Christmas Plays

The festive season is well and truly upon us here in school, and yesterday saw the first of two performances of our plays. The Infants performed a version of "Babushka", a Russian folk tale that describes the Nativity, whilst the Juniors performed a more contemporary piece- 'The Polar Express'.

The children excelled themselves in both plays, and the audience were treated to a really lively and exciting start to the festive season.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Author in School

Last Friday (6th November) was a fantastic day here at school! We were very fortunate to have a real life author in with us for the whole day.

Sandra Horn spent some time in every class, reading from her books and answering the children's questions about her work and being an author. I know that many of the children have been inspired to put pen to paper and start work on their own books. This was a truly inspirational day, and there was great demand for signed copies of Sandra's works at the end of the day.

Year 6 Leavers' Performance

If you go down to the woods today, you're in for a dramatic treat! Year 6 entertained us with 2 performances of Roald Dahl's 'Red Riding Hood'. The performaces were excellent, and entertained the children and adults alike. Thanks Year 6, and good luck at secondary school.

Summer Fair

Last Saturday saw our school summer fair, and despite a shaky start, the weather came good and we managed to hold it outside. The event was great fun; we had a huge turnout- new friends and old. The event raised over £1250, which is a marvelous achievement when you consider that the school community is only 150 families!
Equally importantly, however, the event had a lovely, relaxed, community feel to it. A huge thank you to all those involved in organising it, those who donated their time or prizes, and to everybody who turned out to support the school in this way. Particular thanks to Michelle, who had a key role in the organisation of the event, and was in many ways the founder of FOSS (our parents' association) who leaves us at the end of the year as her daughter moves up to secondary school.

Year 4 Adverts

In literacy recently, Year 4 have been learning about persuasive texts. We looked at TV and magazine adverts and had a go at writing and performing our own radio adverts. We tried to make our smoothie drinks sound really tasty to persuade you to buy them!

Primary Languages Competition

On a very hot Monday afternoon at the end of June, a mixed age group of eleven children took part in the first Southampton Primary Languages Competition at Beechwood Junior School.

The children had entered various categories: the Culture Quiz, the Song category and an ICT category. Ryan P and Mohammod from Year 5 impressed everyone with their knowledge of France and French life! Both of them reached the sudden death play-off, with Mohammod narrowly beating Ryan and the two other finalists.

The song was performed energetically and confidently by Max, Katie, Rhiannon and Archie from Year 3; Kundie, Shannon, Ariba and Charley S from Year 4 and Jasmine F from Year 5. Much to their excitement, they won their category.

Finally, Kundie and Charley S represented the whole of Year 4 by explaining their ‘Comic Life' ICT presentation to the judges. Year 4 had worked with Mr Mackay to prepare comic strip dialogues based on role play at a French market. Kundie and Charlie had to explain how this was done and were expected to read the French dialogue to the judges, which they clearly did well, as they also won!

We were very proud of the children’s efforts and of their fantastic behaviour, which was commented upon by parents who attended. “Bravo tout le monde!”

Year 5 Trip to Hale

As part of their study of a contrasting geographical location, Year 5 went out to Hale in the New Forest this week Luckily the weather stayed good, and the children enjoyed a lovely day out in a school which has many similarities, but also some very interesting differences to our own.

The children were particulary struck by the lack of traffic fumes out in this part of the Forest.

We also managed to win the annual football match with Hale School!

French Assistante in School

We are very lucky to have Charlotte, a Foreign Language Assistant, working in school with the children this term.  Charlotte team teaches French to whole classes; works with groups of children and runs a French Club for various year groups.  The children look forward to working with her and enjoy asking her about France and French life. It is wonderful to have a native speaker in the classroom to support their language learning.

It still seems amazing that we have taught French for such a short time, yet the children are so good at speaking it!

Year 5&6 Enterprise Day

On Tuesday morning we had a real treat for  Years 5 & 6- we had a group of business people and some University staff to put on an enterprise day for the children. This was a refreshing change for the older children who had been working so hard towards last week's SATS!

