End of School Blog

We are sorry to inform you that our little blog is to be no more. The statistics for visits to the weekly blog are very low indeed. Thanks to everyone who has supported the blog.

SCHOOL CLOSED MONDAY 12/12/11

Due to a gas leak, we have been advised not to open school until the problem is resolved. South Gosforth First School will therefore be closed all day on Monday, 12th December 2011.

Please keep visting the school website or this blog for further updates re the rest of the week.

www.southgosforth.firstschool.org.uk

We are very sorry for the inconvenience this will undoubtedly cause but we have no option but to follow the gas supplier’s advice.

Sorry! No blog till next week (9/12/11)

The weeks fly by!

Reception take centre stage again this week mainly due to their willingness to write. Asides from the lovely work in their ‘I Can Write’ exercise books, they’re also choosing to write of their own volition on any surface they can find! Despite both classes suffering a blight of chicken pox, the phonics work raced on with ‘p’ (yes, they did make and eat popcorn!) and ‘e’ being introduced. For ‘e’, the children took a break from chomping, painting pictures and re-telling the story of Elmar the Elephant instead. In maths, meanwhile, they have already started adding to 5 while they did hand-prints as part of their ‘senses’ topic for touch.  

Y1 were also hard at work with writing, re-telling the ‘Dark, Dark Tale’  after a lot of authentic role play that just stopped short of  locking all forty-five in the small hall cupboard for a couple of hours while the teachers, in keeping with the theme, drank black coffee and ate dark chocolate! Y2 also did some super writing around ‘The Lost Toy’ story while in maths they have been furiously adding up using the ‘diamond’ partition/doubling  method for tens and units. KS1’s weather topic this week covered wind and the water cycle while in art, their weaving work drove them to distraction!

KS2 have had a relatively quiet week but their Greek topic got them thinking about the 2012 Olympics where they also made theatrical masks. In maths, as part of measurement and using links to last term’s ‘My Body’ topic, they children made a hotchpotch human skeleton using different sized bones with sizes taken from everyone in class. The result was Frankensteinesque ! 

 

Are the New Starters Putting on Weight?

Looking back over the last few blogs, I’ve noticed a high correlation in our reception classes between learning new letter sounds and having something to eat. I appreciate the need to motivate the learner but this week’s delicious ‘baked buns’ for the phoneme ‘b’ may be the peak of a very slippery slope into obesity! With ‘p’, ‘f’, ‘s’ ‘k’ ‘v’ and ‘w’ still to come (pizza, fries, sausage, KFC, vol-au-vents and whipped cream/weight watchers), it’s a case of thank goodness for ‘x’ and ‘z’!  Continuing with the ‘b’ theme, this year’s Christmas production is entitled, ‘Born in a Barn’ or as one little boy called it, ‘Bun in a Barn’! Taking time out from cooking, the children also made feely hands this week as part of their work on senses.

Healthwise, things got no better in Year One where the children made their own extremely dangerous potions that bubbled, effervesced and erupted like volcanoes. Using a combination of crushed bones (bicarb), dragon’s blood (food colouring), and liquified green snot (washing up liquid), the children had a great time stirring and mixing before writing down recipe instructions and telling stories of what their magic potions were for. They even incorporated some maths; doubling, tripling and even quadrupling ingredients to cater for more people.

Meanwhile,Year Two did some fantastic writing by re-telling the wonderful story of ‘Dogger’ and adding a personal touch by bringing in their own favourite soft toy. However, their afternoon work threw up a little mystery. Measuring the water in their weather station rain gauges, 2M’s was empty as expected as it had been dry while 1/2I’s was full to the brim. On careful examination by the teacher, the rainwater was distinctly yellow in colour leaving the children perplexed about its origin. The investigation is ongoing and we suspect it’s either the work of a fox, a rouge potion from Y1 or that naughty boy, Jimmy Riddle, from Y4! Answers on a postcard to Mr Coles, please.

In case you were becoming increasingly concerned about the thus-far worrying goings-on at SGFS this week, Key Stage Two were undoubtedly the shining lights, holding the flag proudly for the school’s policies on staying healthy and citizenship. They went off to Gosforth Academy (being politically incorrect, that’s the high school to you and me!) for a morning of sports with other children from the local first schools. They had a great time using the ‘state-of-the-art’ facilities for dancing, trampolining, racquet sports and touch rugby while their mid-morning snack of a fruit drink and fruit salad put the eating habits of the rest of the school to shame. The only downside was that some of our boys witnessed how to block sinks to flood the toilet floor thanks to the expert tutelage of Y4 boys from another first school. Fortunately, I’m proud to write, our children were appalled and as responsible citizens, reported the incident immediately. Well done indeed!

