Chris Lindsay 15/05/2021 Chris Lindsay 15/05/2021

Stanmore Post - 14 May 2021

Dear Parents / Carers,

I was really impressed with the effort that parents and children went to for the Significant People dress up day in KS1. Mr Read and Miss Williamson convinced me that it would be an inspirational hook for their History topic. I need not have worried. The children looked amazing and it was fun trying to guess who was who. Thank you so much for the effort and creativity that you put into supporting events like this. The children and staff really appreciate the special days and it adds to the learning experience. Find out more about our learning.

This week we had our first ‘Curriculum Mash Up’ day. At Stanmore every teacher is responsible for a subject within the curriculum. The children were grouped in their bubbles across different subject areas so they could share their learning experiences and the work in their books with the subject leader. This helps us get a complete picture of the impact of our Stanmore Curriculum in providing a high quality of education to all of our children. I looked at science books across the school and I was proud to see the variety, the detail and the knowledge and understanding reflected in the work. The children spoke knowledgeably about their work in science, history, geography, art, Design Technology (DT) and Personal Social Health Education (PSHE) as well as English and maths. You can help us at home by talking to children about the connection between new learning and any previous experiences.

Some of our children and families celebrated Eid ul-Fitr yesterday. In assembly today a group of children shared a presentation about the festival and what it meant to them. The children throughout the school were very respectful, asking thoughtful questions which were answered in a clear and engaging manner. The assembly reflected all of the school’s values of belonging, excellence, support and trust.

Before lockdown we offered a thriving wrap around care through the company ‘Creative Kidz.’ We would love to restart our wrap around care. Creative Kidz Childcare Ltd are a highly experienced, leading provider of out of school childcare in Hampshire. Their objective is to support and encourage personality development, independence and creativity. Developing social interaction, friendships and an understanding of diversity are also top priorities. Creative Kidz settings are registered with Ofsted Standard for Education on the Early Years register and both the voluntary and compulsory parts of the Childcare register. Their staff teams consist of highly trained, dedicated and experienced childcare professionals, each of which are subject to robust recruitment procedures including DBS checks and our extensive training and development package.

In the Stanmore Post last week we asked parents to email the school office adminoffice@stanmore.hants.sch.uk with an expression of interest by Friday 14thMay. We are pleased with the interest so far and have decided to extend the deadline until Monday 17thMay. Please note this is not a firm commitment, it is to indicate to us that you would like to find out more about a place in wrap around care at Stanmore Primary School with Creative Kidz.

Best Wishes

Sharon Taylor

Sally Atkins 14/05/2021 Sally Atkins 14/05/2021

Significant people and outer space

Year 1 and 2

Year 1/2 had a dress up day this week. The challenge was to dress up as a significant individual and come prepared to share 5 facts about that individual. Some children chose someone from history, past and present and other children chose a family member. We had Florence Nightingale, William Shepherd, Neil Armstrong, Rosa Parks and Archimedes to name a few. The children were great at presenting their facts and very had clearly done a lot of research. Their historical knowledge and ability to recall facts about significant people from history has really improved during this topic. We are looking forward to seeing if they can now argue who they believe is the most significant individual drawing on all this knowledge they have acquired.

Year 3 and 4

The children in Year 3 and 4 have been exploring the Shakespeare play, The Tempest, in writing this week. They have been creating cartoon strips of the story and freeze framing a snapshot from a scene. After getting to know Prospero, the main character, the children have used their understanding of his character to write a message in a bottle to describe what he is like.

In maths, we have been learning about parallel and perpendicular lines - we enjoyed making different examples of these lines using art straws.

Oak Class - Our Solar System Blog

This week in science we have been learning about the Solar System. We are never going to forget this!

We had some fruit, raspberry, peppercorn blueberry, cherry, tomato, watermelon, grapefruit lime and apple, we had children hold the fruit, and the toilet paper. 1 piece of paper was 16,000,000 km.

Comments from the children about the lesson!

