Dear Parents,

Can you believe that this term has come to an end? It has been wonderful to see the children really buzzing with so many different learning experiences to stimulate them - "Thank you teachers."

I particularly enjoyed our Spring concert, being able to welcome you all back as a group and allowed to sit next to each other! I'm sure you agree with me that the children were fantastic. 

Thank you to Mrs.Mills for overseeing this and the teachers for their work with the children. 

It's also been wonderful seeing our children taking part in sports competitions across the borough. This has been a huge amount of work for Mr. Duffin supported by Miss Jones so many thanks to them both.

Mrs.White stepped in to cover Mr. Owbridge leaving us, so I'd like to say a big thank you to her plus Mrs.Wilson who also helped with locking up the school. We welcome Mr. Watling to the school as our new Site Manager and you will see him around after Easter. 

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our 'unsung heroes". We have a fantastic team of midday supervisors who provide a variety of games and fun every lunchtime.  They are out 'rain and shine'. We also have a super team of cooks for lunch, and they will be preparing to be run by a new company after the Easter break. Our 'silent heroes' are our wonderful cleaners who are beavering away early in the morning and last thing at night to make sure school is always clean and ready for the children. 

We've had a lovely final week and the children really enjoyed it with  the Spring bonnet parade and Easter egg hunt. As always I'd like to finish by thanking you, our partners in learning. The bonnets were superb and must have taken many of you ages. Please continue to read and play maths games over the holidays whilst having lots of fun too!

Best wishes,

Mrs.Weeks

Reception News

This term reception have been learning a variety of traditional tales. We have loved exploring the stories ‘Little Red’, ‘The three little Pigs’, ‘The gingerbread man’ and ‘Jack and the beanstalk’ through role play, small world and even baking our own gingerbread men! 

We used our geography skills to create and read a map to guide our walk to the nugent retail park, where we enjoyed a lovely story time session. 

On world book day we had great fun dressing up as words, the children were very creative! We made our own book character puppets and used them for storytelling. Drop and read was great fun, with the children reading their books all around the classroom and outdoor area. 

During science week we enjoyed sharing our learning with our partner class at Lowstock Primary School. We learnt all about Charles Mackintosh and then explored resources at the  art table to create our own raincoats, using waterproof materials. We explored our sense of smell when completing the ‘happy smells’ experiment and held some interesting discussions about the ageing process and the different stages of human life. 

We look forward to lots more learning fun next half-term during our growing topic, where we have some very exciting arrivals planned……….

Year 2 News

This half-term in English we enjoyed reading Jim and the Beanstalk, the Great Kapok Tree and the Owl and the Pussy-cat. The children used these books as inspiration for role play and drama activities, writing their own stories and poems, and lots more. In Maths, we learned how to use dienes, a hundred squares and number lines to add and subtract and how to use arrays to multiply and divide. Our topic was The Rainforest, so in Geography we learned about the different layers of the Rainforest and the animals that live in each layer. We also compared the Amazon Rainforest to the UK. In RE we learned about special celebrations in different religions, including Ramadan, Holi and Easter, and in PSHE the children learned about lots of different ways to live a healthy lifestyle.In Science, we planted seeds under different circumstances and then tracked and compared how they grew over the half-term. This taught us more about what a plant needs to grow and be healthy. We also had an exciting Design and Technology day, where the children continued their learning about healthy eating by finding out more about different food groups and how to create a balanced meal by including something from each group. They used this knowledge to design and then make their own healthy wraps, which were delicious!

Year 3 News

In Year 3, the students have been engaged in reading the book "Black Dog" this term. The primary learning objective through this book has been to enhance their prediction skills and use evidence to make logical inferences. Furthermore, the students have been honing their writing abilities by learning the importance of using correct punctuation while writing dialogues. They have also been working on developing their story-writing skills by employing a well-known story structure to produce an effective and captivating story. 

In Maths this half-term, we have revised different methods of subtraction and looked at fractions of amounts. We worked incredibly hard to complete our Spring term assessments.

In Science, our topic of study has been  forces and magnets. Through this engaging and exciting subject, we explored the fundamental principles discovering how forces influence our world. Our investigations were centred on understanding the properties of magnets and how they interact with other objects.

In Geography, we have been conducting fieldwork, based on the data we collected and what we observed during our trip to the River Cray. We have built 3D models, discussed improvements that could be made and we have written letters to the Mayor of Bromley. 

We had a whole DT day to give us time to design and build our own 3D structures. Our design brief was to design a castle for a specific person/ creature with features that would appeal to them. We used nets to build our own 3D shapes.

In computing, we have looked at how branching databases are used to organise and separate groups of things based on their attributes and discussed how these databases could be used in everyday lives.

In Religious Education, the children have been exploring how believers demonstrate their commitment to God within their households. This term, we have delved into various religions, with a primary focus on Judaism. Through our studies, we have gained insights into the unique ways in which Jewish families practise their faith and express their devotion to God. 

Year 4 News

Year 4 has had a fantastic time this half-term.

