This Term’s Virtues
This term we are trying hard to be
Grateful & Generous
From Our Headteacher
Dear Parents & Carers,
Wishing you a Happy Easter! The children have returned refreshed and have settled back in to learning well over the past two weeks and Year 4 are on their way back from an action-packed week at Woodlands. Thank you all those who attended parents evening meetings last week and we hope that you enjoyed the opportunity to discuss your child’s progress and next steps in their learning as we enter the final full term of this academic year.
Our new termly virtues are ‘Generous’ and ‘Grateful’ and children who have gone above and beyond in demonstrating these virtues have been acknowledged in our Friday Celebration Assemblies. The children have also demonstrated their generosity through donations to the Father Hudson’s Good Shepherd Appeal collected during Lent and through the Shoeboxes for Ukraine appeal that we have taken part in this week. In classes, children have also discussed how they can be generous with their talents, both in school and in the wider community.
We have been impressed with the talents that have been demonstrated through Young Art Oxford and are looking forward to the exhibition next week, as well as sporting talents that have been demonstrated in Hockey and Girls Football after school and inter-house sporting tournaments for Year 5 and 6 at lunchtimes. As the Summer Term progresses, we hope to set up similar tournaments for Year 3 and 4 pupils.
Kind Regards, Hannah Duncan (Headteacher)
We have a Twitter presence and would love to boost our followers! Fly on over and have a look … @AloysiusSchool
General Information
School Meals – We now have a new menu – click to see it. If you have any queries regarding school dinner money or require a statement, please email Mrs. McIntyre HERE. Please note, the cost of a school meal will be increasing in September to £2.50.
Parent Evenings – Next week will be Ash Class parent evenings. Please remember to book an appointment.
Payments to The School Office – PLEASE NOTE we 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.
School Lunches
Two weeks on and the new school menu is proving really popular with our children. The highlight of Week 1 was the Tuesday Climate Day choice of noodle and vegetable stir fry – the children (and staff) thoroughly approved!
Have a look at the new menu options.
We are planning a special picnic lunch on Thursday 9th June …
Online Safety Newsletter
SCOMIS, the school provider for management systems, have published their latest Online Safety Newsletter for parents. It contains some really good advice about online gaming and support for grandparents!
Music Lessons
Saxophone, violin, guitar, etc. – Oxfordshire County Music Service – https://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/residents/music-service
Piano – Michael J. Davies – mjmusicservices@aol.com
Guitar & dumming – DrumBeats – nigel@drum-beats.co.uk
This Term’s House Point Totals
Ashmolean
Bodleian
Radcliffe
Sheldonian
Sheldonian are the Spring Term House Point winners!
We Continue To Pray For Ukraine
Loving God, We pray for the people of Ukraine, for all those suffering or afraid, that you will be close to them and protect them.
We pray for world leaders, for compassion, strength and wisdom to guide their choices.
We pray for the world that in this moment of crisis, we may reach out in solidarity to our brothers and sisters in need.
Loving God, May we walk in your ways so that peace and justice become a reality for the people of Ukraine and for all the world. Amen.
Our Neighbours
Already this term we have received numerous complaints from our neighbours about parents driving dangerously (u-turns in the middle of the road and stopping in the middle of the road to drop a child off) and parking across their private driveways.
Please respect the local residents and be considerate when parking. It is very important to us that we continue to uphold the good school-community relationship that has been in place for many years. Where possible, try walking to school or parking further along St. Margaret’s Road.
Dates For Your Diary
Summer Term
Bank Holiday – Thursday 2nd & Friday 3rd June
Summer Half Term – Monday 30th May to (and including) Tuesday 7th June
Summer Term Ends – Thursday 21st July @ 1.00pm*
* No Afterschool Club on these days
Some Future Dates
Additional Holiday – Monday 6th June followed by INSET day Tuesday 7th June 2022
First Day of School, Academic Year 2022/23 Tuesday 6th September
Term Dates – 2023-2024
OFSTED & Section 48 Reports
- Please click to read our recent Good OFSTED report.
- Please click to read our recent Section 48 report.
Safeguarding
Our Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy and Safeguarding Statement can be found on our website under information or by clicking
OFSTED & Section 48 Reports
- Please click to read our recent Good OFSTED report.
- Please click to read our recent Section 48 report.
Battery Recycling
We have a battery reclycling centre in our reception area. Please bring your used batteries into school for recycling.