It was fun although some of the fruit got a little squished

I would really like to do something like this again and this time get to eat some of the fruit

We lost the peppercorn but we found a small stone instead

My favourite part was holding the watermelon!

It was amazing, I loved seeing everyone holding the fruit and holding the toilet paper down!

Elm Class

Written by Charlotte:

During our science we have been doing research on the solar system, this week we have been focusing on the moon and the ways it changes. We used oreo’s to display the moon cycles for example: new moon, crescent, first quarter, last quarter, full moon The moon has cycles because one side is always light and as it orbits the earth we can see it in sections.

Written by Rebecca

In art, we made some beautiful thumb pots in the style of ancient Greek pots! At the end we evaluated our pots and decided what went well and what didn’t go so well. Everyone got their hands dirty and had a go, they look very authentic, good job everyone!

Chris Lindsay 08/05/2021 Chris Lindsay 08/05/2021

Stanmore Post - 7 May 2021

Dear Parents / Carers,

We are always proud of the excellent manners that children show in school. My attention has been drawn to this recently as we have had an increase in visitors in school, rather than virtually, this term. The visitors have all commented on the way children hold open doors, or speak politely to an adult. They are a credit to you and to our school. Respect is one of our Keys for Success and we do regularly refer to respectful behaviour. Within our Personal Social Health Education (PSHE) curriculum, children are taught to have respect for other people, understanding that people should be treated equally. We are proud of our diverse community and want all of our children to understand that prejudicial or discriminatory behaviour is not part of our Stanmore value of belonging.

Thank you to the parents who joined us this week to review another aspect of our PSHE curriculum, the Relationships and Sex Education Policy. It is important that parents are aware of when and how this is taught in school and we valued the support that was shown at the virtual meeting led by Mrs Horkan earlier this week.

As part of our curriculum this summer term, KS2 children are experiencing theatre through different Shakespeare productions organised by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Today children from Year 3 and 4 enjoyed Michael Morpurgo reading Tales from Shakespeare – A Winter’s Tale. Year 5 and 6 will watch Macbeth. After half term we are looking forward to a real theatre performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream performed by the Young Shakespeare Company. See more of our learning this week.

Their staff teams consist of highly trained, dedicated and experienced childcare professionals, each of which are subject to robust recruitment procedures including DBS checks and our extensive training and development package.

In order to pursue this further we are asking parents to email the school office adminoffice@stanmore.hants.sch.uk with an expression of interest by Friday 14th May. Please note this is not a firm commitment, it is to indicate to us that you would like to find out more about a place in wrap around care at Stanmore Primary School with Creative Kidz. .

Best Wishes

Sharon Taylor

Sally Atkins 07/05/2021 Sally Atkins 07/05/2021

Shakespeare, Space and Chocolate!

Year 1 and 2

Year 1/2 have been exploring the work of Andy Warhol in art. Today we were appreciating the different ways of printing, looking at the effects that are created and which methods are better than others. All of the children created some great prints and are planning and then making their final space themed print in the next couple of weeks.

Year 3 and 4

This week the children completed some experiments about melting, using ice cubes and chocolate. They had to record the temperatures and their observations. We also discussed what the particles look like in solids, liquids, and gases.

In our geography work we have been looking at maps, using tracing paper to show the physical and human geographical features of Africa. We are sure that you will be impressed by the photos, but they look even better in real life!

This Friday we were really lucky to be able to watch a live performance of the Winters Tale by the Royal Shakespeare Company and watched a video of The Tempest. The children all really enjoyed it and can’t wait to explore the play further over the next few weeks.

Finally, we have written some amazing, descriptive narratives based on a story called 'The Promise' by Nicola Davies. We have been using expanded noun phrases as well as creating exciting sentences using things such as repetition, alliteration, and similes. Also, we are proud of our lovely handwriting and spelling. We have been working really hard on this since Easter.

Year 5 and 6

Oak and Elm class have been exploring Space this week, learning interesting facts as well as researching planets and creating their own information fact files. We learnt that it would take over 100 days to reach the Earth from the Sun, and also that sunlight takes over 8 minutes to reach the Earth’s surface.

