Middle Department Notices and Reminders

World Book Day

Thursday 2 March is World Book Day! We are celebrating this national event by transforming the Drawing Room and the Junior Hall into two huge bookshops provided by the Travelling Book Company. Pupils will have the chance to browse the books and make purchases.

As part of this national celebration of reading, each pupil will receive a £1 book token, redeemable against any book purchased on 2 March.

As in previous years, we invite all pupils and staff to dress up as their favourite character from a book, and we ask that £1 is donated to the World Book Day charity via this link

Please click here before Monday 20 February to complete the Google form confirming whether your child can participate in the book sale, their maximum spend amount and that you are happy for the cost of the book/books to be added to your account.

This week in Year 3

The children are still on a high from last Friday – the most exciting day so far in Year 3! During the morning, pupils loved sharing with their parents the pride they take in their work, and then the Inter School Cross Country competition was the icing on the cake!

We had an excellent group representing Year 3:

• Violet G,
• Louisa L,
• Lucinda C,
• Naomi G,
• Sasha L,
• Harry M,
• Miles D,
• Charlie M,
• Charlie H 
• Alex F.

There was a real buzz in the School and the whole of Year 3 were very excited to be able to go outside and to loudly and enthusiastically show our support for the runners. We felt very proud of them!  You can enjoy looking through some of our photos below.

Science

Year 3 have started their science topic on rocks and soils. For our first lesson, we became Rock Detectives and walked around the School and grounds trying to spot where different types of rocks were used in the building. We were amazed to see just how many different types of rocks were used and had some great discussions about why these particular rocks had been chosen for each job.  Take a look at our Science session in photos below:

PSHE

Year 3 have been having some excellent discussions over the past few weeks in our PSHE lessons regarding the idea of respect and consent. 

We understand that respect means treating people in a way which accepts and values their wishes, feelings and rights. We have identified our Trusted Adults and we know that a Trusted Adult would never ask us to keep a secret that makes us feel uncomfortable. We learnt how to keep safe around strangers, who to seek help from (a Safer Adult) and where you might find this help (Safer Buildings such as police stations or libraries). 

We also had some great discussions surrounding consent. We know that consent is when we give permission for something to happen or an agreement to do something. We talked about the idea that everybody is in charge of their own body and can decide what can happen to it. This might mean deciding who can hold your hand, touch you or where they can touch you. We know that we can say ‘no’ politely but firmly if we are feeling uncomfortable and that we should tell a trusted adult if we are at all worried about ourselves or our friends. 

And no week is complete without a cuddle with our well-being dog Bruce.

Next Week

We are very excited to have our Year 3 corridor and stairs painted over half term. Mrs Pope has been stripping the boards in preparation and it has been so lovely to hear the children expressing dismay as their work comes down and how much they liked seeing it up there. We have reassured them that it will all end up in their Best Books so they are mollified. 

We are also looking forward to going on our trip to the Hindu Temple next week. We will be out for the whole of Tuesday, but will be back in time for After School Activities. We will share lots of pictures in next week’s newsletter! 

Kind regards,

The Year 3 Team 

This week in Year 4

Science

Year 4 had more exciting lessons in Science where  we took ‘disclosing’ tablets’. We had to crunch the tablets in our mouths and they turned the plaque on our teeth blue so we could see where we needed to better brush our teeth. We then brushed our teeth making sure we got rid of all the blue stains. Check out our photos below – we hope you enjoy them. 

Thank you to Boarding for letting us use your facilities and making this possible. We had a great time and took away a few important valuable learnings.

4P enjoy Forest School

On Monday, 4P had a very exciting Forest School session. They initially had to navigate their way into the woods by following arrows to show them the direction to walk and if they came across a cross, they had to choose a different direction. Once in the forest, the children worked collaboratively as a team in small groups which involved hiding a pig and then creating the directions using the sticks for another group to solve. Brilliant teamwork seen in solving a problem together!

The Year 4 Team

This week in Year 5

Head’s Commendations

Congratulations to this week’s recipients of Mrs Cussans’ Commendations: