THEECHO ECHO ECHO
Spring 2014 Edition
YEAR 6 TRIUMPH ONCE AGAIN! It is with much pride that we publish our Year 6 examination results for 2014. As ever, the children all acquitted themselves beautifully, and without exception proved that they have engaged with our theme of ‘commit to excellence’. Matching children to the secondary school which will enable them to thrive is something upon which we place great importance and it is always especially pleasing when schools
recognize all that our pupils have to offer. Their talents lie not only in the classroom, but also on the stage or on the sports field. Further, the St Margaret’s children are confident, resilient and prepared to have a go at anything, harnessing the ‘can do’ attitude that will help them to make the most of every life experience and opportunity. We send thanks and many congratulations to Year 6 and the staff on all they have achieved.
Artie Beaudesert Park Archie Dauntsey’s School Ava Dauntsey’s School Benjamin Dauntsey’s School Ciaran Dauntsey’s School Ella Dauntsey’s School Matilda Dauntsey’s School Murran Dauntsey’s School Nadim Dauntsey’s School Raffy Dauntsey’s School Thomas G Dauntsey’s School Thomas W Dauntsey’s School Alexandra Downe House Nicholas King Edward’s School Sean King Edward’s School Ossie Packwood Haugh
Maisie Prior Park College Academic Scholarship All-Round Scholarship Duncan St Augustine’s Catholic College Day Abbie St Mary’s, Calne Day Annabel St Mary’s, Calne Academic Scholarship South Wilts Grammar Day The Royal High School Academic Scholarship Belinda St Mary’s, Calne Maths Exhibition Isabella St Mary’s, Calne Day Katherine St Mary’s, Calne Drama Scholarship Molly St Mary’s, Calne Day Rebecca St Mary’s, Calne Day Fiona The Royal High School Day Nina The Royal High School Day Jacob Warminster School Day Lily Westonbirt Performing Arts Scholarship
Boarding Day Academic Scholarship Music Scholarship Day Day Day Day Day Academic Scholarship Day Day Day Boarding Sport Scholarship Day Boarding
Welcome to the Spring 2014 Edition of The Echo What an extraordinary term we have all enjoyed! Notwithstanding the children’s successes as ever, the highlight for the entire school community must surely have been the opening of our much awaited Library and related facilities! This time last year we were looking forward to the start of the building project, now it is hardly possible to imagine St Margaret’s without our wonderful ICT Suite and inspirational Library. In recent weeks, to see so many children curled up with a book of their choice has made it well worth waiting for, and we are
already starting to recognise those who have made significant progress through our new Accelerated Reader programme. As ever, the children and staff have worked extremely hard throughout the term and the results of their endeavours, many of which are recorded within the following pages, are remarkable. I hope you enjoy reading this edition of The Echo and I send children, staff, parents and friends my good wishes for a peaceful Easter holiday.
www.stmargaretsprep.org.uk Reception KC Get All Mixed Up!
Maths Investigations in 6W
The Reception KC children have had fun exploring colour-mixing this term and have learnt about primary and secondary colours. They were fascinated with making observations of all of the different colours in the rainbow and tried hard to predict which secondary colour would be created when they combined primary colours. They also tried to guess which primary colours they would need to make a given secondary colour. The children experimented and recorded their findings by creating their own colour sentences! Reception KC then rose to the challenge of colour-mixing for a purpose - the children worked collaboratively to colour-mix paints to represent different settings for The Bear Hunt. The snowstorm was tricky!
The children in 6W have recently enjoyed investigating mathematical problems and trying to find patterns. They had to demonstrate their organisational skills in agreeing a structured approach; they then recorded results in a logical manner and used this data to predict what their next results would be. Some children were then able to use algebra to express the patterns more generally. Who said maths wasn’t fun?!
5B Learn Water Survival In their swimming lessons this term, 5B have been focusing on water safety and survival skills. The children learnt about safe entry into the water, surface dives feet first and head first to retrieve objects from the bottom of the pool, they also practised treading water. Everyone’s stamina certainly improved as they gradually increased the time they were treading water, from one, to two, to three minutes. However, the most exciting lesson was definitely the one where the children wore their pyjamas in the swimming lesson! They had to swim a length in their clothes, experiencing the difficulty of swimming whilst the clothes became heavier and more cumbersome. The children then took off their pyjama trousers, tied knots in the ends and blew them up to make floats. Some children were then able to float for the length of the pool resting on their ‘cushions’! Finally, 5B made a group huddle, focusing on keeping one another afloat and keeping warm whilst waiting for ‘help’ to come!
Church Detectives in 3R The children in 3R have been studying Christian Holy buildings and the features of Anglican and Catholic churches. After looking at resources in the classroom, they were lucky enough to be able to visit St Mary’s Church in Calne with Father Jonathan and Father Bob, in order to bring the subject to life. Everyone had to be detectives and find all the features of the Church that they had seen in books. They were amazed at the size of the organ and loved spotting the St Margaret’s Lily within a stained glass window. The children asked lots of questions and all came back to school buzzing with information; they then created a wonderful display with all their ideas.
