Stockport Grammar Junior School NEWSLETTER · ‘fastest finger first’ buzzer quiz and, after a...
Transcript of Stockport Grammar Junior School NEWSLETTER · ‘fastest finger first’ buzzer quiz and, after a...
Stockport Grammar Junior School
NEWSLETTER 12th February 2016
Welcome to the latest BUMPER edition of our newsletter. We have clearly been busy in the two weeks leading up to half
term and the children have approached everything with their customary enthusiasm. There have been trips, experiments,
author visits, speaking French, Chinese New Year tales and much more. ‘Safer Internet Day’ on Tuesday provided an
opportunity to talk with children about how to use the internet in a positive way. The end of the week brought the visit of
a large number of grandparents for our biennial Grandparents’ Days. These were much anticipated by everyone and it was
lovely to see so many grandparents able to come and visit us and to join in an activity with the children. The children also
performed some songs and entertained us all. Congratulations to three of our Y6 girls, Amy Jack, Libby Porter and Talia
Zelhof, who have won the Stockport Harriers Schools Cross Country series. There have been plenty of other fine
performances on the sports field, by both boys and girls, and it has been good to see so many of the children in action.
Looking at the diary for the weeks ahead, there is plenty more planned for the second half of term, including a new ‘Music
Day’ which will see children from Y4 spend a morning in the Senior School listening to and then trying out a variety of
instruments. All of which means that we must be due a rest and it only remains for me to wish you all an enjoyable half-
term break.
The Weeks Ahead Wednesday 24th February Netball v CHS (H) U10 3.30-5.00pm
Thursday 25th February Music Day
Quarry Bank Mill Trip
‘Goodnight Mister Tom’ Theatre Trip
Year 4
Year 1
Year 5
9.00-11.55am
9.00am-3.00pm
12noon-6.00pm
Friday 26th February SPA Class Reps Meeting
Netball v KSM (A)
U11
8.30-10.00am
2.20-5.00pm
Monday 29th February Swimming Gala v MHSG (A) By invitation 3.15-6.15pm
Wednesday 2nd March Hockey v Wilmslow Prep (A)
Class Pieces (Music)
Netball v Lady Barn (A)
U11
Year 4
Year 5 A+B
2.30-5.30pm
2.45-3.30pm
3.30-5.15pm
Thursday 3rd March World Book Day
MEN Arena ‘Young Voices’
10.00-9.30pm
Friday 4th March Netball v Withington (A)
Class Pieces (Music)
Year 6 A+B
Year 3
2.45-4.30pm
2.45-3.30pm
Saturday 5th March Netball IAPS @ Terra Nova U11 9.30am-12noon
Year 1 Build ‘Rubbish’ Castles
Y1 have thoroughly enjoyed studying
‘castles’ in their topic work this half
term. They particularly enjoyed making
their own castles out of recyclable
materials and then painting them. Thank
you to everybody who sent in boxes for
the children to use.
Y4S Blow Hot and Cold
Y4S enjoyed a science experiment
on changes for their topic on
‘states of matter’. The task was to
turn a solid into a liquid, which
they did by heating a block of
chocolate. The children then
dipped some marshmallows into
the liquid chocolate but they were
only allowed to eat them after
solidifying the chocolate, which
they achieved by blowing on the
chocolate to cool it. They had lots
of fun learning that you can make
changes to solids and liquids by
heating and cooling.
Infants Celebrate Chinese New Year
Our Early Years children had a visit from Mrs
Forbes this week, who came to tell them all
about Chinese New Year and about their
customs and traditions. She read the
children a story about the animal race and
explained why Chinese people have animals
to represent each year. They also learnt
about the importance of the colour red
which brings good luck.
The children also had the opportunity to
look at lots of resources and, as it’s the Year
of the Monkey, made their own paper
monkeys before finishing their celebrations
with a Dragon Dance.
Holiday Care
Our half term holiday care next week
will be held in the Junior School Art
Room. Places still available.
To book your place, call Miss Jones on
07947 140685
We all took part in this year’s ‘Safer Internet Day’, joining
hundreds of other organisations across the UK to promote the
safe and responsible use of technology. There is no doubt that
the internet provides us with amazing opportunities and this
year’s theme, ‘Play your part for a better internet’, focused
primarily on the creative and positive things that children are
doing online. Our children were encouraged to consider practical
solutions and appropriate responses to negative content so that
we can help to ‘create a better internet’. There is a guide to social
media for parents on our Parent Portal and further useful links on
the website (School Life/Support).
Children in 3H learnt a new
playtime game for Safer
Internet Day. It was called
positive arches. The children
stood in two parallel lines and
joined hands with the person
opposite to form an arch. The
child who is receiving the
honours walks through the
arch while pupils call out good
wishes and positive comments.