Finally, as a sign that I’m definitely getting old, the Cartoon Club  worked on Phines and Ferb and I haven’t got a clue who these characters are! History Club began making a Roman fort and I do know what that is as I was born when Nero came to the throne!

What’s that I hear?

I know the darker nights are setting in quickly and I realise that plummeting temperatures could  encase us in festive ice and snow at any time and yes, the windows at Fenwicks are in full seasonal swing but I still can’t believe that school is already reverberating with the voices of children practising songs for their Christmas performances. It’s not so much, “Bah! Humbug!” (though the staff would tell you otherwise), it’s the nightmarish thought that while we do this, we’re losing valuable curriculum time that could be spent doing my favourite things like maths and English! Okay, I am Scrooge incarnate but what about the ‘blog’? I can’t possibly feature Christmas for the next five weeks or our nine regular readers will leave us in droves and may never return to hear about things like……

…..the reception classes making hot chocolate with Cadbury’s powder (despite the recession when it comes to chocolate, you’ve just got to buy the best!) this week for their work on ‘h’. They also had a great time playing on the new scooters that we bought with the Sainsbury’s vouchers collected by parents and the teachers also sorted out acting parts for the you know what. 

In Y1, the children had great fun coming up with alliterated ingredients for magic potions and once again, their imaginations knew no bounds when it came to being disgusting so there were lots of dog droppings and salty snots to be found. The worrying bit is that they are actually going to concoct these potions next week so if your child asks you to pick up anything from the pavement in a small plastic bag on the way to school, please decline! 

Elsewhere, Year Two had a more sedate time writing instructions for greetings cards while Y3 had great fun with measuring by making rockets that travelled up to an amazing 20 metres! Children in the History Club made Roman mosaics while the Reading Club worked on puppets from ‘The Gruffalo’ story.

Good! Other than the singing then, not a bit of Christmas in sight!

Indoor Fireworks?

Our Key Stage Two pupils have been startled many times this week by bangers going off in their shared area. In case there any health and safety concerns out there, please don’t worry as the explosions came from bursting balloons which the children were using as moulds to make paper mache replica urns as part of their Ancient Greece topic. Meanwhile, 3W and 4D took part in maths workshops with a visiting team from Explore Learning. They did a problem solving exercise to decide on how to best spend funds to set up a new classroom and what started out as a simple process soon got really complicated when energy costs had to be worked out. 3/4W can look forward to doing the same investigations next week.

At the other end of the school, the Reception children took an important leap forward by starting their first ‘I Like to Write’ books. Using “Biff’s Dream” from the Oxford Reading Tree scheme as the text, the children talked and wrote about their own dreams for the future. They certainly came up with some interesting ideas from the usual nurse, doctor and policeman themes to the more sublime aspirations of becoming a knight, a fairy, Ben Ten and even a dolphin! The children have also been learning two more initial letter sounds making aeroplane engine noises for ‘n’ and model rockets for ‘r’. In art, they did some great firework pictures using a paint splattering technique that had the teaching assistants diving for cover as the colours fizzed and popped all over the place. Be warned: don’t let your children try this at home! 

Key Stage One had plenty to talk about this week as their topic is ‘The Weather’ and the last few days have been more like spring than the start of winter. The children recorded a high of 17 degrees centigrade but it would be no surprise if next week they encounter temperatures below zero! Whizzing this blog to a spectacular finale, Y1 did some fantastic ‘Haunted House’ acrostic poetry using lots of magic words and phrases while Y2 excelled with instructional writing for a game they thoroughly enjoyed playing called ‘Aztec Gold’.

Ghouls Galore and Even More!

Most of our children came to school on Friday morning looking like zombies following a night of wild revelry at the PA’s Halloween Disco. Making enough noise to wake the dead, the children got a lot of exorcise, really getting into the spirit of things, dancing, eating, drinking and howling their way through one devil of a night. All alone and locking up afterwards, I must admit to being a bit freaked out, expecting a ghost, vampire, werewolf or skeleton to leap from the shadows and cover me with fake blood at any time!

Key Stage  Two took the ghostly goings-on even further when during their weekly Italian lesson with Mrs Dodds from Gosforth Academy they worked on Halloween vocabulary covering, amongst others, un fantasma (ghost), un teschio (skull), un vampiro (not sure what that is!!!), una casa infestata (haunted house), uno scheletro (skeleton), un ragno (spider), una strega (witch) and un pipistrello (bat).

The Y4 Samba performance added another international dimension to the week as our dynamic drummers entertained their parents with a great little concert on Wednesday morning. Back in class, the children also made sandwiches in food technology coming up with some weird and wacky combinations using ham, cheese, tuna and salad, dripping with butter, tomato sauce and mayonnaise! On a more sedate note, Y3 wrote poems to share with rhyming couplets everywhere!

