Oaks Primary Academy Newsletter

Message from Mrs Tipple

Good news week!

In these times when we have been, and to some extent still are, experiencing a lot of sad and difficult times it is great to be able to share exciting news.

I am delighted to be able to announce the arrival of William Mehigan on 3rd July. We are all thrilled for Mrs and Mrs Mehigan and send them congratulations and very best wishes on behalf of the academy community.

I am also delighted to be able to say that England have reached the finals of the Euros and will play Italy on Sunday night (in case you hadn't noticed!). Whether you are a football fan or not, it has certainly been a welcome opportunity to share an experience that can unite us for positive reasons and release the positive hormones of fun and enjoyment. I understand that we are all looking forward to celebrating on Sunday night irrespective of the final outcome. It is a Trust expectation that all pupils attend school on Monday as normal, so I am offering a gentle reminder to celebrate just enough for the children to be ready for school on Monday morning.

Thank you all for your continued support and have a great weekend.

Stars of the week for 2nd July 2021

Ducklings Update

Another exciting week for our Ducklings this week! The children have shown great interest and enthusiasm about pirates. We have been busy creating our very own pirate ship from large blocks and crates. The children enjoyed creating areas below deck where the pirates would eat and sleep. Additionally, children made their own treasure maps and telescopes to search for buried treasure... X marks the spot!

Friday 16th July - Princess and Pirate Fun!
Following the children's recent interest in pirates, the children have decided they would like to have a princess and pirate party. The children can wear a costume and bring a snack. More details to follow.

Reception Update

Robins class have continued our inquiry about how we can express ourselves and have made cup and string telephones and been exploring how a story is told in silent movies. The children absolutely loved watching the old fashioned silent movies and understanding the storyline without words. We spoke about how important it is to show the story with our facial expressions, body, gestures and props. We had a go at the game charades and the children had fun guessing what their friends were acting out. Next week we are going to make our own silent movies in groups.

Throughout 'discover and do' time the children have been making potions and recording their methods and ingredients, seeing how many sit ups they can do in 1 minute and controlling the bee bots.

Year 1 Update

This week Sparrows have continued to explore what it means to be creative and imaginative! They have inquired about this through cooking, forest school and science! Following on from our Kandinsky research we wanted to find out what would happen if we poured warm water on a circle made from bright coloured sweets. We discovered it created a beautiful rainbow made from a combination of warm and cool colours! We also transferred our creativity to cooking! We incorporated our knowledge of fractions and quarters to design and make our own healthy pizza! With some warm sunny spells we spent time outside looking at different types of nature. We used our fine motor skills to weave plants and other forms of natural materials to create an outdoor sensory board! We have had another wonderful week and are looking forward to finishing our inquiry on 'The Arts can Help Develop Creativity and Imagination'!

I hope you all enjoy your weekend! Hopefully 'it's coming home'!

Miss Clark and Mrs Smith

It's been another exciting week in Blackbirds Class! After researching, sending out surveys and having lots of discussions about our local area, we were very pleased to welcome Councillor Marion Ring into the class. The pupils asked her so many questions about what the Shepway area was like in the past and what the plans are for the future. She explained how excited she is for the regeneration project and the children were pleased to know that so many of their favourite shops and places to buy food will be staying!

Blackbirds Class are finishing their own Claude story this week and will be making into a book. Look out for the photos coming soon!

Year 3 Update

It has been a science filled fun week in Woodpeckers, we have been focusing on light and shadows. We discovered that the moon does not emit light, the sun light actually travels to the moon and it reflects back onto earth! This is why we can see the moon at night time, we found this really interesting! Following on from this, we wanted to learn more about shadows so we led an experiment to watch the position of shadows change over time. We discovered that the shadow was moving anticlockwise and in order for the shadow to return to its original position, it had to do a whole turn which is 360 degrees. We have been creating a new science display board and we cant wait till it is complete with all our hard work on.

