You can follow us ...….. Newsletter No: 2

Friday, 15th September, 2017

CoMPasS

Registered Charity No: 1141329

Although this is only the second week of term so much has happened at Clifton already!

The children chose the school charity, the atrium was filled with home grown produce for

The Great Clifton Glut, our co-curricular activities got underway and we held three

Parent Information Evenings.

Many thanks to the parents who attended the Parent Information Evenings this week.

They were an opportunity for you to find more about what your children are getting up to

in school and asking any questions you may have had. If you have any further questions

then please don’t hesitate to contact your child’s class teacher or alternatively you can pop

in and see either Mrs Clarke or myself. Our door is always open. We would like to run

some parent workshops throughout the year and we would welcome your suggestions as

to which topics may be of interest to you. Please let either myself or Mrs Clarke know if

there is a curriculum area that would be of particular value for you to know more about.

On Tuesday we had our Clifton Friends AGM. A report of the year was shared by the

outgoing Chair Mrs Keyes and the treasurer Mrs Dib-Bennett, and there was a discussion

about how the group can move forward in the future. There will be a meeting on

Thursday 21st September at drop off to discuss Clifton School Friends. I would be very

grateful if you could please spare a short time to help shape the future of this important

area of school. The purpose of the Clifton Friends is to organise social events for parents

across all year groups, social events for children and also events for the whole school

community. They work with the School Council to raise funds for our School charity and

for special activities for the children. My thanks to Mrs Keyes, Mrs Dib-Bennett, Mrs Glyn

-Mills and Mrs Ingham and all the committee for their hard work last year.

This morning there was a parent’s café in the dining room which was attended by over 50

people. This provided a lovely opportunity for parents to pop in for a chat and a coffee.

My thanks to all those who attended and helped run the café, especially to Mrs Rigby for

organising this event.

As you may know each Friday we hold a special celebration assembly. This term we

changed the format from the Superstar Award to a Learning Superhero Award and the

Good Conduct Award to a Value Champion Award. The Learning Superhero Award is

given to children who have been learning using some of their learning superpowers

(resilience, resourcefulness, reflection and collaboration) which are demonstrated through

our Learning Superheroes. A child from each class is chosen and their teacher talks about

their learning in our assembly, as well as showing their work. You can see all of their

wonderful work on the Learning Superhero board in the atrium. We want our children to

value the process of learning, understand how to learn and to develop positive attitudes to

learning. Our Value Champion Award is given to a child in each class who has

demonstrated our school values and it is always special to hear the children’s teachers

describe examples of friendship, wisdom, compassion, humility, trust, endurance and hope.

Posters showing our school values are displayed all around school to remind us all to be

guided by these values in our school community and beyond school too.

Next week promises to be just as busy!

I hope that you have a lovely weekend.

Best wishes

DIARY FOR WEEK COMMENCING

18th September:

Mon Year 1 Dogs Trust visit School

Y3 Ukueles Club (lunchtime)

Y1 Netball Skills

Y2/3 Tennis

Y2/3 Chess

Y3 Tag Rugby

Y3 Netball

Y2 Speech & Drama

Tues

Y2/3 Choir (lunchtime)

Y1 Speech & Drama

Y1/2/3 Ballet

Y2/3 Karate

Y1/2 Creative Crafts

Y2/3 Chess

Y2 Netball

Y3 Swim Club

Wed

Rec/Y1 Yoga Bunnies (lunchtime)

Rec Speech & Drama

Y1/2 Sign Language

Y2/3 Yoga

Y3 Sewing Club

Y2 Art Club

Y3 Recorders

Thurs

Year 1 Pets at Home visit

Rec Arts & Crafts

Y1 Street Dance

Y1 iPad Club

Y2 Tag Rugby

Y2/3 Creative Film Club

Y3 Hockey Club

Y2/3 Book Club

Y3 Speech & Drama

Y3 Badminton Club

Year 3 Sports Workshop POSTPONED by Hill House School

Fri Y1 Football

Y2 Sport

Y3 IT Club

On Monday The Great Clifton Glut opened. During the week lots of superb home

grown produce appeared including potatoes, damsons, beetroot, beans,

courgettes and spring onions. The children really enjoyed looking at all of the

fruit and vegetables and choosing some to take home with their parents. We

hope you enjoyed turning these home grown treasures into delicious meals for

your family. A big thank you to all of our parents who were able to share

produce from your gardens. Please feel free to help yourself to the remaining

produce.