We have also continued our work on ‘Shadow of the Minotaur and have produced some fantastic descriptive writing about stepping foot into the Minotaur’s maze!

Chris Lindsay 01/05/2021 Chris Lindsay 01/05/2021

Stanmore Post - 30 April 2021

Dear Parents/ Carers,

One of our Keys for success is co-operation. The opportunities to extend outdoor play to year group bubbles has meant that children have been able to co-operate with a wider circle of friends again. I know that children have really enjoyed seeing their friends from a different class. Teaching play skills, for example creating natural spaces in the woodland areas or sharing resources is part of our wider ‘Stanmore Curriculum.’ This is one way in which we can develop leadership skills. Children are having opportunities to learn how to use their words to negotiate and share.

On 6 April 2020, Captain Tom Moore set out round his garden to thank our NHS heroes. One hundred laps later, he’d raised an incredible £38.9 million for the NHS Covid-19 appeal.

His simple message of hope – “Tomorrow will be a good day” – inspired millions around the world and brought comfort and joy to so many during the pandemic.

As a school we have taken up the challenge to build on that legacy. Today would have been his 101st birthday and to honour him and his amazing achievements, we have joined other schools and organisations to take part in the Captain Tom 100.

Today we have achieved 100 minutes of reading in every class. Every time a child read, listened to a story or took part in Guided Reading they filled in the goals on the reading ‘thermometer.’ In addition to this there were 100 inspired writing and maths ideas to choose from. At break time some children were happily picking 100 daisies! Find out more about our Sir Captain Tom Moore 100 challenge.

Best Wishes

Sharon Taylor

Sally Atkins 30/04/2021 Sally Atkins 30/04/2021

Captain Tom

On 6th April 2020, Captain Tom set out round his garden to thank our NHS heroes. One hundred laps later, he’d raised an incredible £38.9 million for the NHS Covid-19 appeal.

As this Friday would have been Captain Tom’s 101st birthday, we decided to build on his legacy and take part in the Captain Tom 100 challenge. Classes were challenged to read for 100 minutes and to take part in linked Maths activities.

Yr R

We used flowers and tens frames to find 100 objects in our outside area. The children loved collecting the items and counting together to support Captain Tom.

Year 1 and 2

The year 1/2 children in Rowan and Maple were challenged to see if they could collect 100 items that they found outside into a hoop. They worked as a team to collect the items and thought about how many of each item they needed in order to make 100, some grouping in 10s, 20s, 25s and 50s. This was a brilliant way of showing all that we had learnt in our multiplication and division from this week.

Year 3 and 4

As part of our recognition of the Captain Tom 100 Day, we have been writing some futuristic descriptions of what we think that our school, house or street might be like in 100 years time. We had lots of suggestions about hovering cars, robots to bring cups of tea and even portals to take us to other worlds! In maths we were estimating using money, length and mass. We had to think flexibly about the best ways to measure based on the equipment that we had. Added into all of that, we have achieved our 100 minutes reading challenge!

To complete the Captain 100 challenge, Birch class worked in teams to collect stones, twigs, daisy or leaves: estimating when they had 100 grams in their bags. Two groups managed to estimate 100 grams correctly with a range of 50 grams to 650 grams.

Year 5 and 6

Oak and Elm class have completed their 100 minute reading challenge for Sir Tom Moore! The children loved watching the ‘ temperature’ rise on their scale to show how many minutes they had left to go. This was their way of commemorating the life of Captain Tom and classes also completed a selection of Captain Tom themed Maths and English tasks, including writing acrostic poems using the words ‘One Hundred’.

