I N S I D E T H I S

I S S U E :

Christian

Values

2

Hedgehog

Class

3

Owl Class 4

Fox Class 5

Buzzard Class

6

Around the

School

7

Christmas

Lunch

8

Postcards Of Kindness

9

The Friends 11

Governors 12

Compton Courier D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 9

Thank you to all the adults who

volunteer in School—listening to

readers, helping in class and

helping on trips.

The House Captains wish all Staff,

Pupils, Friends, Governors, Parents

and Neighbours a very Merry

Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Reply Slip

As part of our commitment to parental involvement in school, please use this return slip for suggestions, compliments or concerns that you wish to make

known at this time. There is no requirement for par-ents to use this slip, but it is intended to give everyone

an easy opportunity to communicate with us.

Welcome to the final Compton Courier of 2019! The school has been

beavering away, not only preparing for Christmas but also reflecting on the

lovely things we have done this term. Thank you to all who came to the

Nativity—it was wonderful to hear that so many of our audience thought it

was a great start to their Christmas season. Thank you to all who organised

and supported our Christmas Shopping Day and Christingle. Our final festive

occasion is our Christmas Carol Concert—we hope to see you there!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Each half-term, the school explores different Christian values. We teach our children about these values and emphasise that they are different from our academic learning values. Our Christian Values can be found on display in the school entrance area and they are at the heart of all of the work of our school, both in the classrooms and in the daily acts of Collective Worship. Each half-term, a different Christian Value is chosen for special focus. The Christian Values are not separate but link together to underpin the beliefs of Christians.

If you wish to find out more, please visit http://www.christianvalues4schools.co.uk/

This term we have been investigating respect and hope.

Respect

Respect is a core Christian value because Christians believe that people are made in the im-age of God, that everyone is special, everyone's opinion matters, everyone's contribution is important, everyone's feelings should be considered and everyone's faith is sacred. The Bible teaches Christians to respect differences in our world through stories like The Good Samaritan and Zacchaeus the Tax Collector. Christians use these stories to think carefully about how we treat others.

Within our school, we encouarge all, " to treat others as you would want them to treat you." (Matthew 7:12) Respect can mean simply treating each other with politeness and courtesy, and recognising that everyone's contribution is important and that everyone's feelings should be considered. We regularly discuss how respecting someone does not mean that we always agree with the other person but that we are prepared to listen and share our views without rudeness or impatience.

Hope The Christian understanding of hope illustrates how trivial our everyday use of the word can be. We hope that it will not rain for the picnic, or that the car will start or that the plumber will come tomorrow. Christian hope is grounded in the character of God. Often, in the Psalms, the writer says to God: ‘My hope is in you’. It is a hope rooted in the love and faithfulness of God. Hope is not wishful thinking but a firm assurance that God can be relied upon. It does not remove the need for ‘waiting upon the Lord’ but there is underlying confidence that God is a ‘strong rock’ and one whose promises can be trusted. Hope is not always spontaneous or easy. There is work to be done. As well as trusting God, we have to develop qualities of steadfastness in our own character. Hope is coupled with faith and love as one of the three most enduring gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Year Autumn 1 Autumn 2 Spring 1 Spring 2 Summer 1 Summer 2

A Creativity Humility Perseverance Compassion Courage Thankfulness

B Respect Hope Wisdom Generosity Responsibility Friendship

The Gruffalo By Julia Donaldson

What an absolutely fantastic visit we had to Chichester Festival Theatre!

We have read lots of different books all written by our focus author Julia Donaldson. The culmination of this was a special visit to the theatre to watch a production of The Gruffalo!

For most of us this was the first time we had been to the theatre which made our trip especially exciting! As you can see from the photos we had an amazing time and the children really enjoyed the story being brought to life using singing, dancing, and lots of exciting costumes!

Hedgehog Class

The Autumn TermThe children in Hedgehog Class have settled into school life brilliantly and have taken part in two performances themselves. Firstly they dressed up and sang a song about a scarecrow in the church.

Secondly the children went on to the stage in the hall and sang beautifully in our Christmas Nativity. We were all particularly impressed with their singing of twinkle twinkle!

