I was very pleased to welcome back all pupils on Tuesday
morning, as well as welcome new pupils and staff joining the
school this term. Mrs Cliff joins the school for this term, teaching
various classes throughout the school as we make some
changes following Mr Taylor's departure last term. Mrs Cliff is
an experienced teacher, having taught for a number of years at
Pocklington Community Junior School.
Whilst school has been closed the ground staff have been busy
preparing the pitches for summer sports. The view from my
window is now of cricket, rounders and athletics. We look
forward to many opportunities to enjoy these sports, as well as
spending play times on the field, however this is of course
dependent on dry, warm weather.
Summer Holiday club
dates:
Monday 25th July—Friday
19th August inclusive.
Booking details to be sent
out before May half term.
This half term’s exeat is
Friday 29th April to
Monday 2nd May
(inclusive).
@pockprep
Fri 15th April
EDITION 39
Over the holiday period I know a good number of pupils enjoyed
their time at Holiday Club, which operated in the first week of
the holidays. Thank you to those colleagues who cared for the
children during that week. Do please look out for details of
Holiday Club weeks operating during the summer holidays.
Mrs Cooke led a most successful trip to France for pupils in
Years 5 and 6 with 53 pupils greatly enjoying using the French
knowledge throughout our holiday. I would like to thank the
pupils for being such excellent company and ambassadors for
the school and also those colleagues who joined the trip. I know
we were all tired by the time the coach arrived back at school
on Friday, but this is always an experience to value and
remember.
The House Swimming competition will be completed this Friday
with Pre-Prep houses adding their totals to those of the older
pupils. There were many exciting races at the Prep Competition
and we are looking forward to an exciting competition with PrePrep swimmers. The winning house will be announced next
week. Parents, thank you for your support at these events.
You will have received a calendar for this Summer Term's
events. Do please look through to find out all that is happening
this term, which includes our end of year Prize Giving event.
I wish you a good weekend and look forward to seeing you at
various school events this term.
Mr Wright
Music News
Next Friday the choir will be competing at Pontefract Festival. We only have a couple of
practices left which we want to spend "polishing" our pieces, not learning words. If your
child is in choir please could you ask them to sing the songs to you...and learn any words
not already known! Thank you so much. I do hope you can come and support us on the
day.
Please also remember that we have an 8:15 start that day.
Mrs Dance
French Trip 2016
In the first week of the Easter holidays 53 of our year 5 and 6 children were accompanied
by 6 wonderful staff to France. (Mrs Cooke, Mrs Sweeting, Mrs Afford, Mrs Dance, Mr
Wright and Mr Tyrell)
It was a fantastic trip full of new adventures and opportunities to use French. We visited
several “boulangeries” trying to find the cheapest “pain au chocolat” for the revamped Rue
Quest. where several challenges were set up by Mr Tyrell to find and compare a variety of
things round the local town of Rue, the winning team found over 50 flags.
We made kites to fly on the beach and played on the Dunes.
There were very several tasty treats in store too particularly at the sweet shop where we
learnt the history of sweet making and moulded our own hot sugary delight. We also
learnt about how the more traditional baguettes and croissants are made by a very lively
French baker.
Everyone was delighted to meet the petit “chevres” at the goat farm and learn how
cheese is made.
Pupils enjoyed using their French to buy gifts to take home from the market.
We tried a new trip down the “Caves of Naours” that was used as an underground city in
the war. We finished the trip with the a glimpse at the underwater world at Europe’s largest aquarium. A great time was had by all.
Parents, please note that a number of
French trip photographs will be
available soon to view online. We will let
you know as soon as this is ready.
What we have done at
school this week..
Reception—We have had a fantastic start to the term, the children all came in and settled straight back
into their daily routine. After 3 weeks off they all seem to have grown even more and we can hardly
believe that this is their final term in Reception. The classes were welcomed by a rainforest and jungle
vets role play area which the children have loved playing in (we seem to have run out of plasters and
bandages already!) They were also introduced to our new class pet - Blue the parrot! We have enjoyed
creating our own parrots using hand and feet printing and in Maths we created a simple bar
chart depicting our favourite colour parrot. We also used an app (my talking pet) on the class iPads to
make some of our class animals talk! At the time of writing this news we haven't yet had the house
swimming competition but we are sure that it will be a fun event to end the week.
Welcome back and have a lovely weekend. Mrs Afford, Miss Carless & Mrs Holtby
SOTW RX: Archie Marr for fabulous work in his special book during the Easter holidays
SOTW RY: Chloe Beattie - for being so fantastic on our first week back to school!
I was absolutely delighted to welcome back all my lovely Year 1 children. From what they have told me,
they have all had a fabulous holiday and they have eaten a lot of chocolate, just like me! It was very special to see all their little faces as they came into our classroom and watch how they reacted to seeing my
carefully crafted Rainforest for the very first time. Already we have made good use of this area. We often
go as a class into the rainforest for a little chat to see how everyone is getting on as well as to look at
books together to further their rainforest knowledge.