If this has inspired you to do some gardening with your children there are lots of

ideas here:

https://www.rhs.org.uk/education-learning/gardening-children-schools/family-

activities/grow-it

This week in 2M we have been testing our map

skills and looking at where the Vikings came from!

We explored on google maps and used the atlas on

the iPads to trace their steps before heading out to investigate

how the Viking’s travelled into York. Did you know that they

invaded York when it was raining as people would have been

inside sheltering and so therefore would not have seen them

coming? We ended up at our school boat house next to the River Ouse where we met a

frightening (frighteningly nice!) policeman by the name of Harold Bloodaxe..we think he may have

been a Viking in disguise as he had a bushy beard to match his Viking name!

Glifton Glut leeks and

potatoes being used for a

Mary Berry sausage

recipe

The Oxleys

Chicken on a bed of tasty lentils

and leeks

Stuffed Courgettes

The Normans

On Wednesday we held our annual Charity Assembly. Some of our Year 3 children chose to tell the

school about each charity. The Year 3’s did a fabulous job telling us about three charities; The British

Heart Foundation, The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and Water Aid. They spoke very convincingly about

each charity and shared their fund raising ideas. Each child then voted for one charity and Mr Hardy

announced the winner at our Learning Superhero Assembly.

This year our school charity will be Water Aid.

We can’t wait to get started organising exciting events to raise lots of money to bring clean water to

people all over the world.

This week in 1T we have taken our collaborative and maths learning outside. The children have been working together to make straw and brick houses that will be strong enough to withstand the wolf's huffing and puffing. Down at Forest School we have also been continuing the team work theme and having a competition to see how many of us we can fit on one tree stump. We also did maths challenges down there, with different groups collecting 10 of one object or making tally charts and

bar charts of things we found. In the back playground we used the giant Lego to make an enormous bar chart

sorting it by colour. We found it was easier to count the Lego if we stacked the blocks in columns of ten and then counted in 10s instead of 1s, tricky stuff. Great team work!

VALUE CHAMPIONS

Alexander, Bo, Henry, Elizabeth and Viktoria, Perim, Joy Elise, Sam and Zac

HOUSE POINT TROPHY

WALMGATE

LEARNING SUPERHEROES

Jinyi, Josh, Rossi, Edward, Oliver, Mattie,

Loveday, Srija, Noah, Molly and George

CORE 5 CERTIFICATES

Oliver, Rossi, Holly, Alexander, Alex, Loki, Jack and Emily

MUSIC AWARDS

Charles and Maddie

Headlice – Year 2

Please be aware that we have had a case of headlice in Year 2. Please check

your child’s hair and treat if necessary.

It was really great to see so many children at Playgroup on Thursday, your seaside pictures are great and reminded me how much I LOVE the beach!! I loved your singing too with Mrs Hayden!! I hope to see you all next week. Just a reminder to the parents and carers coming to playgroup to PLEASE sign in at reception and to sign out before you leave the building, many thanks. Mrs Deri-Clark

Josh, Rossi and Scarlett

Hettie and Thomas

This week Year 3 have had a

'hoot' learning all about owls!

The children visited Eeylops Owl Emporium to choose their owls. They then carried out their own research and became owl experts, creating little owl fact

booklets!

Then…after discovering that our owl visitors from last week had left us a little present…in the form of a pellet, we decided to cut it open to find out what

the owls had been eating!

We found lots of fur and a few bones! This told us that Owls are carnivores and the

children then created their own owl food chains.

On Tuesday we had our first session down at Forest School and we were so impressed with how well the children worked collaboratively making bird feeders and owl leaf art. A few children even made their own glue pots out of

conker shells!

In Maths this week we have been investigating magical numbers and place value. We have been making numbers in lots of different ways and have begun to work with larger 3 and 4 digit

numbers!

.

The Nursery children had a fantastic week, the highlight being our visit to ‘Forest School’.

We had snack in the forest, explored the horse chestnut trees that were dropping conkers all around us and used natural materials that we found to make faces. We enjoyed a retell of the story ‘The Gruffalo’, before returning

to school for lunch.