Over in Key Stage One, Y2 did a fantastic assembly for their parents all about Guy Fawkes (if only he’d been around when the MP’s expenses scandal hit the news!) with poems about fireworks and advice on how to stay safe on Bonfire Night. Back in class, Y2 tackled reflective symmetry in maths along with hunting for right angles around school. Y1’s big day was Monday when their party plans finally came to fruition and the children had a fun-packed morning playing games (party corners, musical statues and musical bumps) to win medals and prizes, having a dancing competition and eating cakes. Best of all, when they got back to class, they produced some brilliant pieces of writing about the big day. Key Stage One even managed to squeeze in traffic surveys on the main road through South Gosforth for their geography work on Travel on Tyneside.

Reception were also very busy making insects from polystyrene balls, pipe cleaners and tissue paper for their work on ‘i’ while they also mixed up their own jellies for the letter ‘j’. Culinary delights continued as the potatoes dug up from last week’s spot of gardening were boiled and served up as a little snack on Thursday.

Finally, the children have a well-deserved holiday next week so we hope you all enjoy a lovely, restful break.

Kids Love a Bit of Gore!!!!

One of our doctor parents kindly visited school this week as part of Key Stage Two’s Human Body project and got a glimpse into the strange workings of the minds of 7 to 9 year olds. No doubt expecting a gentile round of enquiries about the skeleton, muscles and major organs, the children had other ideas, enquiring enthusiastically about how many times the intestines would stretch across the classroom, whether girls had bigger brains than boys, whether babies could be born without a head, the consequences of losing all your bones, why fingers crack plus discussions about babies being born inside-out, feline pregnancy and how much it’s possible to eat in a day! To be fair to the good doctor, he was brilliant throughout and was kind enough to leave the embarrassed teachers the name of a good children’s psychoanalyst! On a more normal note, Y3 and Y4 all baked bread as part of food technology and the smell was absolutely lovely.

Reception did a spot of gardening this week, digging up one tiny carrot and a few dozen worms. They also did some flower planting thanks to one of our parents bringing in lots of new perennials  using money raised from a plant sale.

Meanwhile, Key Stage One took a trip on the Metro to North Shields on Thursday where they boarded the ferry to the sunny shores of South Shields, birthplace of Mr Coles. Unable to find any sign of a blue plaque, they quickly returned across the Tyne, spotting three starfish and a dead rat on the return journey!

Finally, the new after school clubs are going well. Cartoon Club featured Horrid Henry, The History Club made a model Roman soldier while the Reading Club enjoyed the delights of ‘The Gruffalo’.

Roll Up! Roll up ! The Circus Hits Town!

Thanks to the fundraising efforts of our wonderful Parents’ Association, we’ve had lots of visits and visitors recently and this week was no exception when the circus came knocking on our door.

However, this was no ordinary troupe of performers but our very own Y3 and Y4 children who quickly mastered a wide range of thrilling skills taught by the visiting ring-masters to ‘wow’ their classmates with breath-taking feats of daring, including puppetry, spinning plates, juggling, balancing upright peacock feathers on their noses and chins, diabolo spinning and the unicycle-inspired Chinese Wheels of Doom ! Although no one actually ran away to join the circus as it left, several children had to be restraint from taking up a permanent life on the road!

As if all that excitement wasn’t enough, the same groups enjoyed a visit from the City’s Education/Business Partnership Team for a brilliant maths workshop called ‘Tetrahedron’. It’s a good job we have a big gym with a giant roof space as the children produced a six metre high tetrahedron constructed by amazing teamwork from just pieces of wooden dowels and elastic bands. They even managed to lift the gigantic structure above their heads as a finale to what turned out to be a fantastic learning experience for all.

And there’s more….Y3 also had a spot of squash coaching this week thanks to Mr. Vitty from the Northern Squash Club who like a rubber ball kindly keeps coming back to see us year after year.

The rest of the week almost pales into insignificance compared to KS2 but elsewhere, Y1 wrote their very first party-themed stories from ‘The Bear Who Wouldn’t Share’ book while Y2 have been plotting their forthcoming parents’ assembly all about Guy Fawkes. Poor Reception had to make do with just having a new tent (from B&Q and not quite a big top) in the outdoor area where  we’re pleased to report that the dolls’ and toys’ tea party was the icing on the cake!

Lastly, thanks to all the mums and dads who came to Tuesday’s classroom-based workshops. It was lovely to see you all and from the feedback we’ve had so far, the night seems to have been really well received.