“Shaping bright futures together”

Spring Term, 12th February 2021 in Lockdown

News from Mrs. Peacey

Here is the beautiful Ashton Tree of Happiness, now on display in the corridor in school, ready for when we all come back together and made with all the contributions of thoughts about what makes us happy from children in each class.

Well, we have made it to half term, I hope you are all looking forward to a good break away from your screens over the next week and hopefully when we come back there may be news as to when we can re-open the school. Next week the teachers will not be monitoring class emails as they need a break too.

I have some news to share with you, Mrs Stephenson has announced that she will be retiring from this August. This newsletter isn’t long enough to be able to say all I would like to about how lucky we have been to have Mrs Stephenson working in our school. Her energy, positivity and amazing ideas have inspired a whole generation of children in Ashton who have been exceptionally lucky to have been taught by her. She is a hugely valued member of staff who always keeps an eye on everyone’s wellbeing and we can’t begin to say how much we will miss her. We do however wish her well and really look forward to being able to have a wonderful party when restrictions allow to show her how much she has meant to all of us.

During half term, please get creative with an entry for the Art Competition, the poster with full details is attached to the newsletter. We can’t wait to see what you come up with and will put them all on show in the school. The closing date is 26th February so you have two weeks to get busy. Good luck. Here is a link to the poster: https://www.ashton.worcs.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/6.-Art-Competition-Final.pdf

Can you help school raise funds for much needed IT Equipment? Please take a look at the information here: https://www.ashton.worcs.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/6.-IT-Donation-Open-letter.pdf

Children were reminded this week how to keep safe when using the Internet. More information is available here: https://www.ashton.worcs.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/6.-Online-Safety-Newsletter-Feb-2021_Ashton-Under-Hill-First-School.pdf

COVID Update

Should your child receive a positive test at a weekend or

during the holidays

please ring or text 07709987018 and leave a message.

“Shaping bright futures together”

Well, what an exciting week it has been for Acorn Class!

You may well have seen the BBC news reporting about the

ongoing alien activity in and around Ashton under Hill. This

week the children discovered that the round silver object

left behind on the roof of the school by the departing alien

spaceship was in fact an alien egg which hatched on Tuesday

leaving a small, lonely and hungry alien at loose in the village.

Various passers-by spotted the alien and notified Mrs Brown

who then gave us clues about its appearance so we were able

to draw pictures and we made posters to let people know

what we were looking for. What excitement there was when,

early yesterday morning Mrs Barnett spotted the lonely alien

outside school and managed to take a few photos before it

disappeared. The children wrote lovely letters offering food,

shelter, love and friendship to the alien which was so kind. It

was with mixed feelings that we heard on this morning’s news

that the little alien had been rescued by his family but NASA

have thanked Acorn Class for the role they have played in

ensuring good interplanetary relationships.

For more photos of our Acorn adventures, please look at our class blog at

https://www.ashton.worcs.sch.uk/news/acorns-news/

ACORN C

LASS N

EW

S

This week in Acorn Class our theme has been ‘friendship’ and the

children have been busy thinking about how they can be a good

friend to others and have been carrying out lots of small acts of

kindness to brighten up other people’s lives. So, we have made

cards and pictures to send to friends and family and we are putting

together an animated collection of ‘cheer up ‘pictures to send to

local nursing homes. We have painted friendship pebbles, and

drawn chalk pavement pictures to brighten up the lives of passers-

by and have made some wonderful ‘recipes for friendship’ and

kindness trees.

In celebration of ‘Chinese New Year’ today, we have been learning about the celebration and enjoying

various linked activities including making lanterns and Chinese dragons, trying out

Mandarin writing and tasting Chinese food. We hope that this coming ‘Year of

the Ox’ will be very different to the outgoing ‘Year of the Rat’!

“Shaping bright futures together”

CLA

SS H

AW

THO

RN

N

EWS

Hawthorn children have been working very hard this week, whether at home or school, and we’re all ready for a well-deserved half term break.

In English, the children pretended to be a soldier injured in

the Crimea and wrote a letter to Florence Nightingale,

thanking her for her care and excellent nursing skills. To

top it off, they wrote out their letters in best handwriting

and had a go at making them look authentic with the aid of

a wet teabag! They achieved fantastic results, as can be

seen in this photo.

Y1s are now working on numbers to

50 and began the week by sorting

an amazing range of items into

groups of 10.

Y2s have continued their work on

statistics using tally charts,

pictograms and block diagrams to

represent their data.

