we live on a map! In Science, we used big pieces of paper to draw around ourselves and took it in turns to label it.
Fig Year 2 Class
It has been a great start to Year 2 and Fig class have been working very hard. We are very proud of each and every pupil. We have been creating a 10 metre number line and using all of our number skills to estimate, partition and compare values. This has been lots of fun and we are now ready to move on to addition and subtraction. In our literacy work we have taken ourselves from St Aloysius and rested upon the seashore as we write poems about the seaside, rock pools and starfish.
Our topic has also sent us all over the world as we have explored France and China as our tour of the continents continues. At the centre of all or our work is our celebration of God’s love. We have started to read, explore and enjoy the story of creation and other Old Testament stories. Our class worship this week focussed on the rights that we have as children of the Earth and the responsibility that we have as Christians to care for others and the world that we have been given. The children each made a backpack full of all the wonderful rights that we have such as friends, shelter, food, schools and medical care. We discussed how fortunate we all are and the enthusiasm and commitment of the boys and girls to use their skills to help others was so encouraging. Don’t worry we will put all of this determination to good use when we start to write letters calling for environmental change.
We, as staff, must thank you for your continued support . We appreciate that the children are working hard and they have each adapted to the more mature routine of the Year2 classroom. Homework is a new part of that routine and we thank you for reading with your child and helping them to work independently on the task provided but if there are any issues please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Oak Year 3 Class
The children have settled into the term well, showing great interest and enthusiasm for our topic on Rainforests. In Maths the children are looking at place value, using different objects to explore, compare and order numbers to 1,000. In English, the children have shown great interest in reading our class book ‘Journey to the river sea’, exploring characters and making great links to our topic on Rainforests. In Science, the children are enjoying our topic, Animals, including humans, exploring carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores, and finding out about the food pyramid. In RE the children are looking at Belonging, exploring different groups they belong to and the importance of the Sacrament of Baptism. The class show great enjoyment and creativity in Art, creating paper frogs from the Rainforest.
Ash Year 4 Class
The first few weeks in Ash Class have been very busy and I have been impressed with the children’s enthusiasm for learning. We have started the year looking at a picture book called “The Whale” as a stimulus for creative writing. The children have enjoyed creating whale information posters, letters, stories and even pieces of “Stormy Sea” music inspired by the book – I can’t wait to read their final stories! In Maths we have been focusing on place value and ensuring our number bonds to 100 and times tables are easy to recall. We enjoyed exploring solids, liquids and gases in Science and even made some slime that was neither solid or liquid – it was a non-Newtonian fluid! The children were amazed to watch it change from solid to liquid and back again in seconds!
Bay Year 5 Class
Welcome to Year 5! We hope that you have all had a fantastic summer and are ready for an amazing learning adventure in Year 5. Our topic this term is Journeys. We began our first week of learning by fully immersing ourselves as explorers in our wonderful class book ‘Brightstorm’ by Vashti Hardy’ with a Brightstorm day. The day focussed around planned opportunities to read and discuss the wonderful vocabulary and plot development. We started the morning making predictions about the book based solely on the front cover. After reading and listening to our first chapter full of excitement, action and wonder; the children were instantly hooked. This followed by a carousel of activities with children making a compass by magnetising a needle, map reading using the story map (The Great Wide), making origami Aurora sky-ships (see photo attached), researching historical explorers to make a fact file and free art with children designing their own sky-ships. The day was full of excitement and fun.
In Maths, we have been learning number and place value up to 100,000 including Roman numerals up to 1,000 where we had to help astronauts on a space mission to Mars to solve problems in Roman numerals on their journey. In Science, we are learning about space and started our learning focusing on drawing mind-maps about what we already know and would like to find out about space. Following this, our big question was ‘How big is space? We learnt about our 8 planets and created a scaled solar system model using spherical representations with various sized balls and fruit, as well as a toilet roll to measure out the distances of the solar system where each piece represented 16 million kilometres. The children were amazed by the scale and distance between each planet. In RE, we have started our unit on Creation by using our referencing skills to explore the Bible finding answers to set questions and creating a colourful storyboard on Creation. On Tuesday it was the International Day of Peace, the children wrote beautiful and thoughtful prayers about peace on doves which have now flown onto our wall for display (see photo attached).
Willow Year 6 Class
Willow Class have been adapting to life in Year 6 and the expectations that come with it, which they have been matching and improving as each day comes.
We have started reading the book Holes and have done some vocabulary gathering. They are now moving onto writing letters as the protagonist (Stanley Yelnats). We have particularly focused on emotive language, fronted adverbials, rhetorical questions and relative clauses.
In Maths, we have just finished our unit on place value, where they have shown real security in numbers up to ten million. We are now moving onto worded problems and re-buffing our knowledge on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division methods, while learning to approach these with a mastery approach.
In Science, we have started our unit on living things and have understood how classification keys work and tested our knowledge on this by creating their own, with Liquorice Allsorts.
Finally, in Topic, we have started our work on South America and have so far located the countries and found out about their capital cities.
Keep class Topic Overview and Knowledge Organiser