To all our wonderful Highflyer families,

WOW – what a truly lovely ‘final’ week to end Term 5 with; especially, after thoroughly enjoying our SCARF (PSHE) session with Katie – who also brought along Harold – the giraffe! – dialled up Kiki (the kangaroo!) ‘live’ via a video link after Derek (the penguin!) had, inadvertently, hurt her feelings before all discussing our favourite fancy-dress party characters! A really magical moment – and HUGE thanks to the children for being just SO beautifully attentive, thoughtful and observant! Great stuff indeed …

Monday afternoon also saw all the children (in their respective House Groups) head out for a bespoke session with the lovely Mrs Lorrimer-Simmonds – in our Main Reception Area - to help complete the superbly large mural paintings per ‘house’ … which Mrs Greenwood, no doubt, will be looking to very proudly display in the coming weeks around school. Some brilliant contributions from Highflyer Class – particularly as they were SO thrilled to, in their words, “meet, and work with, a real-life artist” :)

Before our term finishes at 3.30pm today, however, thought I might just quickly pop on our new Curriculum ‘Knowledge Organiser’ (and up-dated timetable - even though it remains pretty much the same as T5) to briefly introduce our new history topic of “What is a Monarch?” from next Monday (1st June).

As well as looking forward to enjoying some terrific ‘topic-related’ story books – and non-fiction texts all about Castles, Knights and the Crown Jewels, we shall also be thinking about the role of a monarch in our country and how it has changed since William the Conqueror over 1000 years ago! Our plan is to refer to our local town of Wallingford – given it is steeped in gorgeous history with its own castle - albeit now, sadly, a ruin … aawwww :( … but also its historical connection to the Royal Mint in times gone by. We shall be starting with William the Conqueror and Harold Godwinson – including the Battle of Hastings in 1066; so please do watch this space for our next batch of exciting findings! 

Our usual spellings ‘quiz’ will take place on Monday at approx. 9.30am; with, as before, all further details about our new term/other topic details attached to our new curriculum letter link (on the Highflyer Class web page) under T6 … :)

Forest School will continue on Wednesday mornings – although PLEASE do begin to send in sunhats etc if this incredible weather persists (including sun-cream – previously, wherever possible, ‘applied at home’ … with HUGE thanks …) coupled with our Outdoor ‘Performance Sport’ P.E. remaining on Thursday afternoons (from 1.30pm) – with, of course, a greater focus on athletics throughout the next 6/7 weeks … and our eagerly-awaited Sports Day practices!?!

For Week 1 our phonics focus will be: Suffix - -tion (station/nation); with new homophones of meet/meat – whilst in Maths we shall continue with our unit on 'Time' and learning about how an analogue clock is read (reading the hour, half-hour, quarter past, quarter to and using the minute hand to show five-minute divisions). Our daily mastering number focus shall remain focused on our deeper understanding of strategies to calculate (and help problem solve as well) – with all new weekly maths homework popped into planners, once again, by Friday afternoons!

Wishing you all a truly SUPER week … and see you all again – ‘bright and early!’ - on the 1^st …

With very best wishes – as always,

Mrs Winters and the ‘HF’ Team