Year 4 Update

by Ruby F, Lexi and Edward

In PE we have been learning to throw and catch a ball with our partners. When we are trying to catch the ball and throw it we have to think about a Nike tick (ask someone in Blue Jays class about this). We've been practicing a lot and throwing the ball high in the air and trying to set our position to catch it. After that we played traditional rounders, then we also did another kind of rounders. We played rounders with tennis balls and we threw over arm and under arm. At first our brains were very muddled but we persevered and were open-minded.

During our maths lessons we have been learning about symmetry and lines of symmetry. We have worked with horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines of symmetry. Horizontal lines go right to left, vertical goes up and down and diagonal lines go from corner to corner.

We have been also been learning about finding coordinates on a grid. To find a coordinate we go along the corridor and then up the stairs, it's a little thing you can say to help you work out the coordinate. We write the coordinates like this (4,7).

Year 5 Update

On Wednesday, Luna, Jayce, Mia, Som and Oisin had a meeting about a complex maths problem that had coloured circles and numbers inside. For example: the number one was a grey circle whereas two was an orange circle. As the numbers went on, they had lines in them such as number 4 which was an orange circle with a line down the middle. We all had a debate for about the problem for 10 minutes explaining our reasoning and we were being recorded to share our learning with others. As well as this, the person who recorded us (Bruce who works as a videographer for Leigh Academies Trust) said that we were brilliant and that we were like highly trained actors.

Last week, Year 5 had a fun experience when a science specialist from Cornwallis came to visit us and taught a science class for us. Year 5 is starting to adapt to learning about science more frequently. As we want to learn more about science, next week someone from NASA will attend our class whilst we design our own innovative inventions utilising recyclable materials.

In P.E we have been learning about the rules of netball. This is in preparation for September when we are going to have a netball tournament against other schools. We are also having football and basketball tournaments and can not wait to re-engage with this aspect of life in Primary School!

On 6th July, two former students of our school (Oaks Primary Academy) came. Right now they are over eighty years old and we think it is great that they got to enjoy coming back to the school they attended so long ago.Their names are Betty and Ken and we loved asking them about how the school had changed and what life was like in school during those times. We would love to welcome them both back soon!

Year 6 Update

by Lewis and Dallas

This week we have been given agency to continue to work on our own PYP Exhibition. For the past 5 weeks we have been working on this exhibition and putting lots of work and effort into gathering research, creating and completing surveys for others to complete as well as creating our own display board to show off our work. This week we have focused on creating fun and exciting titles. Some groups decided to make their titles in a 3D way and others made theirs look like graffiti.

Our PYP Exhibitions will go live on its own Google Sites next week - look out for the link in next week’s newsletter but for now, here is a sneak preview of a couple of the titles that we were working on.

When we went swimming, some of us were in the length pool and we had to practice swimming our front crawl for the whole way. If we got tired, we were able to roll on our back.

PE Update

We have had another busy week in PE. KS1 pupils have been taking agency in their PE lessons and enjoying choosing their activities which have incorporated all the skills they have learnt during the year. KS2 have been practising their striking skills with the traditional game of rounders which they have been really enjoying but finding it more complicated than it looks! Yr 6 worked really hard on Thursday during their swimming session preparing for their badges next week.

From September, please could we ask all KS1 pupils wear velcro-strap trainers if they are unable to tie their own laces. Unfortunately, staff do not have time to keep doing their laces up during the lesson. In KS2 part of the curriculum for pupils' independent learning is to be able to tie shoelaces, so please could their summer learning be to learn how to tie them.

National Online Safety

We are asking all parents and carers to register with National Online Safety for a wealth of information about the dangers and benefits of the online world and how to help your family to safe. Check out guidance about using Snapchat, WhatsApp, setting up parental controls and much, much more.

Please watch the following Online Safety videos here. You will need to set up an account but this only takes a few moments! Please let us know what you think of the site and the videos.

Pupil Employment - Reporters and Photographers

This week has been an exciting week. We had a second visit from Betty Taylor and Ken Curtis who attended Oaks Primary Academy during WW2. Please see below our reporters review the visit.

