Mr Applegate

About Mr Applegate

Posts by Mr Applegate:

April 28, 2022

Welcome back! Year 2- Our Amazing World

We hope you all had a wonderful Easter Break. The children have all settled back really well and are working hard. We are very proud of them all.

This half term, our learning is based around ‘Our Amazing World’. In Geography we will be learning about a non-European country and in Science we will be thinking about plants and how they grow. We will be linking our learning in lots of creative ways and look forward to sharing our work with you and our school community. If you want to find out more about our topics, then please look at our knowledge organiser and topic web below.

We will be growing beans but to save on unnecessary plastic, rather than buying cups, we are asking that you provide your child with a transparent plastic bottle (1 litre or 2 litre will work well). Please also cut the top off before sending it in. See attached example. Sometime next week will work well.

Please also remember that our PE days are on Wednesday for the remainder of the half term. Please ensure that children come into school in their PE kits on a Wednesday but also with a coat in case of rain.

Advance notice:

Many parents have asked about a trip and we are excited to let you know that Year 2 will be going on a trip to Hillier Gardens on Friday 24th June. A letter will be coming home next week. We will be asking for parent helpers but will require you to have a DBS. We are aware that the DBS are taking a little longer than normal to come back so if you would like to help, then please contact the office as soon as possible.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us via our year group email: year2@stmarksce.org.uk

We look forward to a fun half term!

The Year 2 Team

Year-2-Knowledge-Organiser-Our-Amazing-World-Summer-1.pdf
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Year-2-Our-Amazing-World-Topic-Web.pdf

April 27, 2022

Year 5 – What are we learning about in Summer 1?

We are so excited to be back at school and begin the Summer term – and oh what a half term it is going to be! As one of the teachers’ favourite topics, we are going to be learning about the Caribbean. It’s going to be a musical and colourful 5 weeks, finished off with a Carnival Day on Thursday 26th May, when we will also have some virtual sessions with Reading Museum! The children are going to be learning in more detail about the Caribbean islands (we touched upon this in our North America topic in the Autumn term too) and also will be learning about the Windrush movement. This period in History lead to a change in British culture as the Caribbean influence began to merge into British music, sport, carnival and food too.

Attached are our Topic Web and Knowledge Organiser for this half term. The Topic Web gives you an insight into what we are planning on covering in each subject and the Knowledge Organiser gives you lots of facts and information about our Caribbean topic so that you can learn about these at home too.

After May half term, we have lots of trips coming up – Swimming, Ufton Court and Brighton Hill. Please ensure the forms are completed for these as soon as possible.

Thank you, as always, for your on-going support,

The Year 5 Team

Year 5 Sum 1 – Knowledge Organiser

Year 5 Sum 1 – Topic web

April 26, 2022

What an adventure!

We trust that you have all had a good break and the children enjoyed lots of Easter fun! We certainly enjoyed our Easter themed learning just before the holidays and it was especially lovely to see our Year R children spending time with their Year 6 buddies at our Easter event. We are looking forward to arranging other opportunities to meet with our buddies during the Summer term.

For the whole of the Summer term our topic is ‘What an adventure!’ After this first week when we are focussing on RE and the concept of ‘belonging’ we will begin our adventure with an imaginary hot air balloon ride. Once we are off in our balloons we will visit the Amazon and the UK this half term before continuing on to Africa, the Great Barrier Reef and then up into outer space during the last half term.

You can find out more about our topic and other learning for this half term in our newsletter here.

We are looking forward to travelling the world with your children! As always, information about what we have learned day by day will be shared on your child’s ‘walk and talk’ board.

The Year R team

April 26, 2022

We’ve been busy in Year 4!

What a busy first day back we have had in Year 4. Not only have we been swimming, but we also made erupting volcanoes to start off our Quivers, Quakes, Eruptions and Shakes topic.

The day started off with our very first swimming session. The children were all brilliant, and showed all of the learning behaviours. The first lesson began with a mini assessment of what the children already knew, and then they began straight away with their lessons.

Either side of swimming, the children were set the task of creating a volcano, ready for some eruptions in the afternoon. The children's creativity shone out, and they created some lovely volcanoes. Once they were finished, it was time for some eruptions! Using a concoction of different materials, we were able to imitate some volcanic eruptions.