RB started learning phonics this week and

have found sounds everywhere! We practised writing

ssssssss in the sssand with sttticks, ttttook

ttttuurns making ttttt on the ttttarmac

ttttennis court, found aaaaaaples on our

maaaaagic ttttttree, did ppppotato pppprinting

and ppppprepared ppppppop-cakes just

like in the story! Phew, what a busy week!

2H have been making

themselves into Vikings, ready to

put into the Viking longship,

going on our display board. We

looked at the clothes the Vikings

would have worn and the

helmets too. We know that

some ‘facts’ are not

true….Vikings did NOT wear

helmets with horns!

We have also looked at maps of

York and been to find the river,

where the Vikings arrived when

they invaded and have written

about the reasons why they

chose to invade this city.

The Land of Dreams!

RS have reached the clouds…! This week we climbed through

the clouds into the ‘Land of dreams’. After starting the week

off with a question – ‘what would your land be?’ we discovered

everyone has their own fantasy ideas! During the week we

used different materials and techniques to create different cloud effects; from

bubble wrap to balloons art, bin bags and pillows! Science was also necessary

when we made candy floss clouds! The children

observed as sugar dissolved and changed, only to

create delicious fluffy clouds of candy. It

would seem that journeying through the

clouds has been an experiential week!

Co-curricular active clubs got off to a flying start this week. Great fun was had by all!

Tickets are now available for the St Peter’s School Christmas Term Public Lectures.

Dr Peter Wothers: Gods, Devils and Alcohol Wednesday 27 September 7pm

This lecture, based around a humble bottle of shampoo, will decode the language of chemistry, delving into some of mankind’s most remarkable ideas and achievements, from astrology to zoology. Book your free tickets here.

Randall Munroe: Thing Explainer

Tuesday 3 October 7pm

Abandoning scientific jargon in favour of simple words and entertaining sketches, Munroe explains how things we use

every day function, from microwaves and bridges to tectonic plates and our own bodies. Book your free tickets here.

Professor Geriant F. Lewis and Dr Luke A. Barnes: A Fortunate Universe

Thursday 12 October 7pm

If the Universe had been forged with even slightly different properties, life as we know it would be impossible. This

lecture explores our understanding of the Universe, from its most basic particles to its grandest planets. Book your free

tickets here.

Professor Keith Ward: The Christian Idea of God Tuesday 17 October 7pm Eminent theologian Professor Keith Ward takes a fresh look at the ancient philosophy of Idealism and shows that a combination of good science, good philosophy, and a passion for truth can underpin religious faith. Book your free tickets here.

Professor Anil Seth: What in the World is Consciousness?

Wednesday 8 November 7pm

Without consciousness there is no world, no self: nothing at all. Understanding its material and biological basis is now one

of modern science’s greatest challenges. Book your free tickets here.

Barbara Taylor Bradford in conversation

Monday 27 November 7pm

Leeds-born Barbara Taylor Bradford is something of a Yorkshire legend. With her books having sold nearly 100 million

copies, she will be talking about her life, her work and her new novel, Secrets of Cavendon. Book your free tickets here.

Terry Waite: Survival in Solitude

Wednesday 6 December 7pm

Terry Waite was taken hostage in Lebanon in 1987 and held in solitary confinement for 1,763 days. Following his release

in 1991, Terry has gone on to write a number of books and take up presidency of two major charities. Book your free

tickets here.

Science Society Christmas Lecture

Tuesday 12 December 7pm The St Peter’s Science staff return for their hugely popular annual lecture, featuring fascinating insights, interactive

challenges and dynamic demonstrations, this year focusing on the periodic table. Book your free tickets here.

If you have any access requirements, are hard of hearing or have any other special requests, please book your tickets using Eventbrite, then

email events@stpetersyork.org.uk or call 01904 527 315, stating which event(s) you are attending and how many tickets you have booked.

Please note that many of our events sell out, and you must bring your ticket with you to guarantee entry. Please either print off your ticket

or display it to us on your smartphone or tablet on the evening. With all best wishes, Ben Fuller, Head of Public Lectures, St Peter’s School,

York, YO30 6AB