2016-2017 School Year

Whole School Newsletter – Autumn Term 2016

By December 21, 2016 No Comments
Dear Parents and Carers,

Another term has flown by and everyone in the Manby Lodge Family has worked exceptionally hard. We have had an incredibly busy term beginning with the big move in September, followed by a visit from Ofsted and our Grand Opening! Throughout all of this the children have excelled themselves and I am very proud to be Head Teacher of Manby Lodge.

I have also had the pleasure of sharing both the Christmas Performances and the Carol Concert with you and your children.

A fantastic time was had by all at the Christmas Fair. It was a wonderful event; Mulled Wine, Father Christmas and the animals in the stable were just a few of the highlights. It truly was a “Winter Wonderland.” The incredible amount of £4,200 was raised. Well done and a huge thanks to the FoML.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support that you have given the school over the last term. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and I look forward to seeing you all on January 3rd.

Kindest regards
Mrs Creasey

Key Date

School returns on Tuesday 3rd January.

Thank you and Goodbye. We are very grateful for the help that we have had from our visiting German student teachers, Miss Dahlke and Miss Reinke. Both are leaving at the end of term and we wish them luck as they continue their studies at home. We also say goodbye to Miss Andre our teaching practice student who has been working in Lion Class this half term.

Reminders

Holidays: As per the DFE guidelines no holidays will be authorised unless there are “exceptional circumstances”. You may be liable for a fixed penalty fine.

Please see the Attendance Policy which can be viewed on the school website.  Surrey school  term and holiday dates can also be found on the school website under the ‘Parents’ tab.

Reception

We have had a very successful and exciting half term. The children have been working very hard on their blending and segmenting skills in our literacy work. They have used these new skills to create labels and signs in our role play and small world areas.

Our class mascots went missing, we had to make posters to help us find them.  We have had a volcano in the small world, a hairdressers, a hospital and a vet’s surgery in our role play.  In maths we have been learning about 2D and 3D shapes, length and developing our counting skills.

As part of our outside learning the children have been involved in setting up a car wash, cinema, water channel, and we have used our mud kitchen area to develop language. The children have also enjoyed making their own shows and singing songs on the stage.

Our Christmas concert was a great success. The children worked hard to learn songs and perform on stage for the very first time.  We have learnt to use the cameras to take photos of our learning and put these in our special books as a record of our achievements.

Year One

This half term in maths we have focused on addition, subtraction and place value. The children have very much enjoyed using marshmallows and Twiglets to partition numbers into tens and ones.

In English we have been learning about the features of non-fiction books. We have written headings, captions, labels, facts and lists. We have also received a very exciting letter from Father Christmas asking us to write instructions to make reindeer food.

We have focussed on Samuel Pepys and The Great Fire of London for our topic this half term. As part of their learning, the children have made some houses of which we have used to re-enact the Great Fire.

The children have designed, planned and evaluated glove puppets. Thank you to the parents who supported the children when sewing. They look truly amazing. We are looking forward to another magical half term with our wonderful children in Year 1

Year Two

At the beginning of the half term we learned about poetry focussing on firework poems. We learned about the use of verses, rhythm, rhyme and repeated phrases and patterns. We used onomatopoeia words to create our own firework poems.

We have been reading and exploring a range of fairy tales and traditional tales this half term and identifying their key features. We have examined the structure and the language and used this to compose our own alternative fairy tale.

Within maths we have focussed on multiplication and division and the relationship between the two operations. We learned about the use of arrays and repeated addition to solve multiplication and to draw sharing circles to solve division. We have begun to look at data handling including tally charts and bar graphs.

Our topic this half term has been Famous People. We have compared and contrasted the lives of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth and learned about the lives of Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole.

In Science we have learned about changing materials and their uses including making a fruit cake. The Values we have covered this half term have been Co-operation and Thoughtfulness. We also enjoyed a fantastic Christmas Craft Morning.