Young Art Oxford
Our small team at Young Art Oxford has been extremely busy processing all the wonderful pictures your school entered into this year’s competition, preparing for our exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum on 12th-14th May. We hope that you will be able to come along and see what promises to be a fantastic demonstration of what your pupils have achieved.
We hope to see you at the exhibition.
Regards, Paula Wallace, Chair, Young Art Oxford
Governor News
If you would like to see who our governors are and that they do, click HERE.
Breakfast and After School Club
Breakfast Club is open every morning from 7.45am until start of school. Booking is essential and should be made online via the Schoolgateway (bookings can be made up until the day of the session).
After School Club is open Monday to Friday until 5.00pm. Again, booking is essential, online via the Schoolgateway, to ensure correct staffing, activity planning, etc. Bookings close at 2.00pm on the day of the session. PLEASE COLLECT YOUR CHILDREN ON TIME – staff finish at 5.00pm.
Thank you for supporting our After School and Breakfast Clubs!
ChatHealth Has Launched!
ChatHealth is a safe and secure text messaging service between healthcare professionals and service users that provides confidential help, advice and signposting support.
CLASS NEWS
Acorn Nursery Class
It has been lovely to see the Acorns so happy to be back together after the Easter break and I would like to extend a warm welcome not only to our existing children but also to the new Acorns who have joined us! They have settled so well and been made to feel very welcome and included by the other children!
In class discussion, we have revisited the Easter Story, retelling the story and why we celebrate at Easter time. I was very impressed how much the children had remembered.
Our current topic is minibeasts and the children are enjoying finding out exactly what a minibeast is, where we can find them, how to be careful when handling them, what they eat and looking at the similarities and differences between them. We have been exploring everything from messy play spaghetti worms to investigating a real wasp’s nest (thank you Georgia) and using minibeasts as a focus for lots of creative tasks such as butterfly symmetry printing and caterpillar painting. The children have been listening to and joining in with a wide range of minibeast books and our core book for this topic is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Retelling and adapting the story using story stones and puppets has helped develop language skills, introduced them to new vocabulary and taught them about the life cycle of a caterpillar.
We have been focusing on fine and gross motor skills within play so lots of wall washes, big mark making and pinecone streamers as well as smaller mark making, threading, tweezer games and cutting activities. We are also placing more focus on name writing with our Acorns who are moving on to Tigger Class in September. They are practising looking at accurate letter formation and ensuring a good, comfortable pen grip.
In phonics, we have learned a new sound k to add to our existing sounds (m, a, d, s, t, i, n p, o, g, c) and I am currently spending some group time looking at rhythm and movement and how we can reflect this in mark making and match the pitch and melody of a tune.
In maths we continue to enjoy whole group activities, interactive games in provision and in smaller group work we are revisiting pattern and how to make a repeating pattern and spot and correct mistakes, if needs be.
It has been lovely to see all the children enjoy our topic so much and their willingness to learn and try new activities is wonderful! Well done Acorns on a strong start to the new term!
Tigger Reception Class
It has been great to be back with the children after the Easter break. The children told us all about the things they got up to and did some great writing. When they arrived back we started a new topic on superheroes and the children have had so much fun hiding out in the secret den! We have been focussing on the story of Super Tato and his fight against the evil pea, using problem solving to save and warn the other vegetables of his dastardly plans.
We have made our own supertatos which were stolen by the evil pea. The children made posters to warn everyone of what the pea looks like and what he had done. The children wrote letters to the pea, some bribing him with cake! The potatoes were returned, the children read clues which led them to the potatoes in the classroom. This week we found more vegetables in distress in the classroom, we completed a range of educational challenges to free the veggies. The children experimented to see how they could free the veg which had been frozen, using different household substances to try to melt the ice set the vegetables free.
The children continued to explore the structure of a story and created plans to write their own stories which they then made them into comics.
In maths, the children have been continuing to reinforce their knowledge of maths, subtilising and recognising patterns and then using them to recognise doubles. The children have looked closely at ways to make 5 and being able to recognise the next step in the patterns that make number bonds to five.
The children have continued to extend their fine motor skills, doing fun challenges. In RE, we have continued to talk about Easter and the importance of Jesus’ resurrection.
Fir Year 1 Class
Outdoor Learning – this week was the first time in a long time that we have had an outdoor picnic!
It has been a busy start to the summer term in Fir Class. In Maths, we have continued with measurement and looked at weighing different objects in the classroom. We have compared the weight of objects such as glue sticks and pencils. We talked about why different objects might be heavier than others and why some might be lighter.
