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!