Whole school attendance this week: 94.6%

Overall attendance so far this year: 95.6%

Every day counts! All classes begin learning activities as soon as the children arrive at 8:40am. 

All absences must be reported to the school either by leaving an absence message (Option 1) or emailing Mrs Redman (Pastoral Support/Attendance Lead) via absence@greatgaddesden.herts.sch.uk

Please note: in line with the statutory guidance from the Department for Education which is reflected in our attendance policy, we are unable to authorise term time holiday.

Guidance: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance 

Thank you for your support and understanding.

This week, we have continued to explore our value of the month 'responsibility'.  We explored the story of Creation and were inspired by the Bible quote below:

Following this, our Big Question of the week has been 'How will you look after God's creation?'

At our Macmillan Coffee Morning this morning, Jess, Joey and Amorie shared a prayer.

This week we hear from Year 1 & 2.

All of the children have settled into the classroom brilliantly and we are particularly proud of our Year 1 children who have managed the transition from Early Years with confidence.

In R.E, our big question is “Why do Jewish families talk about repentance at New Year?”

This week, we listened to the story of ‘Jonah and the Whale’ and thought about how Jonah shows repentance and how God shows forgiveness. We then looked at a picture depicting the story by John Freeman and recreated this using watercolours. The children particularly enjoyed this creative activity!

In English, we have been reading the story ‘The Journey Home’ by Frann Preston-Gannon. The children have been interested in learning about endangered animals and have written their own version of the story, featuring their choice of endangered animals. We will continue to think about how we can protect these animals and write persuasively to encourage others to do so. After completing our stories, we tried our hand at origami and used the construction bricks to create some boats for the animals to escape in. Can you make a boat out of any other materials at home? 

An abundance of conkers and natural Autumn objects has helped us with our maths learning this week on place value. The children have enjoyed finding amounts that are ‘greater than’, ‘less than’ or ‘equal to’, ordering numbers to 20 and challenging their friends to find the missing numbers. Our Year 2s have broken numbers down into 10s and 1s and practised writing numbers correctly in words. Becoming fluent with the numbers to 20 helps our understanding of using numbers to 100 and beyond. Please keep practising counting forwards and backwards at home and talking about the patterns you see as you count.

On Wednesday, Year 5 and 6 visited the woods and there was definitely an autumnal feel in the air!  They ventured up to the woodland and began the afternoon playing some strategy games.  They then spent some time collecting resources to use when designing and making clay faces on the trees. 

Mrs De (our Forest School Practitioner) has introduced a forest school award for each session. This week, Pheobe was given this award for her teamwork, cooperation as well as being kind and helpful.

This year, we are sharing our offering with DENS (local food bank in Hemel Hempstead).

Below is the high needs list from DENS. Thank you in advance for your support and generosity.