Chris Lindsay 26/04/2021 Chris Lindsay 26/04/2021

Stanmore Post - 23 April 2021

Dear Parents/ Carers,

Welcome back to the Summer Term. We have had a brilliant start to the term helped by some lovely sunny weather. With Covid restrictions easing slightly, we have taken the decision to allow the children to mix in Year group bubbles outdoors in the fresh air during break and lunchtime. It has been good to see the children playing with their friends in the good weather. During lessons the new topics have started across the school with exciting hooks to inspire the learning for the term. As we hoped, the children have returned to school much more settled after the Easter holiday. While we are remaining cautious, we are working to return to as much of the planned summer events as possible. Have a look at some of this week’s wonderful work.

I would like to welcome Mrs Emma Holland to the Stanmore Team. Emma is our new Admin Officer and she has made an excellent start, working with Mrs May Eagle in our school office this week. I hope that you get the opportunity to meet with her in person soon. She can be contacted via adminoffice@stanmore.hants.sch.uk

We have two further new members of staff who I would like to welcome. Mrs Kate Barton and Miss Amber Noel-D’Avila have joined our teaching assistant team and we are very pleased to have them in school. Finally, to complete our Stanmore family, Mrs Mason, Mrs Griffiths and Mrs McGovern have returned following the end of Covid shielding restrictions. The children and staff were delighted to see them back in school this week.

I was really proud of the school today as we had our final virtual visit from Whiteknights Primary School, the English Hub who have been supporting us with our early reading programme: Read Write Inc. This has been a two year support package which has seen our teaching strengthen and our outcomes improve by 20%. We will continue to invest time, money and energy into this programme as children throughout the school continue to benefit. As we have made such strong progress with reading, this term we have added a highly focused spelling programme to the daily lessons. In order for this to be effective for all children we need to start the English lesson at 9:05am. Children split into different groups to get teaching at precisely the right level and so for many, this means moving. Children who arrive in the office after 9am are missing their speed sounds. Over time this amounts to a lot of lost learning, affecting reading, spelling and self-esteem. It would be brilliant if this term we could see every child in school by 08:50am.

If you need any support with this please contact Mrs Fenton or Mrs Mason via the admin office email and we can look at ways to help you adjust the morning routine.

Best Wishes

Sharon Taylor

Sally Atkins 23/04/2021 Sally Atkins 23/04/2021

Welcome Back

Year 1 and 2

This week in Year 1/2 we have begun our new topic 'Is there anybody out there?'. We started our topic by analysing images and portraits of people of the past. We then focused on Neil Armstrong and found that he was significant because he was the first man to step foot on the moon. This week we also began our art focus. The children were tasked with recreating the same image 4 times and found it very tricky to make each image exactly the same.

Maths was focused on multiplication with Year 1 learning how to count in 5s and Year 2 using their multiplication knowledge to solve problems using number lines and arrays. In science we continued with our longitudinal study, assessing how the weather affects the animals that live on our school grounds. We went to the pond and discussed how tadpoles are a sign of Spring as the weather has become sunnier and warmer which provides better conditions for animals to have offspring. We are very proud of how Year 1/2 have settled into school and are of the work that Year 1/2 have done this week!

Year 3 and 4

This week, Year 3 and 4 enjoyed our Hook Lesson for our new topic 'What makes Chocolate Unique' and what better way to start a unit about chocolate, than tasting chocolate?

Funnily enough, everyone was very eager to take part! Even the adults! We started by developing our vocabulary. Before we could eat any chocolate we had to look at it carefully and describe it's appearance. We then had to smell it and finally we could taste it! We came up with words like; rich, creamy, bitter, milky and delicious.

As you can see, we really enjoyed ourselves, and these photos capture our 'irresistible' curriculum perfectly!

We also started a new Science unit called 'States of Matter'.

It was an exploratory session to see if we could understand the difference between solids, liquids and gases. The children came up with some amazing statements and questions, including:

Solids don't move, they just are a shape.
Liquids are runny. You can't hold a liquid.
Gases are mostly hot.
How do you know that there is gas around us?
How many particles are there in a grain of sand?
We explored with different materials, such as: jelly, custard, rice pudding, shaving foam, sand, and fairy liquid.

