grafton

This term, the children have been learning about the topic ‘Superheroes’. We have looked and listened to different superheroes' songs and stories such as ‘Let’s Be Superheroes’ and ‘Pete the supercat’. The children have been developing their language and communication skills through sensory stories and experiences, for example, dressing up as superheroes. We enjoyed a variety of sensory activities, for instance melting frozen superheroes and a superhero wash involving lots of water and bubbles.

We have been developing our number knowledge through a variety of sensory number songs. We have really enjoyed songs such as ‘ 5 Currant Buns’ and ‘5 Little Men in a Flying Saucer’.  We have been working on matching amounts and 1:1 correspondence. 

The children have been developing their fine motor skills through a variety of activities such as button threading, dough disco and spaghetti snip. They have enjoyed a wide range of creative tasks, for example, potato stamping and making superhero capes. The children have used a range of materials, such as sponges, paint and feathers.

The children had their end of year celebration and loved the different carnival activities set up such as the bouncy castle and ball pit. This provided the children with the opportunity to celebrate the end of year with their families. 

This half term the topic in the Nest has been ‘At the seaside and under the sea’.  We have read the following stories: What the Ladybird Heard, We’re Going on a Treasure Hunt, Rainbow Fish and Pip and Posy at the Seaside.  These were delivered as sensory stories enabling the children to immerse themselves fully and have a greater understanding of the text.  

The children have enjoyed creating their own sea aquarium and Rainbow Fish collages, demonstrating good attention to detail when placing the water and sand in the correct places on their paper plates.  We have concentrated on strengthening the children’s fine motor skills by carrying out activities such as cutting by creating a jellyfish and threading sea creature pictures.

Throughout this half term, the children have enjoyed participating in music lessons where they have demonstrated their understanding of beats and rhythm using the beat sticks and learning to pause when using the egg shakers. 

The Nursery children have been busy taking part in lots of exciting activities this half term. In Literacy, we have been reading the book Oliver's Vegetables and making a list of the vegetables. In maths, we used the vegetables to make repeating patterns. 

They thoroughly enjoyed the festival to celebrate the end of term and to say goodbye to Nicola and Jo as they will be leaving the school this summer. 

Well done to all of the children who took part in our sports day, the children thoroughly enjoyed it and they all tried their best. 

I think you would agree that the children looked fantastic in their graduation gowns and they all looked very grown up and ready for their new Reception classes, we are very proud of the children and how they have grown in confidence this year. We would like to thank our parents/carers for their continued support and we hope you have a restful Summer holiday and look forward to seeing you in September. 

The end of the year has been incredibly busy for the Year 6 children. We have been lucky enough to attend several trips recently and had lots of activities taking place in school.

At the start of the term, the children all attended a knife crime workshop in Barking led by the Ben Kinsella Foundation. The children were taught about the importance of staying safe, especially when moving to secondary school, and learnt the dangers of knife crime using real life examples.

After this, some children were lucky enough to take part in the MoneyWise Maths Challenge at the ExCel Centre in London. The challenge involved 3 rounds of tasks all about taxes, inflation and debt. The children did brilliantly and ended up finishing the challenge in 17th position out of 140 schools!

A few weeks ago, some of the children in year 6 attended their end of year residential at Stubbers Activity Centre. They took part in a range of activities including: paddle boarding, raft building, rock climbing and laser tag. Over the three days and two nights the children were at Stubbers, they were a credit to the school and had a fantastic time.

The children who stayed at school also had some fun activities whilst the others were away. They took part in their very own fashion show using clothes made out of recycled materials! As well as this, the children were able to do some cooking and made some delicious cornflake cakes!

On the last Monday of term, the children attended Clacton Pier as their final trip in Primary School. They went on a range of rides and got to explore the pier with their friends- eating lots of sweets in the process! It was a fantastic day and a real joy to see the happiness on all of the children’s faces.

Finally, as a send off to the children, we held our Graftonbury Festival after school in the playground. There were inflatables, pizza, cakes and lots of dancing. The children have worked incredibly hard this year and it was amazing to see them relaxing and having a good time with their friends. 

As their time in year 6, and Primary School, has come to an end, we would all like to say a massive well done to all the children. They have been a brilliant year group to teach this year and we wish them all the best in the future.

The Year 6 Team

As well as providing a language rich literacy curriculum, at Grafton we're always looking for wider opportunities to develop our literacy skills. This year has seen some amazing work from our children.

Starting back in October,  children entered our poetry competition writing poems about home, shelter and refuge. Entries from EYFS up to Year 6 were really impressive, expressing personal views of what makes home so special to them.  Here are the winning entries receiving their poetry book prize. 

Earlier this term, Grafton pupils took part in another poetry competition.  This time, children in EYFS & KS1 were challenged to write an acrostic monster poem; children in KS2 wrote poems on the theme of 'Dreams'.  

In one week, over 150 entries were received and the standard was exceptional!  A huge thank you to all the parents and carers who supported the pupils and, of course, to the pupils themselves, for their wonderful entries.

Seeing an opportunity to link reading and writing skills with science, our Y5 children took part in the We Wonder: Journey Into Space challenge run by the National Literacy Trust. Children were challenged to submit a design and explanation of their own rocket. Mustafa, from 5 Maple, received a special mention for his amazing rocket (and a space book prize). Commenting on his entry, the judges said, Mustafa's model rocket was incredible; we loved the creative approach that he had taken with the challenge and the written details included on the rocket.  Well done to all those who entered the competition. 

We look forward to seeing what the next year brings, developing literacy skills in meaningful ways across the curriculum. 

This year for Black History Month, EYFS learnt about Black culture, while the rest of the school celebrated black women including Floella Benjamin, Wangari Maathai, Beverly Knight, Malorie Blackman, Dr Shirley Thompson and Nicola Adams.

Year 2 had a fascinating workshop on ‘The Power of Hair’ with Dr Leema where they learnt about different types of hair and its purpose. Dr Leema signed copies of two of her books for the school library. 

In April we celebrated St George’s Day by wearing red and white and learning about the life of St. George.

With the help of the PTA,  we held an after school celebration for Eid al-Adha. It was fantastic to see so many parents and children come to join us to celebrate and we look forward to celebrating more festivals in the new school year.

We have worked very hard to make sure Grafton is a more Eco-friendly school this year. We are aiming to get the Green Flag by the end of the year which means that we help with environmental issues and are making the school a greener place.

We have done this by helping clean up our school. We have monitors who help clean up our playground every week. We also have small compost bins and every class uses them to put their fruit in. Every week we collect them and put them in the large compost bin outside.

This doesn’t stop outside school though, we also helped collect all the rubbish from Valence Park for the Great British Spring Clean. We love working with our local community too, we collected thousands of bags for the Big Plastic Count, which we then recycled. This showed us just how much plastic we use every day and why we should cut down.

We also aspire to be more energy efficient. We even put some advice on the school website to help others. The Year 5 and 6 Rights Ambassadors also created an Eco-Code which shows some small everyday things that we can do to make our school and our lives more environmentally friendly.