The Icing on the Cake
Y4S had a lesson on evaporation using icing sugar and
cakes last Friday
“The water from the mixture evaporated, leaving the
icing sugar behind” Thomas Mo.
“I found out that the water you put into the pot
evaporates and leaves the icing sugar to harden”.
Philippa Othen
“It was really fun and I liked eating the icing on the
cake!” Anna Porter.
“When learning about the states of matter in
Science, we did an experiment about evaporation, to
turn a liquid into a solid by evaporating the water
from the icing sugar mixture.” Jack Rafter.
Safer Internet Day
Children in Year 5 designed their own hearts as part
of the ‘Play your Part, #Share your Heart’ campaign
for Safer Internet Day. Here are just a handful of
the fabulous designs.
Alice Finnie
James
Carr Lilah
Vidler Claudia
Fell
Aimee
Reynolds
Hogwarts Comes to SGS
25 pupils from Years 5& 6 were chosen to attend this year’s
Harry Potter event in the Senior School Library. The children
had to go through the wall at Platform 9¾ to enter the library.
The Sorting Hat then put them into Houses and they had to
read a magic spell and collect ingredients to make the potion.
After working up an appetite, the children were treated to
some butter beer and chocolate frogs. The last activity was a
‘fastest finger first’ buzzer quiz and, after a few more activities,
Slytherin were crowned the winners and the children returned
with a goody bag and huge smiles on their faces!
Y3 Grab a Pizza the Action
As part of the Y3 Nutrition topic, the children had to design
and make a meal to incorporate foods from the main food
groups. We decide on pizzas! Whilst the Infants used ready-
made pizza bases, the Juniors mixed their own (using the flour
from their trip to Tesco) and really enjoyed getting their
hands sticky! After throwing it into the air a few times, they
decorated it with passata, cheese and a choice from ham,
pineapple, mushrooms, sweetcorn and peppers. It was great
to see the children trying different ingredients. The pizza was
then taken home to cook and enjoy whilst fresh! Everybody
really enjoyed the lesson and we would like to say a big thank
you to the SPA for supplying us with all the baking equipment.
Shrove Tuesday
Reception children talked about the significance of
Pancake Day on Tuesday and how it signals the
beginning of lent.
News from the Pool
The Junior School girls and boys enjoyed the gala
away at Westholme last week. The final score was:
Westholme 273 - SGJS 278.
“The children were amazing and perfectly behaved.’
Well done to all our fabulous swimmers.”
Miss Pepper and Ms Franklin
Y4 and 6 ‘Love’ Art
Children in Y4 were told that the Senior School were doing a project in Classics and were asked if they
would like to take part and to provide some Junior School work. The project is about love and the children
discussed symbols of love, with the heart being most popular and 4S were asked to use watercolours to
create an abstract heart. They then used ink to go over the original lines. They were given small brushes and
challenged to work carefully within the shapes they had created. Often they had to wait for their work to
dry then reapply to make the colours more vibrant. When they completed their designs, they went through
the coloured photocopier so that flat copies were available to display as a collage of hearts. The originals
are on display in the classroom. Meanwhile, Y6 were given cardboard hearts and string. They created their
designs on the heart then sprayed them in various shades of gold. When that dried, they used gold acrylic
to pick out the original string work. 4S and 6B went over to the Senior School this morning to see the
finished display and to listen to a senior pupil sing a song from one of the Classics play.
Puzzle Challenge Day
The Happy Puzzle Company visited the Junior School this week to
run their exciting Puzzle Challenge Day. Each year group took turns
to spend an hour in the school hall where they were divided into
teams and put to the test with a series of fun challenges.
The children were given various 3D puzzles to solve. None of them
was impossible, although some of them were tricky and required
team work in order to solve them.
‘It was interesting to try different puzzles that needed a variety of
skills to complete. I would like to have another chance to try more
puzzles in the future’. James Carr
The children particularly enjoyed ‘Perilous Penguins’ where the task
was to get all of the penguins to balance at the same time on an
iceberg without them falling off, and the Trapezium puzzle where all
the different coloured trapeziums had to slot together with no two
colours the same next to each other.
‘Puzzle Day was amazing. It taught us how to work together as a team
to solve the challenges. I really enjoyed it.’ Blake Weedon
Surprise Story Tellers
Our Reception classes continue to enjoy surprise
visits from lots of secret story tellers. Last week
they had their first daddies reading stories in both
classes, much to the children’s delight!
Infants Enjoy an Author Visit
The Infants were visited by author Emily
MacKenzie. Emily is an author/illustrator who
has written a book called ‘Ralphy Rabbit’ and
has just released a new book out about a cat
that knits called Stanley. She told the children
about herself and her books and then read to
them.
