This Term’s Virtues
This term we are trying hard to be
Attentive & Discerning
From Our Headteacher
Dear Parents & Carers,
It was lovely for us to join the parish for 10am Mass at The Oratory last Wednesday to celebrate the Feast of St Peter and St Paul. The children were reverent and a credit to the school and we received a number of messages from parishioners commending our pupils for how attentive they were during Mass, which fits well with this half term’s virtues of ‘attentive and discerning’.
Last week was the launch of this term’s work sharing events for our youngest and oldest pupils and we look forward to welcoming Year One, Two and Three parents and carers in the coming two weeks.
As I write this, I can hear Year Five and Six pupils rehearsing for Cinderella Rockerfella which promises to be a showstopper on Tuesday 12th July and we are looking forward to returning to St Edwards School grounds for our Year One to Year Six Sports Day on Wednesday 13th July and our Early Years Sports Day event on Monday 18th July.
Hope you enjoy the sunny weather this week.
Kind Regards
Miss Duncan (Headteacher)
Reminders
A reminder that term time holidays are not acceptable and should not be taken. Over the past 18 months, children have missed so much and they cannot afford to miss any more time. Our school will make a referral to the attendance team at OCC who will issue fines to parents who book holidays in term time.
Please can parents leave the school site by 3.15pm. After school clubs need to start and cannot do so whilst parents are still in the playgrounds. In addition, please can you make sure your children are supervised at all times and not using the climbing frame or other school equipment.
Breakfast Club – please book a place and pay via Schoolgateway so that we can ensure we have the right staffing, etc.
If your child is in Reception to Year 5 and you will be leaving at the end of this term, please can you let the school office know? We have other families waiting for spaces.
Please can children bring a named water bottle in to school with them every day.
Thank you!
Safeguarding
Our Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy and Safeguarding Statement can be found on our website under information or by clicking
Considerate Parking?
Our neighbours have spoken to parking wardens recently and asked for increased visits to our area …
General Information
Breakfast Club is open every morning from 7.45am until the 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!
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.
Payments to The School Office – PLEASE NOTE we do not 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 sent into school with your child to hand to the school office.
OFSTED & Section 48 Reports
- Please click to read our recent Good OFSTED report.
- Please click to read our recent Section 48 report.
Governor News
If you would like to see who our governors are and that they do, click HERE.
This Term’s House Point Totals
Ashmolean
Bodleian
Radcliffe
Sheldonian
Sheldonian are the Spring Term House Point winners!
Prayer
Lord our God, we pray for the strength to hold to our convictions. We pray, too, for the courage and determination to stand with those who suffer from injustice. In all that we do, Lord, inspire us to act justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with you our God. Amen.
Acorn Nursery Class
We had a very successful Open Afternoon in Acorn Nursery Class this week. One parent commented…
“We love Acorns and are so appreciative of their warmth, energy and ingenuity with the children. I brought her on the open day yesterday and she can’t wait to start – it was lovely to see everyone enjoying the wonderful playground and all the activities that had been set up”. Lucy – parent of a current Acorn and a new Acorn starting soon.
Places are filling up for September. If your child is staying in Acorn Nursery Class next September and you would like to change your sessions, please can you email the school office as soon as possible so that we can accommodate everyone.
Thank you.
Work For Us – School Staff Vacancies
We currently have some vacancies for Teaching Assistants across the school to start in September 2022. If you are interested or know someone who may be looking for a TA post, please can you direct them to our website.
Dates For Your Diary
Summer Term
Summer Term Ends – Thursday 21st July @ 1.00pm*
Additional Dates
Tuesday 12th July – Year 5/6 Performance. Note: lunch today will be roast pork/Quorn and shortbread
Wednesday 13th July – Sports Day @ St. Edwards – parents welcome. Note: lunch today will be hot dogs/Quorn burgers/jacket potato with beans & cheese and chocolate sponge
Wednesday 20th July – Year 6 Leavers Assembly
Work Sharing Afternoons 2.40pm – 3.00pm
Wednesday 13th July – Year 3 (Oak Class)
Thursday 14th July – Year 2 (Fig Class)
Tuesday 19th July – Year 1 (Fir Class)
* No Afterschool Club on this day
Some Future Dates
First Day of School, Academic Year 2022/23 Tuesday 6th September
Term Dates – 2023-2024
St Aloysius’ International Summer Fair
We have a Twitter presence and would love to boost our followers! Fly on over and have a look … @AloysiusSchool
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
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
With only a few weeks left of the final term, we have been trying to fit in as much as possible before the holidays begin! It was lovely to see so many parents join for the stay and play mornings and watch the children showing their favourite activities in the classroom.
