Swinefleet Primary School

Email: swinefleet.primary@eastriding.gov.uk
Website: www.swinefleetprimaryschool.co.uk
Location: Swinefleet Primary School, Low Street, Swinefleet, Goole, UK
Phone: 01405 704386
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SwinefleetPrimary

Instagram: Swinefleet Primary (@swinefleet_pr) • Instagram photos and videos

What a busy start back it has been with so much learning taking place already. I hope that you have been finding the weekly bulletins useful and please do let us know if there is anything that you would like to see in these. The monthly round up hopes to be a real celebration of the children's learning and contain some useful resources for families so please do remember to check in with the weekly bulletin for up and coming dates, reminders, menus and reading reward information. There is a lot to look forward to ahead of the Christmas break including our exciting Christmas trip which will be here before we know it!

Don't forget to check out our Swinefleet Primary School Facebook Group, our Little Pearls Nursery page and our instagram for further photos and insights into our learning.

This month in Little Pearls we have welcomed 2 new friends and are really pleased with how well they have settled, forming bonds with their key workers and making friends with our other children.

It is important to us that children feel safe and secure in their setting, and we place a lot of emphasis on settling in sessions and forming good relationships. We understand how worrying it can be leaving your child for the first time in a new place and will work with families to ease these transitions.

This first half term we are focusing on 'regulate me', learning about our emotions, feelings, and our bodies.

We are exploring these themes through play, ensuring we continue to provide exciting provision, which links to the children's learning and development intents.

Our learning intents:

Week 1 - We focused on 'The invisible string' story, talking about who in our lives are important to us and spending time focusing on forming relationships and building on our sharing and turn taking skills. We have enjoyed a special teddy bears picnic with our friends in reception, we enjoyed sharing fruit, listening to bear stories, signing songs and running around together.

Week 2 - We enjoyed 'The colour monster' story and we have been busy exploring colour mixing through lots of different mediums. The children have enjoyed getting messy mixing colours in foam, making potions in the water and glitter and using different tools to mix paints (fly swatters are a great way to get the paint on the paper!!)

We also have been exploring mark making, including during our daily 'Squiggle whilst we wiggle'. The children are putting in brilliant effort with the movements and shapes they have learnt so far!

Week 3- We have listened to the story 'Ruby's' worry this week. We made some amazing 'Calm jars' after a lot of fun pouring water, glitter, oil and other liquids such as soap and washing up liquid, we experimented with how the different liquids affected the way the glitter could move.

We used our big muscles to shake the jars and then took a moment of calm while we watched the glitter dance around. ✨️

Week 4- This week our intent has been; learning to be healthy and making healthy choices about food, drink, activities

and toothbrushing. We have made a delicious apple crumble using fresh apples and talked about what other yummy fruits we enjoy, exploring fruits and vegetables using all our senses. We have created some brilliant artwork using blackberries which we found in our outdoor garden as well as painting pictures of our own bodies, brushing teeth in our messy area and role-playing doctors and dentists.

Next month we are going to be learning about different ways we can move to keep healthy. Exploring through our senses. As well as enjoying some seasonal celebrations, harvest festival, Halloween and noticing the changes Autumn brings.

Wow what an amazing first few weeks we have had in Pearls! We are super proud of our reception children who have taken starting school fantastically, they have taken it completely in their stride and loving school life! Our Year 1 Pearls are wonderful role models for our reception children and have also had a super star to the academic year.

In Pearls we are really enjoying our new phonics lessons using Little Wandle, the children have learnt new sounds and busy using their segmenting fingers to help them blend words. We are now using our learning from phonics in our English lessons.

In English we have started following the Drawing Club and the children are super excited to complete their work every day. We have worked on the books Aliens love underpants, Dear Zoo and Home where the story begins. Each day children create their own drawings and codes. We are now encouraging all the children to begin writing sentences to go with their drawings. The children are working so hard to try and use their phonics knowledge to help when spelling words in their writing.

In maths we are focusing on place value this term, building the children’s knowledge of number and developing their understanding. We have counted and sorted numbers, worked on recognising numbers and one more, one less.

We have started our topic, All about me and The Local Area. We have learnt about birthdays and when everyone’s birthday is in our class, each child added their birthday to our cupcake display in the classroom. We have learnt about our location on a map of the UK. We named the four countries, and some major cities.

