Dear Parents,

Welcome to our last Newsletter of the term, and what a busy term it has been! You can see from the pictures below just some of the fantastic learning that your children have been engaging in. When walking the school, it is amazing to see the breadth of the curriculum in action, I look forward to hearing the trumpets sessions that year 5 have every Thursday morning!

I was hoping to share the Ofsted Report with you before the end of term, but unfortunately it still hasn't been published, so I am not able to do so. As soon as I am able, I will send it home for you to read.

I have been very proud seeing the Christmas Performances this year, most children have not had the chance to perform in front of an audience for a couple of years and some children not at all. The confidence and enthusiasm they showed was amazing. Thank you so much to all the parents who joined us to watch a performance, I am sure you enjoyed them as much as we did.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the staff for their hard work and commitment this term. It has been tricky at times with staff absences, but they have pulled together as a team and made sure the children still got all the same opportunities and support.

A big thank you to the PTA for organising the Christmas Disco and for working hard all-day last Friday, making Christmas Craft with the children, and looking after Santa in his grotto!

School is closed from today and our Family Support Workers will be on their Christmas break too, so if you require any help for your family whilst we are closed, the following numbers may be of use:

Childline 0800 1111

https://www.childline.org.uk

NSPCC 24/7 helpline: 0808 800 5000

Surrey Children's Services 0300 4709100

Caterham Foodbank 01883 348385

The Samaritans 116123

The children are due back on Wednesday 5th January after the Christmas break. Thank you so much for all your support this term. I hope that you have a restful Christmas break with your families, stay safe and we look forward to seeing you all in 2022.

Denise Coady

Head of School

This half term we have been exploring the topic “Whizzpopping Wonders!”.

We started Autumn 2 with our experiences of fireworks and Bonfire night, using our senses to recall what we had seen, smelled and felt! We also extended our language by introducing new words to describe the noises, “exploding”, “screeching”, “fizzing” to name a few! We expressed our memories of the fireworks through drawing, painting, musical instruments and water play!

This led us onto exploring light and dark and night and day and we learned all about nocturnal animals| what are they? Where do they live? Had we seen any before? We shared our own experiences of day and night, taking about our routines for school and bedtime! The children were surprised to discover that their friends have very similar routines to them!

Our senses then led us onto exploring the weird and wacky weather we were having – ignited by a comment from one of the children, “I didn’t know if I should wear my winter hat or my sun hat Miss Bullman.” We used our senses to recall memories of different weather such as, “When it was snowing I had a hot chocolate. It made my tummy warm.” The children quickly became experts in packing for a snowy, sunny or rainy holiday!

We have finished the half term with Christmas celebrations, talking about our different traditions and also looking at traditions around the World. We’ve decorated a Christmas tree, put on our first performance for our families and shared an end of term Christmas dinner. What a busy half term it has been!

This half term, the children finished the story, we were learning through The Write Stuff and were all very proud of their final sentences. Everyone had a go, and they were fantastic! I can't wait for next term when we will be writing like this every day.

We then had a visit from Cooper the pet therapy dog. who performed some amazing tricks for us. The last few weeks have been all about the Christmas plays and the Christmas spirit with dressing up in Rudolf, Elf and Santa costumes.

I am so proud of everyone in Gruffalo Class and what they have already achieved this term. Bring on the Spring term!!

The children in Elmer class have done a brilliant job transitioning into Year 1 and we are all very proud of their hard work and achievements over the Autumn term.

During Autumn 1, our topic was Marvellous Me. The children were inspired by the works of a range of artists such as Kandinsky and Picasso. They learned all about portraits and used oil pastels and coloured paper to create their own unique self-portraits. For Science, the children learned all about their bodies, labelling body parts by drawing around each other and sticking labels on their friends.

Autumn 2, our topic was Let’s go on Holiday. We examined and compared the different weather types that we experience in the UK with that in Morocco. We then packed our suitcases for a holiday to Morocco and thought about how this differed to our suitcases packed for a trip to Lapland UK. We also learned all about the seasons and what the changes look like.

In English, we have been writing a poem about Firework Night. Children learnt how to use different types of verbs to describe the movement of fireworks and the reactions you might expect from spectators. Children then experienced a make believe ‘Snow day’ to help them to write their very own poem about Snow. They were encouraged to use their senses to describe what snow felt, looked and sounded like.

