Marton & District C E Aided Primary School

We started the week off in a most delicious way by celebrating Pancake Day/Shrove Tuesday with Miss Copestick’s legendary annual pancake tossing assembly and afterwards Rachel served Pancakes for breaktime snack and our week has continued to be so wonderful. I hope you are now all looking forward to tonight’s Family Bingo. Thank you for all your bottle and chocolate donations; you have been so generous!

Have you all managed to see the Astro Turf we now have at school? It’s absolutely amazing and we all excited to have such an area that children can play on. Children will need to wear trainers (no moulded or stud boots) to go on the astro and this will be closely monitored so we can preserve this.

Our classes have all been working hard and we have launched Class Ambassadors today. I have met with the CA’s from each class today and will meet regularly to discuss representing school.

Weekly news from busy classes:

Reception have made a joyful start to their new topic with The Selfish Crocodile, exploring the story by learning the given names of all the animals and creating labels for each character using their sentence skills. They have enjoyed talking about who appears in the book and what is going to happen to the Crocodile. This week also included a special moment as the children took part in their first Ash Wednesday worship, joining the school community with curiosity and respect as they learned about this important tradition.

Year 1 have come in with such a great attitude to learning.  We've started the term with some new phonics sounds that mean some tricky words are decodable now - especially our favourites; could, should, would!  We're working on the place value of numbers to 50 in maths, so we're learning how to read and write these new 2 digit numbers.  We are starting a new history topic about Kings, Queens and Castles so in English we are reading The Castle the King Built. Who knew there were so many different people in a castle!  Year 1 also started off the term with a fun spring walk so we're ready to talk about new beginnings in R.E.

Year 2 are continuing with the theme of exploring and adventure and have been looking at the wonderful journey of Charles Darwin on the HMS Beagle. This term we will be writing diary entries based on this journey. We will continue with our work on multiplication and division in Maths and learning are times-tables. We have started our new art project on castles and will continue to look at what factors influence growth in plants during our science lessons.

This week, Year 3 have been exploring the world beneath our feet in Science; investigating and comparing clay, sand, chalk and peat soils. The children enjoyed using equipment to carry out mini investigations to observe their different textures and discuss their properties. In History and whole-class reading, we travelled back to Ancient Egypt, practising chronology of key events of the era and learning about fascinating rituals and beliefs surrounding the afterlife. A special well done to the children who received Golden Acorns for their fantastic character voice while reading - what a brilliant week of learning!

This week Year 4 have been busy completing our diary entries based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, using our imaginations to write from the viewpoint of Charlie. In Geography, we have started learning about tectonic plates and how they move, which has helped us understand earthquakes and volcanoes. In Maths, we have been working hard on fractions and developing our confidence with them. We have also continued our ELSA sessions with Mrs Woodmass, which support our wellbeing and emotional skills. In French, we have begun an exciting new unit called Le Classroom, where we are learning classroom objects and useful phrases.

Year 5 have had a joyful and productive week. They have been loving their singing lessons as part of the Congleton Singing Project, led by conductor Tom Newell, showing great enthusiasm and confidence. In Maths, the children have been challenging themselves by finding fractions of amounts, while in English they have written thoughtful diary entries imagining Rumaysa’s escape from her enchanted tower. It was also wonderful to see so much excitement at the first girls’ football session on Thursday lunchtime!

Year 6 have had a busy first week back after half term! There has been lots of excitement as we discussed auditions for our end-of-year performance of Peter Pan with Mrs Cook — we can’t wait to get started. In maths, we’ve continued developing our understanding of decimals, while in English we’ve been refining our letter writing skills. We’ve also had some important discussions about resilience, putting in our best effort and having a positive mindset when we want to improve — a fantastic way to start the new half term.

Don’t forget children (and adults!) are welcome to dress up for World Book day next Thursday for World Book Day too! Our Wonderful F&F will be selling their famous Wonka bars on World Book Day on this day so look out for special Golden Tickets to reveal wonderful prizes. We are excited to launch our Sponsored Reading Challenge this week. Huge thanks to Mrs McLean for all her hard work and organising this for us. If you are able to take a photo of your child reading (and happy for us to promote this on social media and our website) please send us this via email as we want to celebrate reading so much!

Please don’t forget, if children are not able to take part in PE we need confirmation/explanation from parents/carers. Please email or call school, thank you.

Enjoy the weekend, Nevin Deakin