Year 5 and 6

This week in year 5/6, we have spent our English lessons immersing ourselves in our new text. ‘Shadow of the Minotaur’. To hook us all in we were all given a lump of clay and a short description of a Greek mythical beast, and asked to create a sculpture which matched. We thoroughly enjoyed using the clay and we were all able to produce some fantastic (and terrifying) creatures!

Nina Lindsay 04/04/2021 Nina Lindsay 04/04/2021

Stanmore Post - 31 March 2021

Dear Parents,

We have had a really enjoyable end of term. The children have been celebrating with an ice-cream, generously donated by Tony’s Ices as a goodwill gesture. Thank you! It was really appreciated. This was arranged by the FOS and I am sure that you agree it was well deserved by the children.

At Stanmore we frequently talk about the Keys for Success: Resilience persistence, organisation, confidence, co-operation, respect. This has been an exceptional term during which we have seen all of these keys used so well by the entire community. Thank you again for all of the support that you have shown towards the school. The children have recovered their stamina and are back into their routines. Looking ahead to the Summer Term, it will be good to be able re-start from the settled position we are in now.

We will be saying goodbye to Mrs Rachel Sanderson, our Senior Admin Officer. Mrs Sanderson has made a significant contribution to school improvement and we wish her well for the future. Mrs Sanderson will be leaving the school at the end of this term. Many parents will also remember Miss Norris, who worked at Stanmore for many years. Miss Norris has been working at Riders Infants on secondment for the past year and has now been successfully appointed as the Head of School and will not be returning to Stanmore. I would like to thank both members of staff for everything that they have done for the children and families at Stanmore Primary.

After Easter we welcome Mrs Emma Holland as our new Admin Officer, working alongside Mrs Eagle in the school office.

I hope that you are able to enjoy a relaxing and happy Easter.

Best Wishes

Sharon Taylor

Nina Lindsay 30/03/2021 Nina Lindsay 30/03/2021

Stanmore Post - 26 March 2021

Dear Parents,

We enjoyed seeing the children take part in the Easter Egg hunt organised by the Friends of the School. Thank you to the Friends who were involved in organising this. It is great to see children taking part in whole school activities again, even if they are still limited to their bubbles for now. After Easter, if the guidance allows, we intend to widen the bubbles to year groups and resume after school sports clubs.

One of the positive outcomes of the last 12 months is the improvements that we have seen in the way we use technology to support our curriculum. We now have 45 Chrome Books to use in school. The advantage of this technology is that children are able to find new and inspiring ways to learn about the world around them. As part of their Geography curriculum, Year 1 and 2 children have been using ‘Mote’ within Google Classroom to record their own virtual tours of Winchester, inspired by the 360 tours of London. Our curriculum is designed so that all of our children have the opportunity to ‘appreciate, participate and innovate.’ The opportunity to use technology is one of the ways that we can motivate children to ‘innovate.’

Throughout the school this week there are examples of high quality writing inspired by the curriculum. In Catkins, children have received letters from a fairy who comes to school at night. The children have been inspired to write to the fairy, named Fabian, to ask him questions. In Year 3 and 4 children are writing balanced arguments about whether hunting was acceptable during the Stone Age. Children in Year 5 and 6 have been writing persuasive letters to the organisers of the UK film festival, encouraging them to include the short film Alma in the festival. Children are still recovering their stamina for writing after lockdown, but the quality is there which is fantastic. Where we are noticing a slight dip, is in reading in Year 3, 4 and 5. Please support your child to read independently, perhaps one of the Stanmore 30 books that we have in the library or a book of their choice that they can really enjoy. Reading a range of high quality texts helps children to have an ‘author’s voice’ in their head. Not only is this important for children’s spoken language it leads to better writing too. It can be hard to motivate children to read at home when there are more instant sources of entertainment. If you aren’t sure how to help, please speak to Mrs Kempson our English Leader or Mrs Jones our early reading leader who will have lots of good ideas to share.

You can see more of our work at: https://www.stanmore.hants.sch.uk/news/2021/03/26wonderfulwriters-fg2zp-jzxg

Best Wishes

Sharon Taylor