In science we have started to learn about different animals and how we can group them based on their features. We have sorted them into different groups, drawn some of their features and enjoyed learning new things about different animals.

In PE, the children have enjoyed working with Jordan from Hull FC on their running skills. We have worked on using our arms to help us run faster, making sure we look up and taking larger strides. The children have enjoyed racing against each other in teams, whilst also building their team work skills.

We have had a fantastic start to the year and really look forward to the rest of term ahead. We have lots of exciting things planned this term including a cinema visit and a very special trip to see Santa!

We are over the moon with how amazing our Rubies have settled into Year 2 life. We are super proud of them and how they have been excellent role models for younger children in the school. They have adapted well to the classroom environment and a new teacher. They have been a fantastic start to this academic year.

In Rubies we are really enjoying our new phonics lessons using Little Wandle. We have been recapping our sounds that we learnt in Year 1 and using our segmenting fingers to help blend the words. We have been encouraging the children to use and apply their phonics into their English writing which they have been trying really hard to do.

In English we have started reading our book for this term which is The owl who was afraid of the dark. The children are really enjoying reading this text. So far, we have written a character description and have used some amazing descriptive vocabulary to describe Plop. We are currently working on a unit called ‘Dark is…’ where we are using adjectives and expanded noun phrases to describe what dark is and how it makes us feel using our senses.

In maths we have been focusing on place value this term. We are focusing on place value and will start to look at addition and subtraction. We have recapped a lot of our Year 1 learning, and started to develop our skills in comparing numbers, counting forwards and backwards to 10 and 20, as well as learning to recognize tens and ones in lots of different ways.

We have started our topic of Our Local Area. We have started to recap the countries and capital cities in the UK. We will look more into the surrounding seas of the UK as well as learning to create a map of Swinefleet using a key to recognise key landmarks.

In science we have begun learning about animals including humans. We have recapped our learning from Year 1 and have been grouping animals by their features and characteristics. We have enjoyed learning that animals have offspring and have been matching offspring to their adult.

We have really enjoyed PE so far this term. The children love working with Jordan from Hull FC practicing their running skills. We have worked on three things, using our arms to make us run faster, making sure we keep our heads up looking where we are running too and taking bigger steps. The children have practiced these techniques against each other in races and have shown great sportsmanship and teamwork.

We have had a fabulous start to the year, and I am so proud of the children for settling in so well to the new school year. They have my start at Swinefleet Primary School a lot easier and for that I thank them. We have lots more exciting things planned for this term like the harvest festival and a visit to someone very special at Christmas!

In Diamonds class this half term our theme is ‘Stone Age to Iron Age’. We have had a busy start to the new term and we are really pleased with how all the children have settled into new routines and (for some) a new classroom. We have enjoyed getting to know all the children again, since they were with us in Pearls class!

On 17th September, we had an exciting start to our new theme ‘Stone age to Iron age’ as we visited the Hull and East Riding Museum. We found out about the different times during the stone age and how people moved from being hunter gatherers to farmers. We ground flour by hand, made some stone age artwork and learnt how to use an early drill. We had a lovely day! We have written a detailed recount explaining what we did, what we learnt and how life was during this period.

In English lessons we have been reading our class text ‘Ug, boy genius of the stone age’. We have been writing character descriptions, and we have also written a diary entry from Ug’s perspective, he didn’t like the stone age very much!

In maths lesson we have been learning about the place value of numbers. We have been using our maths packs to help us make numbers, using our thousands, hundreds, tens and one blocks and we have been tackling a range of different problems.

In science lessons we have been learning the names of different rocks and learning how they have been formed. We have grouped the rocks using different criteria. We have started focusing on ‘working scientifically’ finding out which rocks are harder than others and which ones can absorb more water than others.

We have also been enjoying our two Monday PE sessions! We have been learning the importance of team work when playing rugby and netball games.

What a wonderful start to the year the Sapphires have had! We cannot believe September is nearly over. The highlight so far has to be our trip to the Hand on History Museum in Hull. The children enjoyed learning all about the Ancient Egyptians, visiting an actual tomb, studying some artefacts pretending to be Egyptologists, ‘mummifying’ one of their school friends and creating their names out of hieroglyphics! The Sapphires also got to visit the East Riding Museum and the Streetlife Museum in the afternoon. As part of our theme on Ancient Egyptians, the children have done some research on a range of gods and goddesses. They have mummified some apples and created a pyramid out of lego. Their reports on the trip to the Hull Museum were well written and full of detail.