In English, we have read the Iron Man by Ted Hughes and written a newspaper report, written a menu and composed a story. Drama has been used to support our understanding about the characters in the book, with role on the wall being our favourite drama activity. We now understand a modal verb and how to use it in our writing. We have also read the book The Word Collector and dressed up as a word for World Book Day. 

In Maths, we have been learning about multiplying and dividing by 10,100 and 1000. We started to learn more about decimals - 1- place decimal numbers representing ones and tenths, dividing 2-digit numbers to create 1-place decimal numbers, multiplying 1-place decimals to give whole numbers, ordering and comparing decimals. We are now learning about fractions - understanding  a range, ordering, comparing, adding and subtracting fractions

In Science, we have been learning about States of Matter and one experiment has been observing the evaporation process through water in jars. We had a fantastic week in Science Week, where we had two Zoom calls with a link class in another school. During the week we designed our own scientist, investigated our fingerprints and experimented with weights for an investigation called ‘Bridge Blunder’. 

In Geography, we have continued to learn about Modern Europe. This has included describing and understanding key aspects of physical geography including rivers and mountains, learning about the effects of Europe’s different climates on industry and how this influences what countries can be famous for. We also explored the geological variations in one section of Europe.

In Spanish, we continued to learn about greetings and how we would introduce ourselves with our name and age. We have also introduced family titles such as mother, father, brother and sister and how you would refer to them.

In RE, we have explored ideas such as, ‘is all suffering in the world caused by a battle between good and evil? What would life be like without evil? We have also learnt about the Hindu festival if Holi and a religion called Zoroastrian.

In Computing, we have been learning about programming shapes using coding in Turtle Academy. In Design and Technology, we have designed and made our own pavilions around the theme ‘Our Playground’. In Music, we have been practising for the Year 4 Fairfield Halls concert in April.In PSHE, we have been learning about our health in ‘Healthy Me’.

Year 5 News

The second half of the Spring term has been busy for Elm and Elder Classes. In Maths, we have been increasing our Fractions knowledge. In English, we have been reading and creating different pieces of written work based on the book High-Rise Mystery.

We started to play the Djembe in our music lessons. Both classes have made brilliant progress.

We have continued learning about Ancient and Modern Egypt in our Geography and History lessons.

In Science, we continued our topic of States of Matter. We have taken part in lots of experiments focusing on making sure they were Fair tests. The one we most enjoyed was making a Bouncing Egg! 

In IT, we learnt about Computer Crumbles. We built and programmed our own to display different light patterns.

During PE lessons, we have continued to improve our Lacrosse skills. On 30th March, some of our children were selected to play in a competition against other local schools hosted by Poverest. Everyone played well and showed great skill and focus.

We made Poem Portraits in Art.

Finally, in DT we have designed and made a stuffed toy.

Year 6 News

This half-term, year 6 have continued their learning around the Ancient Greeks and have learnt all about the Greek buildings including the Parthenon. The children learnt all about the Parthenon marbles and debated whether it was right for the United Kingdom to keep them in the British Museum. They finished their unit of work by recreating the Parthenon, including the marbles, using Minecraft. 

During English this term, Year 6 have enjoyed reading, ‘Who Let the Gods Out’ and exploring the different characters within the text. They particularly enjoyed writing in the role of Virgo the mischievous constellation. As part of their learning they wrote diary entries from the point of view of Virgo as well as formal letters from the Zodiac Council.

Science week was also a highlight for both classes as they created a fair test experiment to find out how the temperature of water would affect the growth of the yeast.They watched to see the balloons inflate with carbon dioxide and discovered that the warmer the water the more carbon dioxide was created. They were then able to use what they had learnt about the temperature of the water when making bread the following day. 

Ash and Maple News

Life skills and wellbeing must have been top of our agenda this half-term. All the children have enjoyed our trips to the local shop to get their supplies ready for our Mash Friday treats. As we all know though, it gets even better … the tasting after the making. 

The children absolutely loved their trip to the Cray River for their signs of Spring scavenger hunt and showed the adults just how safely they can cross the roads to get there. We did get a little waylaid in the park though. 

Inclusion has been a huge success for a lot of the children, and they’ve been really enjoying joining their mainstream peers, making new friends and working on projects with them. The Reception and Year 4 children have been really lucky as they got to experience Forest School in action, whilst Year 5 and 6 have been honing their new skills in Lacrosse. 

6 extremely lucky children also got to join the SEND bowling competition at the Pavilion this term too. With strikes, spares and near misses, it didn’t really matter as, in the words of one of our pupils - it’s not all about winning, it’s about teamwork!

Junior Friends of Hoblingwell Award

Hoblingwell is a very small woodland, in Orpington, but it still has a lot of different species. Over the course of a year, Junior Friends of Hoblingwell wanted help to improve the surrounding area. This is where I volunteered to improve the woodland in our local area. I also learnt lots of interesting facts like: different species of trees, insects, birds and butterflies. During my time there, I was taught first aid and a lot of professionals came in and did mini surveys to count how many bugs or flying animals were in the area.