In English, we have been reading The Pirates of Scurvy Sands which is about a girl called Matilda who goes to visit her pirate friend on his boat. We designed pirate hats and wrote sentences about them using describing words. We even made a pirate test where we had to decide what makes a good pirate and how you would pass the pirate test. We had great ideas such as, pirates must have an eye patch.
In Topic, we looked at a giant world map and talked about the 7 continents! We chatted about all the different places we all come from and found them on the map. We drew pictures of ourselves and stuck them on the country! It was interesting to see where we were all from!
In Science, we talked about seeds and what they look like in different plants, fruit and vegetables. We looked at seeds in different fruits and discussed how long we thought they would take to grow depending on the seed’s size or shape!
Fig Year 2 Class
The boys and girls have settled well into the new term. We have had an exciting start with the class going to the STEAM museum in Swindon. We explored the many steam trains that they have there. We also put our acting skills to good use as we took part in an interactive workshop where we found out about the life and importance of Brunel and Stevenson in forging the railway network throughout England. The children loved the experience and the excitement of our return coach journey. We are focussed on our new terms learning. Our new topic is exploring significant heroes through history. The children have been asked to consider their heroes and the qualities that a hero demonstrates. Our RE work is now celebrating the joy of the season of Easter and new life. In maths we are exploring time and measurement. Time can be difficult for many children, particularly as we use digital time increasingly. Your child is expected to read analogue clocks too so wherever you see the opportunity please ask your child what the time is? Our new class texts are Matilda by Roald Dahl and Pippi Longstocking which the children are very much enjoying. In Science, we will explore the world of plants. What they need to survive and their importance in ensuring balance across a range of habitats. We have been revising our maths, grammar knowledge and reading comprehension skills in preparation for the KS1 SATS which will be held during the last two weeks of May. The SATS offer an opportunity for the children to demonstrate what they have learned. The tests should not be a worry for any child or parent. Our Year 2 children have worked extremely hard through some very difficult years and we are proud of each and every one of them.
Oak Year 3 Class
Oak Class welcomes you back to a new term. The class are very enthusiastic about starting our new topic on the Romans, learning about important people of this era, and exploring the spread of the Roman Empire. In Maths, the children are enjoying looking at amounts of money, identifying coins and notes and finding an amount to give change. In English, the class show great interest in reading our new class book Thieves of Ostia, predicting story plot and characters, and discovering great vocabulary to use in their own writing. In Science, we are continuing to look at plants, investigating how water is transported around a plant. In RE, we are focusing on Easter, exploring the story of the Road to Emmaus. The children are enjoying learning tag rugby skills and playing team games in PE.
Ash Year 4 Class
Ash Class are away at Woodlands Outdoor Education Centre this week. They are having a fabulous time, caving, orienteering, hiking, etc. and will return to school on Friday evening.
Bay Year 5 Class
I hope you had a restful Easter holiday and welcome back Y5! Thank you attending the parent meetings. It was a pleasure to catch up and share your children’s progress. There is so much to be proud of!
Our new topic focus this term is Climate Change. Have a peek at what we will be learning this term on the topic overview (see below).
During the past two weeks in science, we have been learning about the lifecycles of insects and amphibians. We explored the differences between complete and incomplete metamorphosis by looking at the different growth stages of their lifecycles. This week, we learnt about how plants reproduce, labelling the different parts of the plant and describing their roles. Next week, we will be dissecting plants to have a closer view of these different parts.
In English, we have been analysing the story structure of The Promise by Nicola Davis, which has an important message related to our topic. Children have been comparing the contrasting settings in the story and exploring the literacy devices the author has used. Following this, next week we will begin planning, drafting, editing and writing our own story in a similar style to The Promise, reflecting a key message to support climate change.
In Maths, we have been focusing on decimals as fractions, understanding thousandths as well as tackling problem solving and reasoning questions. Next week we will be moving onto percentages and their link to decimals and fractions.
In PE, we have begun learning the skills involved in playing handball. Children have really enjoyed our recent sessions as it is a very fast paced, exciting and quick-thinking game. The skills we are developing in our PE lessons are supporting us with our inter house handball matches with Y6 during our lunch breaks. There is a buzz of excitement with children talking tactics, practising during their break times and checking the scoreboard.
Once again thank you all for your continued support. Have a wonderful weekend!