The children had an 'Apprentice' style challenge- to plan, design and market a children's club and present their work to the rest of the class. To make the task even more challenging, the children's club was in France, so the children had to use their French to translate for the posters and marketing materials, and use their Maths skills to convert pounds to Euro for their budget!

The children coped very well with this complex task, and produced some really good work. It was nice to have the business people and academics in school as well.

Year 3 Assembly

We were treated to a real star performance on 

Friday afternoon, as Year 3 put on their Assembly for the Junior classes and parents.

Clearly, a lot of work had gone into preparing the event, and the children shared some of the brilliant work they have done in English, Numeracy, IT, Music and French.

It was really good to see just how much fun learning can be, and also to get a glimpse into the future as to how technology will enhance learning.

The audience were spellbound:

Year 6 SATS

This has been a busy week for our Year 6 children, who have been sitting their SATS in English, Maths and Science. They seem to have done very well and enjoyed it so far!

We have been serving breakfast for them all week as a way of calming them down, making sure they are fully fuelled to get through a busy morning, and also to have an opportunity to talk to their teachers about any last minute revision.

I don't know how much academically they have learnt during these breakfasts, but as a school we have learnt two things:

1. The most popular breakfast cereal amongst Year 6 children at Swaythling is Kellogg's' Cheerios.
2. Mr Parker makes the best toast in the UK!

I'm very grateful to both Mr Parker and Mrs Hurst for helping out to arrange these breakfasts- it has been really popular- 23 out of a possible 27 have attended!

Congratulations to our Sports Coach

We pride ourselves on providing high quality PE here at Swaythling- in fact we have been awarded the PE Mark for providng 2 hours high quality PE every week ahead of the government deadline for this target.

One way we achieve this is through buying in our sports coach, Neil, through Sports4Schools. I am delighted to share with you the news that Neil and his colleagues have just been awarded the Southampton City Council's Quality Mark.

This is very well deserved- the children all enjoy working with Neil (second from the right), and he also runs our Football team, who are performing at an increasingly high level.

Drummer in School

Today is the celebration of the 'Buzzing about Books' project which has been run by Mr Oliver and Mr Mackay. It has been a really great project, and many of the children have much improved attitudes to reading as a result of their involvement of the project.  A highlight of today's celebration was the visit of Paul, a professional drummer, who has run workshoops for all the junior children.

Here are some pictures of Year 4.

Flu Information

It's a worrying time with all the news being about the flu at the moment, but I think we should all be reassured by the fact that there have been no confirmed cases in Hampshire at all, and all those elsewhere in the UK seem to have only mild symptoms and make a good recovery.

Nonetheless, we are taking the threat very seriously, and have stepped up our cleaning routines, and spent some time over the last couple of days teaching the children about good hygiene practices (handwashing, throwing away used tissues etc.). This is the best way to stop the infection spreading.

If people are worried, here are some links for more information:

Health Protection Agency  http://www.hpa.org.uk/

Southampton PCT http://www.southamptonhealth.nhs.uk/

SCC website: http://www.southampton.gov.uk/people/keepingyousafe

Hopefully, in the very near future, we'll all be wondering what all the fuss was about!

Happy Birthday Mrs Salter!

An atmosphere of celebration was in the air on Thursday, as Mrs Salter, our Senior Midday Supervisor, celebrated her 60th. birthday.
Mrs Salter is a very important person to the smooth running of the school, so this was a lovely opportunity to both wish her many happy returns and thank her for the 27 years of service she has given to the school. (She brought in a nice cake as well...)
Happy birthday Mrs Salter!

Welcome back after the Easter Holiday- hope everyone had a good break.
It looks like being a very busy half term in School! There are only five weeks before half term, and one bank holiday.
Year 6 have their SATS in the week beginning the 11th May, so are frantically revising and brushing up on exam technique. We have a few treats booked in for them once this week is out of the way-they (and Mrs Charlton and Mrs Dixon) will certainly have earned it by then.
Year 5 enjoyed presenting the weather in French just before we broke up:

first post

Welcome to the Blog, this is a first test to see how it works.