The children ended the term by blowing us all away with their fantastic Nativity Play performance. We are all so proud of how the children learnt all their lines and songs and how they were very brave standing In front of a large audience for the very first time! What a great show

The Year 1 team are very excited to see what the New Year and the new term will bring. We would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and look forward to working with you next year.

Y2 Paddington - AUTUMN TERM 2021

The children in Paddington Class have worked hard this term. We have been working on our writing skills and have produced some amazing pieces of work. In our writing lessons, we have created word banks and then used these word banks to help us write different types of sentences. We have written our own stories, instructions and we have written diaries too. We have extended our vocabulary knowledge through our daily word of the day sessions and some children have been using some of these words in their writing.

In Maths, we have been working on our knowledge of place value. We have explored how numbers can be represented in different ways. We have also practised our addition and subtraction skills. We have also been practising counting in 2s, 5s, and 10s and describing the patterns we notice.

In Science we have learnt about healthy and unhealthy food. We have also learnt about different food groups. We have discussed how we and other animals change as become grow older. Also, we have learnt about different animal habitats. We have investigated microhabitats that can be found in our school field and learnt how animals adapt to their environment.

In our topic work, we have described our local area and investigated different types of homes. We have described our own homes and identified the physical and human features near our homes. We have learnt about the Great Fire of London. We have learnt about why it happened and created a timeline of events. We have also created some lovely artwork and created fiery skies using pastels and other materials.

We have had a successful half term and we have worked so hard!

I hope you all have an amazing Christmas with family and friends and have a well-deserved rest.

What a half term it has been! We have been working incredibly hard.

Our topic this half term has been Interrailing. We have been learning all about Europe and its capital cities. We have conducted lots of research and identified famous human and physical features. We decided as a class to learn the traditional German song, O Tannenbaum for our Christmas performance.

We created beautiful poppy paintings for Remembrance Day and we have had a wonderfully noisy time playing glockenspiels, learning the names of musical notes and beginning to read sheet music.

We learned all about packaging in DT and were set our own design brief. We designed and created Christmas gift boxes to hold some delicious German biscuits. We learnt all about how nets work and had to think carefully about the material that we used. Then we decorated them in festive colours to fulfil our design brief and went about making the goodies!

Science has been so much fun! Learning all about the human body, what we need to nourish ourselves, the function of skeletons and then finally, we created moving arms with elastic bands to show how our muscles work.

It has been a very busy half term and whilst we are excited for the next half, it is time for a well-deserved rest.

Merry Christmas! x

What a fantastic term we have had in Year 4. During our Computing lessons, we have been planning our own podcast. We created the script ourselves and practised how to record our voice.

During our Art lessons, we have been focusing on Russia and focused on drawing St Basil's Cathedral. We could choose what materials we wanted to use: pencil, pastel or charcoal and the end results were fantastic!

Year 4 have been fantastic Scientists during the term. We have been exploring the topic ‘Electricity’ and made different circuits during our lessons. We identified conductors and insulators, as well as creating our very own switch out of paper and a paperclip.

Well done for all your hard work Year 4, have a wonderful Christmas break.

Here is a selection of vector drawings from our computing lesson over this term. In lesson 1 the children learnt how to make basic shapes and colour them in to make simple vector drawings and were set the challenge to make a house (Georgia).

Over the next couple of lessons the children worked on taking a premade vector drawing – a penguin - and adapting it using newly learnt skills such as changing outlines, duplicating shapes and zooming in to add more detail to make it into something new – a parrot (Oliver).

In the final lesson, children applied all the skills they had learnt to take a simple vector drawing and improve it. They were given a simple robot and added details (Miguel). These three pieces of work really show the progress the class made from the beginning of term to the end. It's been a busy but great term for Year 5!

Dragons

What a busy half term we've had in Dragons! Earlier in the half term, trips: to mark Armistice Day and lay our book of poems at the memorial in Kenley and to the local Library- where children got to explore and find out more about how to use the library. I was so proud of how Dragons behaved on both trips- showing the very best of Marden to everyone they met! And thanks to Samantha and the staff at the Library for welcoming us all there!

We've also been working so hard on following the values and building our teamwork for Dojo points, so children enjoyed clay model making- of their own choice! Some choosing to recreate things from our WW2 topic- like Teagen's awesome Spitfire. There were also tanks, a mushroom, a pineapple, some among us characters and so much more!