This term Owls have enjoyed the topic: On the Move. We’ve managed to cover the topic in lots of subjects; including English, Maths, Art, Computing, Geography and History. In the first term of English we wrote a diary from the point of view of the 1st Class Titanic passengers. In the second term we looked at writing our own story based on “We’re in the Wrong Book”. The children explored different genres of book and thought about taking a journey through different stories. We have also focused on instructional writing for making a cart wheel and a badge (inspired by our two trips).

Mixed Media and Sketching In art we focused on repeated line sketching in order to create precise lines and images and different effects. We then sketched images related to our topic and used a variety of materials to recreate the scenes.

Amberley Working Museum Before Half Term we spent a day at Amberley Museum. We rode a train and a bus that was almost a century old! We spent time exploring the train shed and looked at the history of transport on Britain’s roads.

Chichester Cathedral

After Half Term, we had a class trip to the Cathedral to learn about what made it as special place and to link in with our topic we learned about St Richard and the journey he went on. Everyone got to make a badge too!

‘Sparkle’ Nativity 2019! The Whole School was involved and performing this year’s nativity. This year we told the origin story of the Star of Bethlehem.

Fox Class

Over the term we have been busy working on a variety of aspects of math's including place value, addition and subtraction, fractions, multiplication and division and measures. As a class we have been using frog to help solve subtraction problems, thinking about pizzas for fractions and trying to use our existing knowledge to make links to support our next steps in learning.

Literacy in Fox Class During the Autumn term we have looked at a selection of books written by the author Michael Cole and compared the different styles that he uses. We also discovered that as well as writing he has also illustrated for authors such as Mi-chael Morpurgo. We have been working hard on our poetic style this term—starting with our obser-vational poems about the school grounds written at the start of the year and fin-ishing the term with acrostic poems about the Christmas Story for our dis-play. The children has also enjoyed learning about Fables and can now recognize their features and tell you the morals behind many of them. Each child in the class also worked really hard to produce their own version of a Fable and we have tales such as The Cheetah and the Sloth.

Paul Ullson—The Romans

This term we have been lucky enough to receive two visits from Paul Ullson. During our visits we have learnt about the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. In our first visit we were introduced to Ug the Stone Age Man and learnt about how he would of discovered fire, predators and means of survival. As a class we produced charcoal sketches of Stone Age artefacts and then produced our own versions of cave paintings. During our most recent visit from Paul Ullson we looked at how things changed during the Bronze and Iron Ages, how man became more settled and learnt new skills and ways to survive. Using pastels this time we created observational drawings of artefacts from this time and then created our own masks.

Numeracy Day

This term saw our second Numeracy Day—inviting parents to come in and work alongside their children during a maths lesson. In Fox class we taught our parents our odd one out game which explores the properties of numbers. There were a few slightly concerned parents when they were selected to choose a number for our game! We looked at the upcoming Multiplication check which the Year Fours will have to complete in the summer term and encourage ourselves and parents to keep practising all our tables up to 12 x 12. The main part of our lesson was exploring how we could solve the mathematical problem of a magic square. Can we also take this opportunity to thank all the parents who attended Numeracy Day—we all enjoyed sharing our maths with you.

Buzzard Class

This term Buzzard Class have been very busy learning all about The World in our geography topic ‘Around the World in 80 Days’. We have been following the journey Phileas Fogg made and learning about key geographical vocabulary, world geography and different biomes. A highlight for us was singing the names of all the countries to the tune of the ‘Mexican Hat Dance’! Next term we will be studying ‘Body, Mind and Spirit’.

Paul Ullson—Ancient Indus

For our history this term, Buzzard Class have been exploring the advancements of Ancient Indus—a civilisation, which existed 4 thousand years ago. Amongst their many achievements, we were most impressed with their flushing toilets! Paul Ullson came in and kick-started our learning. We designed our own seals, interviewed an archaeologist and then created our own version of Mohenjo-daro—one of the main cities.

Electric Art

As part of our science this term, Years 4, 5 and 6 have been investigating electricity. To support our art work as well, we have created art pieces which use electrical circuits to create an overall effect. The children had some very ingenious and creative ways to combine the art and circuitry, including wool and willow sculptures, papier mache shells and cardboard homes. We hope you enjoy looking at the photos below.

H a r v e s t F e s t i v a l

C h r i s t i n g l e M a k i n g

C h r i s t m a s S h o p p i n g A n d W r a p p i n g

A huge thank you to everyone who helped with the annual Christmas lunch. We had a fantastic time with cracker pulling, joke telling, lively singing and of course eating our yummy Christmas Dinner.