No Language Barrier in Y6
6B and 6T visited the language laboratory in
the Senior School during their weekly French
lesson. They thoroughly enjoyed practising
recording their spoken French and improving
their accent independently and were able to
ask and answer questions in pairs. They hope
to revisit the language lab next half term.
Stockport Harriers Schools Cross Country
Enormous congratulations to the Y6 girls
who ran in all 6 of the races at Woodbank
Park. Only 4 runs need to be completed for
scores to count but the girls, Amy Jack,
Libby Porter and Talia Zelhof, made it their
joint mission to complete the entire series.
So that they could run the last race, they
even made an A6 dash from their hockey
match against King’s Chester to get to the
start line, making it in the nick of time. Some
fantastic individual results meant that the
girls have won the series as a team.
Other children who have completed the
series and should be recognised for their
commitment and efforts are: Alice Finnie,
who finished a creditable 26th overall in the
Y5 & 6 girls’ event, Anna Porter, whose
results placed her in 25th position, and Isaac
Finnie, who finished 29th in the Y3 & 4
series.
Invitation Hockey Festival – Ryleys School
Well done to the Y5 team who played in the Festival
at the Ryley’s on Wednesday. They were competing
against pupils a year older than them in order to give
them some early experience of tournament
competition. The games were tough but the
Stockport Grammar girls remembered to pass and
attack the ‘D’. They were unlucky in two of the games
to repeatedly hit the post but the power of their
shots was excellent. The defence started tentatively,
often tracking backwards instead of moving forward
into tackles, but this improved as time went on. Anna
Howard had a fantastic tournament in goal showing
her increased confidence, clearing some great shots
off her line and moving out to steal the ball from her
opponents’ stick.
Results were as follows:
Wilmslow Prep A 2-2
Terra Nova 0-2
Pownall Hall 2-0
Wilmslow Prep B 3-0
Ryleys 0-0
Pop Lacrosse Proves Popular
The Junior School children are thoroughly enjoying their
new lacrosse club, which has added another sport to the
many activities already on offer.
The clubs gives children in Y3 and 4 the opportunity to learn
more about the game of Pop Lacrosse, the official English
Lacrosse game for primary schools.
Over the last few weeks, children have had fun practising
the skills needed to achieve the English Lacrosse Bronze
Stick Award. They have been learning to scoop (pick up),
carry, throw and catch the lacrosse ball, which is a lot harder
than it looks!
‘I’ve loved learning a new sport with my friends.’ Alex Canty
Y4 Visit World of Glass
Y4 visited World of Glass as part of their Science topic on
‘Solids and Liquids’.
First they looked at glass artefacts in the museum. Lucas
Henry told us: “It was interesting to learn that years ago bottles
used to have marbles inside them to act as a lid. Children would
break the neck off the bottle to get the marble out to play with.”
The most popular part of the morning was the visit to the
cone building. Eleanor Harper-Jones said: “We saw how they
used to make glass. We went down some tunnels to see what it
would have been like to work there in Victorian times, collecting
broken glass and recycling it.”
The children also got to paint their own glass and bring it
home.
After lunch the children got to play in the mirror maze. Ben
Lavender commented: “It was basically a maze made of mirrors
and you had to find your way around it. It was very likely that
every few minutes you would bash into a mirror. A wizard
appeared a few times to give us things to do in the maze.”
We then watched a glass-blowing demonstration, which was
very warm. Alfie Smith was chosen to blow a glass bubble
and told us: “The pipe was heavy and I had to blow very hard to
get the glass to go bigger. Mine was enormous until it popped,
glass went everywhere!”
Finally we went to watch a film show about how glass was
made. Grace Warburton explained: “It was unreal, the sounds
were amazing. The actual film was fascinating telling us how big
panes of glass were and are now made.”
Grandparents’ Day
After much excitement and a countdown all week, the Grandparents’ afternoons had finally arrived! The children had
been warming up their voices all morning in the classrooms ready to sing to their grandparents. As our school is
celebrating 100 years on this site, we chose to sing some traditional hymns to the grandparents and a modern hymn
that we sing in assemblies today. Grandparents who had travelled from far and wide warmed to the traditional All
Things Bright and Beautiful and the Early Years rendition of Who Built the Ark rounded off with the delightful modern
hymn I am Special. It was a lovely start to the afternoons. Following this, refreshments were served. The delicious
scones went down a treat and then the grandparents joined their grandchildren in the classrooms to enjoy an activity
together. They had the opportunity to paint and decorate a canvas with their grandchild. The remit varied in each
class from handprints in Nursery through to family paintings in Year 2. Grandparents commented that it was wonderful
to come and see their grandchild’s school, to meet their grandchild’s friends and to see what school is like today. One
grandparent said: ‘It is the best afternoon out we have had in ages!’ and another commented: ‘It was a lovely opportunity to
come and see what my grandchild does and to meet her teachers.’