We finished off our farm topic with some delicious bread and butter, made from scratch by the children. They should be proud of their hard work! We have blasted off from the farmyard and up into space, exploring our own solar system, learning the planet names and what they look like, what they are made from and even making our very own papier mache solar system. We have our own Acorn rocket too, which has proved the perfect opportunity for some number work, counting down to blast off! As we finish the term we will be landing safely back down to Earth to explore the seas and perhaps encounter a pirate or two along the way!
In Phonics, we continue to focus on initial letter sounds and making sounds ourselves through singing and games as well as segmenting and blending short words in group times. Name writing continues to be a focus for our older Acorns. In Maths, we continue to strengthen the children’s understanding of number learned over the course of this year, focusing on the different ways we can represent number, what is one more than a number and the ways in which numbers can be made up.
Tigger Reception Class
Tiggers have been launched into space again this week and have been focusing on the book The Man on the Moon. Bob helps to clean up the moon but never sees any aliens! They have enjoyed playing with the story, writing to bob and looking closely at the characters and setting.
Tiggers enjoyed making rock cakes and using their maths to half the amount of ingredients needed.
They came in on Thursday to see a space craft had landed on the shed roof. They made news reports and posters to see what might have happened and who could have been in the ship.
They also had a go at sewing this week and did a really good job. Then they had lots of fun making tin foil men and posing them in different ways.
In Maths, the children have been looking at spatial reasoning, looking at how shapes can be made up of other shapes and how things fit together. They looked closely at positioning and using the correct language to describe things whilst using their knowledge to solve problems.
In reading and writing, they have continued to reinforce their phonic knowledge, practicing using sounds.
In RE the children have been focussing on prayer and linking what they have learned throughout the year.
In Music, the children have been focussing on rhythm and have also been learning about different instruments and the sounds they make and how they work.
Fir Year 1 Class
This week, in Maths, we have been learning about quarters, halves and wholes. We have looked at different shapes and how we can split them in half and quarters. We know that to split something in half or quarters, each part needs to be equal.
In English, we wrote a recount of our school trip. We also decorated biscuits like the animals we saw at the zoo. We used chocolate chips, food colouring and stuck eyes on them. They were very tasty! We also wrote all about our visit to The Oratory for Mass. We paired up with the Year 5s and walked there together. We have started looking at non-chronological reports about pirate ships! We used the book See Inside Pirate Ships to find out about where pirates live.
Last week, we had International Day. It was very exciting as everyone dressed up in clothes which represented their home country. We did lots of fun activities and some children spoke to the class about their home country. It was great to see how many of us come from different places around the world, especially as we have been learning all about the different continents and countries within them. In the afternoon, the whole school came together for an assembly where children from each year group came to the front and performed a song, dance, or something else they had prepared from their home country.
We did some music using the claves. We had to listen really carefully to the rhythm of the songs!
Fig Year 2 Class
Fig Class continue to work hard on lots of different activities. In Maths, the children have continued to focus on multiplication and division using these operations to solve word problems and so becoming more secure in their knowledge of their times tables.
In English, the children have created story boards of the book The Tunnel but creating them with a new ending. They have also completed a diary entry piece of writing based on a short film.
In Topic, the children have been using their excellent research skills to learn new facts about a variety of heroes and then write their own fact files. They also painted pictures of their own invented superheroes.
A highlight of every Monday morning is the brilliant weekly music lesson being delivered by Aris’ mother. The children have been learning call and response songs, singing in groups, playing the xylophones and drums and looking and practicing a variety of new rhythms which they then clap. The weeks continue to be very busy in Year 2!