Postcards of Kindness

Pupils from Year R to Year 6 from Compton and Up Marden CE Primary

are participating in a national campaign to combat loneliness by

sharing stories and friendship across the Country.

Postcards of Kindness was created by Your Health Group – a care

home provider with ten homes across the UK. They set up a campaign

asking people to send their residents postcards and they have also

encouraged more care homes and care settings to get involved, with

now over 100 homes participating across the Country. “We want to

combat loneliness and isolation across the country and remind our

residents that there’s always somebody thinking of them, regardless of

where in the world the postcards have come from. Imagine being able

to travel the world alongside card writers while sharing their holiday

adventures; residents’ memories are stirred and imaginations piqued,”

they said.

Compton and Up Marden CE primary pupils have been busy writing

about their wonderful countryside setting, their School uniform, School

dinner and favourite lessons.

Pupil Terri-Jayne Dyssell (10) said “I am enjoying writing and posting

letter rather sending emails. Posting letters seems old fashioned but it

means we can enjoy writing to elderly people who don’t have mobile

devices and they can reply to us”

Chloe McClelland aged 10 said “This is such a good idea as the elderly

people know that they aren’t left out feeling lonely and we can show

them that there are people, like us, that still care.”

Cecily Ison aged 9 said “We have lots of assemblies on including

people and making them feel part of our Community. Sending the

cards will hopefully make residents feel part of our School community

– we can’t wait for replies even though they maybe 100 miles away!”

Headteacher, Mrs Claire Inskip said, the campaign links so well with

our vision and values. We are a church School and we care deeply

about others and their feelings. In this day and age we are used to

receiving instant replies to emails and text messages so going back to

writing letters and cards and having to check the post everyday for

replies is creating a real buzz around the School. We are mapping

where we receive our replies from so we are improving our Geography

as well!

~ News from The Friends ~

Well what can I say…we started the term by breaking our previous year’s

fundraising total for the cake sale. Then we finished the term by breaking

the previous total raised at the Christmas Shopping Day! This is just

incredible and shows the immense support from the whole school

community.

Our bake sale in September raised £134, of which £67 was donated to our

chosen charity this year, the Dementia Support Hub in Tangmere.

The annual film night in October was enjoyed by all a raised £123.

During December we have been busy with the Christmas Shopping Day

(approx. £450 raised), tea towels (total yet to be announced), jolly jam jar

day, Christmas cracker purchases for the Christmas dinner and providing

the upcoming mince pies and refreshments at the end of term service.

The Friends have also funded the saxophone lessons for Fox class this term.

We have on-going income from various sources…

Clothes bank – please keep filling it up with your unwanted

shoes/sheets/clothing (remember to bag items)!

If you are shopping online, please use www.smile.amazon.co.uk instead of

the usual Amazon site.

The School Lottery continues to be successful. Please register at

www.yourschoollottery.co.uk/play for a chance to win regular cash prizes!

In one term, with all of your support and help, The Friends have raised

nearly £800. I cannot thank everyone enough. The community spirit and

support from everyone at this school continues to surprise me even in my

fifth year with The Friends. Merry Christmas and thank you!

Emma Milne

Chair of The Friends

Dear Parents and Friends, As we come to the end of this term, we still do not know the decision that West Sussex County Council will make on the future direction of our school. We are sorry that this process has caused so much concern for all the school community. We expect to know the answer in early January, and we will of course communicate it as soon as possible. However, we do know that your fantastic response and support meant that out of the 1069 responses made to the process - 423 were for Compton. A whopping 40% of the total just for our school. Thank you. We know that you all wrote masses of supporting comments, letters, and replies. We also know that we had the best supported public meeting, with a great demonstration of why you send your children to this school and why we should continue to provide a unique, Christian education in this beautiful place.

We know that 87% of you supported no change. We know that 88% of replies agreed that we supply a high quality education at this school. We know that 92% of responses agreed that we are focused on the needs of our children. We also know that 88% of respondents agreed that we are financially viable. The Governing Body are incredibly grateful that you have trusted and supported us with the direction of our school. We assure you that we will continue to work toward providing the

best environment for our children in this community that we possibly can. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2020. The Governing Body of Compton & Up Marden CE Primary School