The creative things didn't stop there- so much design thinking and teamwork went into designing and building the Anderson shelters... Children showed they really understood their features and importance by the way they created their own models. We were planning to test their strength and durability with waterbombs... But they were too amazing to destroy!

The children have also been building their confidence and showing off their own skills in our "Guest Teacher" sessions... So far, Kian taught us some tips and tricks on Scratch and Jaydon has shared how to draw some cartoon characters! Such a pleasure to see them sharing their skills and the other children listening to and responding to them! Next terms sessions are already booked in- football tactics with Ben and colour effects in Art with Angel... Watch this space!

Finally, our term would not be complete without our furriest class member; Willow! The children have been learning to care for and handle her safely- including feeding and cleaning her out! They have shown great care and gentleness with her.

And just in case you were in any doubt... Dragons enjoyed their visit to Santa last week, and enjoyed keeping the magic alive throughout the day too!

I couldn't be any prouder of how hard Dragons are working, and the differences I can see in confidence and self belief makes me prouder each day, Your children are amazing! I'm looking forward to settling into January and building more English and maths skills, but in the meantime, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Mrs Kinner and I! See you in the new year,

Love, Miss Cushman🎄 😊

Poppins

Poppins have had such a busy term!

With ‘Beyond Enemy Lines’ being our topic, we have been able to have many World War Two related experiences and projects. Poppins have enjoyed learning all about the experiences of an evacuee child during our English and Topic lessons. We were lucky enough to trial the ‘Now Press Play’ headphone experience and immersed ourselves into 1939 for the morning!

Our DT project this term has been to design a ‘fit for purpose’ Anderson Shelter. The final projects were amazing. We had a rigorous planning process that identified Anderson Shelter's features and purposes which allowed our final masterpiece to be so realistic!

In Poppins class we have also been developing our skills of independence, responsibility and compassion. We have been learning and practising different life skills such as cooking, following instructions and self-organisation. We are also privileged to have Willow, our year group Hamster who is helping us to develop compassion, responsibility and turn taking skills.

Parent Workshop- The Breck Foundation

On Monday 13th December, there will be was an online presentation for parents from local charity, The Breck Foundation, to support families around the dangers of online grooming and to help parents educate and empower their children to make better decisions to stay safer online. If you missed the presentation, it is available here to watch back until Sunday 20th December. Thank you to all the parents who joined live.

We hope you find the video informative. If you are interested in finding out more, please see the following website. https://www.breckfoundation.org/about-us

Pupil Presentations

The children from Y1-6 enjoyed a presentation from The Breck Foundation on 7th December. They amazed us with their knowledge on the online world and listened well to how to keep safe online.

Both the parents talk and the pupil presentations were funded by donations given to The Breck Foundation and we are very grateful that we were able to have these at Marden Lodge, free of charge. Thank you to The Breck Foundation.

Thank you to Miss Roberts

A huge thank you to Miss Roberts, who works in Y4, for creating our new logo for our nursery- Little Lodge. We love the new logo and can't wait to start seeing it around school more and more.

Trusted Adults

One thing we often discuss with children at school is who are their trusted adults. This was something they were asked by The Breck Foundation who spoke to the children at the start of December. The children were asked to have their top 3 trusted adults in their head. See the resources here to have a similar discussion at home with your children.

Morning Drop Off

Our gate opens and 8:40am and closes at 8:50am. Lots of children are being dropped off late to school which then prevents the gate from closing at the correct time. Please can you make sure that your child arrives by 8:50am so that they can be in class ready to start learning as quickly as possible.

PE Kits

It has come to our attention that quite a few of our children are not wearing the correct school PE kit.

Please ensure that they are in the correct PE kit in the new year.

Please see below for the correct PE KIT:

• T-shirt in house colour

• Navy or Black Shorts / Navy or black tracksuit bottoms for outdoor PE

• Black or Navy zip up tracksuit top (for outdoor PE)

• Black plimsolls / trainers

If there are any issues, please contact us.

Reception Primary School Applications

Primary school admissions applications are open for parents to apply for a primary school (Year Reception) place for September 2022.

The statutory national closing date for applications is 15 January 2022. If you do not apply by this date then your application will be considered as late and will not be processed until after all on-time applications. This means your child will be less likely to receive a place in your preferred school.

The easiest way to apply is online, by visiting https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/schools-and-learning/schools/admissions/primary-junior-and-infant/apply

Nursery Places- Little Lodge

If you are interested in a nursery place for your child, please call Mrs Kirkpatrick at the school office for information.