Yesterday, when Betty and Ken came to our school and they were teaching us about money and what happened when the air raid alarm went off. When Betty and Ken were young they used to have different money to the money that we have now. Ken and Betty showed us the money that they used to have and told us to be very careful with it because the money was very rare and valuable to them. Ok now to my favourite bit, let me tell you about the air raid. When Betty and Ken were in school there was a thing called an air raid alarm. When the air raid alarm went off Betty would go into the shelter and Ken would go home because Ken’s mum would pick him up because it was not safe for him at school still and staying in the shelter. Also Betty’s class had a tin called a survival kit. In the survival kit there was a bandage, plaster and two biscuits and that's about it.

Reporter - Lanah - Bluejays

Two people called Betty and Ken visited yesterday. We asked them some questions and some of the questions were:

Were the uniforms different? and the answer they gave was that they didn’t have uniforms. Was Oaks always called Oaks? No, at first it was called Mangravet School. Were the classrooms decorated like they are now? The answer was no. Does the playground look different? The answer was yes. We learnt that they had an air raid shelter under our school field. One thing they told us is that they didn't take a bag for their lunches as the children had to go home to eat lunch from 12 o’clock until 2 o’clock.

Reporter - Tyler - Bluejays

Not so long ago (on the sixth of July) we had a visit from two former students from Oaks Primary Academy. They were called Betty and Ken and they are actually brother and sister. Surprisingly to this day, both Ken and Betty are over eighty years old and it’s very amazing they got to visit their Primary school. At the time they visited we got to ask them questions about their days here at Oaks. The first question was “What did the school look like eighty years ago?" They said that it pretty much looks the same but there wasn’t as much decoration and furniture. The school car park was never there so it was basically filled with trees and wildlife. During the visit the most interesting fact they had told us about was about the field near the front entrance. It has a hump on it which actually used to be an underground bunker. But now you can’t see it and the entrance and exit was blocked of with cement meaning that its now its abandoned. Also when they were there, the war was still going on so they had to be very careful. A fun fact is that when the signal had gone on they had to hide in the bunker and wait until it stopped. When it stopped they got the day off. They didn’t have to wear school uniforms as they couldn’t afford it. In the middle of the visit, Betty and Ken had shown us what the coins looked like when they were younger. It was taped on a piece of card and it got shown around to all of us and it was very interesting to see. They were called half-crown, florin, shilling, sixpence, silver three pence, penny, halfpenny and farthing. There were also many other questions but there were too many to type up! At the end when they had left it was really sad since we had a good time learning about Ken and Betty’s younger years. But it was also nice so we would write about it.

Reporter - Luna - Kingfishers

Contributor - Finnley - Chaffinch

Photographer - Luna - Kingfishers

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Community Liaison Officer

Dear parents/carers,

A gentle reminder that you MUST call the school and report your child absent if they are not going to be in school which is option 1. If you require some advice on what to do if you are unsure if you should send your child in please call myself on option 4. If you are unable to speak to a member of staff then please leave a message and we will get back to you.

• If your child is going to be late please call the school before hand so we can arrange a member of staff to meet your child at the gate.

• If your child has a medical appointment please email your proof of appointment to office@oaksprimaryacademy.org.uk

Reminder about different Covid tests

If you or your child develops symptoms of Covid then you MUST book a PCR test - a lateral flow (LFD) test isn't sufficient if you think you/your child has symptoms. Remember that the symptoms are:

• a high temperature – this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature)

• a new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual)

• a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste – this means you've noticed you cannot smell or taste anything, or things smell or taste different to normal

Lateral flow tests are used for people who DO NOT have symptoms as a way of identifying people who may be carrying the virus but aren't actually showing symptoms themselves. All households are recommended to take part in lateral flow testing twice a week to help stop the spread of Covid-19.

Have a lovely weekend.

Kind regards

Mrs Osborne

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