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.