Oak Year 3 Class
Oak Class have shown great engagement and curiosity on our topic the Romans, exploring how life changed after the Romans invaded Britain. The children enjoyed designing and creating Roman coins with clay in Art. In Maths, the children have been learning about properties of shape, finding angles, parallel and perpendicular lines and describing 2D and 3D shapes. In English, the children have been looking at the features of a newspaper report to use when planning and writing their own. In Science, we are looking at forces and magnets, investigating objects that are magnetic and exploring the strength of different types of magnets. In RE, we have begun our topic on Pentecost, exploring the story of Pentecost and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The class enjoyed using drama techniques to explore the characters thoughts and feelings in RE. The class look forward to sports day, the work sharing afternoon and Roman day next week.
Ash Year 4 Class
This week in Ash Class we enjoyed preparing for our work sharing event with parents by finishing off lots of bits of topic such as our beautiful heraldic shield tee shirts. The children have also really enjoyed starting our new topic on electricity – they built their own buzz wire games for the summer fair and here is a photo of them testing materials to see if they are electrical conductors or insulators. We were excited to see so many parents are our sharing event and it was great to be able to show our Tudor dancing video to you all.
Bay Year 5 Class
This week’s newsletter will focus on our very successful and engaging class trip yesterday to Science Oxford. Today, the class spent writing up their visit and here are two pupil recounts about our trip below with some photos.
First recount.
On Tuesday, Bay Class went on a very exciting trip to Science Oxford where we enjoyed 3 brilliant science activities, starting with pond dipping.
The Science Oxford site (owned by the Oxford Trust) has its own group of ponds where we did pond dipping. The class caught a wide variety of pond life such as an amazing adult newt, a water scorpion and many water boatmen (which were all returned to their habitat afterwards).
Next, we entered the centre’s theatre for the Light Fantastic Show. We all loved learning about reflection, refraction, and light sources. After lunch, we went to the Exploration Zone, which was full of exciting STEM activities, and completed fun challenges such as getting paper cones and parachutes to fly, shooting scarves across the room, and using microscopes to closely observe small objects.
Second recount.
On Tuesday 5th July, Y5 went on a fantastic trip class trip to Science Oxford.
It was tons of fun and every student thoroughly enjoyed it. There were 3 different and interesting activities:
Firstly, we went pond dipping. We were put into pairs, and we took it in turns to catch all the sorts of mysterious pond creatures for example: newts, tadpoles, blood worms, water scorpions and pond snails, whilst our partner would investigate their findings. When we came back inside, we used magnifying glasses and different bits of equipment to identify what we found using a pond creature key.
Secondly, we took part in the Light Fantastic Show (which was the ‘light of our day’) that was very, very interesting because it put our minds to work and we got to play lots of engaging games. We were learning about florescent objects glowing in the dark and shadows appearing on opposite side of a light source plus naming numerous light sources.
During our final activity, we entered the Exploration Zone, and we were given a couple of challenges that many of us had investigated and accomplished. We enjoyed all the activities and some of them involved us playing with gears, magnets, air pipes, sound, ice, air, heat and many, many more amazing things to explore and discover.
At the end of the day, the whole trip had brightened up our day for sure!
Willow Year 6 Class
Rehearsal
During the past two weeks, Year 6 have been rehearsing their Year 5-6 performance of Cinderella Rockerfella: a mix of drama, dance and singing. These students have put together creative actions for the songs and have shown great passion for this musical in which they will perform to you and the whole school.
Leavers
Our 2022 leavers, have recently been compiling songs and looking at their future jobs to create their leavers assembly in which they will say their farewells to friends and teachers.
The Dot
The Dot is a book based on self-esteem, where a girl in art class does not have the confidence to realise that she has a talent in art and that everyone expresses art in different ways. Based on this book, our students have created poems, short narratives and diary entries as well as art pieces that started with just a dot.
By Valli and Shennelle
The musical “Cinderella Rockerfella” was a masterpiece! We’ll done to the cast, the producers and directors. I think you should put on more. The actors truly enjoyed the parts they played. It was a proud moment for parents.