During guided reading this half term, we are reading the Secrets of the Sun King, the Sapphires have made predictions about the story, created character maps and made inferences relating to the characters. From their reading, they have produced some excellent diary entries focussed on the character of Lil. The Sapphires used hot seating to really get into their roles and ensured they included fronted adverbials and conjunctions within their written work. As a class, we are really focussing on making our handwriting joined and legible – your support at home with this is much appreciated.

The Sapphires have been working really hard to thoroughly understand the elements in place value. They are confident now in rounding numbers, negative numbers and understand the value of numbers up to 10 million. In science, the Sapphires are learning about life cycles. They have researched life cycles of mammals, insects, amphibians and birds and compared them. It was lots of fun working out which baby photo belonged to which pupil. The Sapphires are also finding out about naturalists such as Jane Goodall, David Attenborough, Steve Backshall and Chris Packham.

During PE lessons with Jordan, they have been learning rugby skills, the children are really enjoying games of rugby and developing their passing skills. In RE, the children have found out about different symbols from different religions and created their own symbols. They researched a range of celebrations and festivals from a range of different religions. The Sapphires have started to look at systems in computing. Music lessons have been focussed on music from films and the children have listened and appraised the music considering the tempo, pitch and dynamics of the music. In PSHE, the Sapphires have created a class charter and have considered and discussed the importance of the UN rights of the child.

After a visit from the vicar, the Sapphires enjoyed creating some poems, fact files and biographies on Edward Cragg Haynes and this work was displayed in the church. We are also fortunate enough to be part of creating the mural on Goole Train Station, so far the Sapphires have designed some ideas and some of their art work will be displayed in the train station! The Sapphires got the opportunity to do some food tasting and learn about the countries of Europe during golden time on the European Day of Languages.

We have so much to look forward to in October, including a trip to Drax Power Station and the Skylark Centre. The Careers Fair on 15th October from 1.30pm till 3.30pm, Harvest Festival on Wednesday 1st October at 1.30pm, Parents Evening 22nd October and the Reading Reward treat. Plus as well as having our school councillors, we want to give the Sapphires some other roles and responsibilities across the school such as play leaders/peacemakers, librarians, reading buddies, assembly monitors and any other roles that we may decide on as a class!

Thanks for all your support, keep uploading reads on seesaw, practise spellings and complete maths homework. Have a lovely weekend, from the Sapphires team

Enjoying food tasting as part of European Languages Day.

September's Stars of the Week

Our September writing award winners

Our maths medal winners for September

All of the children in Reception to Year 6 are placed in one of our house teams where collaboratively they can earn house tokens each week for showing our school values. Throughout the year we also take part in events such as Sports Day in our teams.

Please note we have changed our teams around a little so your child may be in a different team to the previous year.

The winning house team at the end of the year will receive a special reward.

September House Team Results:

15th - 20th Sept - Winners Ben Nevis

22nd - 26th Sept - Joint winners Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis

Our new after-school childcare and is open to all ages. This is open up to 6pm and is £8 per session. Bookings can now be made via Arbor.

It is important to attend school regularly but we understand there are times that this isn't possible. If you want further information or advice regarding attendance and supporting high attendance then please take a look at our resources below or speak to a member of the team.

Each week we aim for at least 97% attendance.

September's Weekly Attendance:

3rd - 5th September - 95% Below expected standard

8th - 12th September - 97% Expected standard

15th - 19th September - 96% Below expected standard

22nd - 26th September - 97% Expected standard

Information and advice on variety of areas such as children using Snapchat or playing games online.

We know that conflict is a normal part of relationships, and we also know that it's not conflict that is the problem, but how we deal with it.

Evidence shows that ongoing, poorly-resolved conflict can have a damaging effect on children’s well-being and happiness. The Relationship Matters website provides tips and support local to you and within the site, there are some great tools, such as the Amity's Little Book of Relationship Care, and links to a broad range of websites, including Mind, and the One Plus One site, which supports separating parents to handle arguments better.

There is also Separating Better, a useful app for families going through separation.