And finally, we’ve been celebrating Chinese

New Year, finding out more about it every

day. Coincidentally, our greeting this week

was Ni Hao which means ‘hello’ in Cantonese.

The children had a range of arty-crafty

projects to have a go at, such as a fortune

teller, a folding dragon and Chinese Zodiac.

Welcome to the year of the Ox, one and all!

We’ve now come to the end of our Transport topic. Futuristic

vehicles have been designed and made from junk modelling and

evaluations completed. We’ll be setting up a special gallery on

the website where you can see the children’s amazing

creations. We also took time for an end of topic quiz via Google

Classrooms and were incredibly impressed by everything the

children have learnt. Well done, Team Hawthorn!

In science, Humpty Dumpty faced a big problem - he kept falling off the wall and having to be put back together again! The children’s challenge was to investigate the best material to wrap around him to protect him against breaking, but it also had to be comfortable to wear and not too heavy! Goodness, what a challenge! The children both in and out of school had a great time investigating, as the pictures show.

“Shaping bright futures together”

NEW

S F

ROM

OAK &

WILLOW

We cannot quite believe that we have come to the end of this extraordinary half term –

it feels like it has sped by, whilst at times, we have felt very frustrated that this

lockdown has continued to last for so long. We cannot express how thrilled we are with

the level of engagement and enthusiasm we have seen from the Key Stage 2 children

during this time. They have continued their learning with great resilience and produced

some fabulous pieces of work. We know a lot of this has been down to the support you

have provided them and we are very grateful, as we know at times how challenging it has

been for all involved!! We all deserve a well-earned break next week and both the Mrs

T’s will be avoiding any screen time – we hope you will do the same. We hope that the

children have plenty of opportunities to play and get lots of fresh air and find things to

entertain themselves. Even enduring a bit of boredom – it does them good to be bored

sometimes – that is how they learn to be resourceful!

We have had some excellent Google Meet experiences this week. Nearly all of Willow class have read to Mrs Tulley, and we have thoroughly enjoyed our meet ups; chatting about books, sharing stories and catching up on our news and keeping in touch. Willowers have also met up twice for story time where Mrs T has read to them and if only virtually, have shared some special time together as a class or year group. Oak have also experienced this via daily Google Meets with Mrs Thompson. In this time, they have shared their news together in morning and afternoon registration sessions. Also, these sessions have allowed them to read out parts of their English work or look at their volcanoes and have invaluable socialising opportunities with their class mates. We will continue to develop our use of these sessions over the next few weeks.

Maths this week has had a Money

focus for Year 3, they have been very

good at counting it, and knowing what

they can buy within a budget. Great

life skills being practiced. Year 4 have

learnt about perimeter and have been

busy counting squares and problem-

solving using lots of regular and

irregular shapes. Year 5 have been

reading and interpreting data in tables,

which has given them some good

opportunities to practice their

addition and subtractions skills as they

have been finding the difference and

comparing numbers.

“Shaping bright futures together”

Oak’s English work has been centred

around figurative language, learning

about oxymorons, metaphors, similes

and personification. All this will

contribute to helping them to continue

to improve the quality of the

sentences they write. Willow Class

have been using their grammar skills

from last week to help them create

adventure stories with clear

structure. They have produced some

very exciting and interesting stories

with twists at the end and have been

incredibly creative!

In PSHE our theme this week has been Chinese New Year and on Wednesday afternoon the children learnt all about this celebration and created some lovely work to reflect what they had learnt.

To help us to continue our Music lessons through Lockdown, we have had access

to YUMU which has allowed us to listen to and appraise different songs. The

children have had great fun over the past couple of weeks singing along to

different songs including Happy and Dancing in the Street. They do little tasks

to go with each song for example doing drawings inspired by the music or

reworking the lyrics.

“Shaping bright futures together”

more

NEW

S F

ROM

OAK &

WILLOW

We came to the end of our Geography topic this week with a ‘big make’! The volcanoes you produced were amazing all different shapes and sizes, some dormant and some very active! We really enjoyed sharing the children’s work and watching the videos you sent in of eruptions. Thank you very much for helping your child with this task and we hope they did not cause too much mess!! Enjoy this selection of your handy work:

We hope you have a relaxing break and take some time out away from any routines or screens.

We are very much looking forward to starting back next half term, with Mrs Clements back

on the team and beginning our new topic on Romans to keep those enquiring minds busy.

Look out for the invite to our ‘Back to School’ Google Meet Roman quiz at 9.15 on Monday

22nd February. We want to kick off the new half term with some fun and to see you all again!!

Our very own

Worcestershire Ring

of Fire!!