I am also incredibly impressed with the Holiday Reading Challenge sheets that have come back to me. I
am thrilled with all the time and effort that has gone into completing these forms and l have really enjoyed
reading how the children felt about the wide variety of books that they have read.
I hope you will enjoy reading the curriculum statements, the children have a very busy and fun term
ahead!
Have a lovely weekend from Mrs Steel
SOTW 1X: Freddie because he has had such an amazing first week back at school as well as producing
some absolutely beautiful work at home during the holiday. Well done Freddie!!!
Year 2 have begun their topic ‘The Road to Rio’ with lots of colour and we hope that they have enjoyed
their new role play areas! Whilst the focus of our term's work is still very definitely our capital city, we
have changed the topic title to allow us to compare and contrast London and Rio and to mark the 2016
Olympics as this is an event which can not be missed. We begin our term in Rio but will shortly be
'travelling' back to London to begin the build up to our exciting visit. This week the children have been introduced to where the Amazon Rainforest is and have discussed why it is called a rainforest, thinking
about what makes the plants grow there. We have looked at various artists interpretations of the rainforest, including Henri Rousseau and creating their own collages using some of the key aspects from the
pictures that they have seen. This has helped the children imagine being in the rainforest, which they
have used to create senses poetry using ‘Wow!’ words. In Maths the children have focused upon place
value and being able to explain the meaning of multiplication number statements. The children have been
set some ‘Summer Challenges’ to enhance their knowledge and understanding of our topic. We look forward to seeing some of these completed and for the children to be teaching each other some knowledge!
Have a great weekend! Mrs Rogers and Mrs Walton.
SOTW 2X: Anna Braim - for her enthusiasm towards our new topic.
SOTW 2Y: Jemima Powell – for sharing her fabulous ideas in discussions and group activities.
What we have done at
school this week..
Year 3 have returned to school bubbling with enthusiasm for our mini topic- Tim Peake and his work
on the International Space Station. They have been enjoying looking at different books and video
clips about life in space. They have created posters and in our English lessons imagined what an astronaut would say when he went into space. The children have been creating cartoon strips and
learning how to write speech accurately using speech marks.
In our maths lessons we have been working hard to embed our times table facts. Next week's homework will outline our work on times tables and our expectations for the term. We have also been
reviewing partitioning and using digit cards to create different numbers. The children have also
enjoyed a variety of measuring activities this week and are recognising when to use different units of
measure.
Hopefully the seeds from the International Space Station will have arrived, we have to plant them in
school on April 19th. The children will keep you informed of their progress! Thank-you for your
continued support.
It was lovely to see all the Year 4 children bounce back into school full of energy to start the summer
term! As is typical the weather could have been a lot better when we started our summer sports in
games but we're hoping for more sunshine as the term progresses. Thank you for returning your
child's Bewerley Park forms and balance promptly, please send any outstanding forms into school at
your earliest convenience. We are all looking forward to this exciting weekend away.
This week 4X have been busy writing limericks and 4Y have been pushing their punctuation skills
editing advertisements and descriptions. We are rounding up our 'May The Force Be With You' topic
in Science and continuing to compare and contrast settlements in our area within Geography. Next
Monday we are taking a walk around Pocklington centre to observe and investigate the variety of services which are provided within a typical market town in England. Please ensure that the children
have a raincoat with them to cope with any inclement weather. Thank you.
Welcome back Year 5 after a wonderful holiday I hope. There's lots planned for this term and we in
Year 5 are looking forward to sharing it with you. We welcome our two new children, Beck and Ruby;
we're really pleased to have them. Miss Pickering is continuing with us and is a real asset to the
school in her attitude and teaching.
Year Six have returned after the Easter break looking forward to a full and action packed final term
together. I am not one to look to the past, but it cannot go without mentioning the positive attitude and
effort the Year Six children have put into this year so far and we are sure that it will continue.
In school they are working hard and Mrs Sweeting and I have had the pleasure of travelling with the
Year group to both Bewerley Park and also with those lucky enough to go to France. On both activities, out of their comfort zone, we have been very impressed with the mature way all the children
have behaved, as well as the way they have looked after each other, working well as a team.
We welcome two new pupils this term, both boarders; Maryana Yarshova and Ethan Rhodes have
already settled in to our busy routine and we are sure that they will enjoy the many events, trips and
activities planned for this hectic term. All details of these can be found in the school calendar which
have been circulated this week.
Fun and Learning at school
Matthew and
his brother
created a song
about the
Jarrow March
in 1936 as
their History
Homework.
Learning about fractions in
Year 1
Measuring
using
Newtons in
Science in
4X
2X exploring in their classroom
this week.
Enjoying the Easter holiday club
activities...
Thank you to local Artist Andrew who came
in to the Prep School yesterday