4B Travel to India! During the Spring Term the 4B children have been learning all about the village of Chembakolli in India. The first task was to work out how to get to India from Calne (with the added challenge of not using an aeroplane!). The children then focused on Chembakolli, a small village in the southern hills and forests of Tamil Nadu. It soon became apparent that life is very different there and that many children wake up at 5.30am in order to make a start on jobs around the house. This might include starting the fire, or walking up to ten miles to collect water from a well! Chembakolli is a special place where religion, music, dancing and a sense of community are very much a part of the culture. The children designed posters to inform each other about the sorts of activities that go on there. 4B also learnt a song from the Sing Up website called ‘Allah Hoo’ which they performed at the end of their class assembly.
The Great 5C Bake Off As part of their Design & Technology studies on ‘Bread’, the Year 5 children were extremely lucky to be visited by local chef, Peter Vaughan. Over a four week period Peter covered a wide range of topics beginning with an investigation on the sound, texture and taste of bread. Initially, the children watched a demonstration of soda bread being made and then in the second week they made their own. They had to follow instructions carefully and use their maths skills when adding the flour. After deciding when to take the dough out of the bowl everyone had to shape and decorate their bread and decided when it was baked. Next the class made bread using special flour called Korasathan Flour. As well as learning that yeast is a living organism that produces carbon dioxide, which in turn produces the air bubbles in bread, they learned how to knead bread properly so that the gluten was stretched. Week 4 saw the children making their own spelt flour loaves. They chose their own toppings and flavourings from a selection provided by Peter.
Reception HC Explore Gymnastics! The Reception children have been really busy learning new skills in gymnastics this term. They have been exploring different ways of travelling, balancing, rolling and jumping. The children have been learning to work in small groups and worked with a partner to explore balancing in a pair. They have also been building up a simple sequence to perform on the equipment, remembering to show off their starting and finishing positions. They spent a long time practising their routines and even used the flip camera to record each other. Everyone watched the videos back in the classroom and picked out their favourite routine.
The loaves all looked and tasted fantastic! The children have continued to bake even after Peter’s lessons finished; everyone has made their own loaves following their individual designs. Experiments with flavourings and shapes meant that the final loaves all looked very different but everyone agreed that they tasted delicious!
Dressing Up in Kindergarten! Following the opening of the St Margaret’s Library, the children in Kindergarten have been exploring a range of new books. They have enjoyed both listening to stories during ‘storytime’ and also trying to act some out. The children created a stage area in the classroom where they could put on their own shows and have had great fun acting and being part of an audience. Here you can see some of the children’s favourite characters!
THEECHO ECHO ECHO SPRING 2014 EDITION
Victorian Life for Year 1 Year 1 had great fun visiting Lydiard House this term as part of their work about Houses and Homes. They learnt through first-hand experience what Victorian life was like. The children found out how Victorians did their washing and were able to have a go at doing the washing themselves! They found that this was very hard work as they had to scrub everything by hand. Much excitement was had by all when practising the ‘waltz’ in the ballroom. Everyone also enjoyed finding artefacts through a treasure hunt to do with bedtime, and found a nightdress, chamber pot and bed warmer, as well as a bedtime story.
3H Explore Magnets For their Science unit this half term, the children in 3H have been discovering magnets. To begin with they discussed questions to which they would like to know the answers. For example, ‘Do magnets lose their magnetism?’ and ‘Why do we need magnets in the world?’ The children set off exploring; initially everyone made predictions as to which materials would be magnetic and the scientific vocabulary used for ‘sticks to’. Whilst investigating the different materials, the children were surprised that not all metal objects are magnetic. For example, they discovered the class radiator did attract the magnets but the metal sink did not. This led to the conclusion that iron and steel are the two metals in the classroom which are magnetic.
1T Agree Reading is Fun! 1T had an amazing time during Book Week reading a variety of books. In English the children had been learning how to make their writing more interesting by using WOW words. They looked at the main characters in their favourite books and wrote wonderful character profiles using adjectives to describe how they looked and how they behaved. The children were inspired by Chris d’Lacey’s visit and again used their understanding of adjectives to describe a dragon they had drawn. The week ended with them dressing up as their favourite characters and sharing their new found love of WOW words in their class assembly. The children performed brilliantly with bags of confidence and huge voices. We are sure they inspired their peers to pick up a new book and enjoy the read!
Evacuees in 6G 6G recently spent a day as evacuees in order to learn more about the experiences of children in the Second World War. All the children dressed up as evacuees, with clothing made from natural fibres, as well as some very stylish caps and hair styles. Some even had a suitcase or teddy with them! Everyone had to carry a gas mask, identity card and a ration book. Each child also had a label with their name, age and destination, in case they became separated from the group. During the day the children wrote letters home to their family, sang wartime songs and did some drill in their PE lesson. A highlight was a visit from Mrs Elton, Mrs Chester’s mother, whose experience of the war was internment by the Japanese in Shanghai. The children had plenty of questions to ask after her talk about her childhood. This provided a different perspective of wartime experiences - being able to speak to real people makes modern history come alive.
Even lunch fitted the theme with ‘rabbit stew’ and tapioca pudding being served up for the evacuees. Overall the day was great fun as well as giving some insight into wartime evacuation.
www.stmargaretsprep.org.uk Animal Magic in 2B! During Science lessons this term 2B have been sorting and discussing the variation of animals. Alongside this the children designed a stick puppet in Design and Technology. Choosing the correct materials for each of the features was a challenge, but after a few trials the children were able to select appropriately. When attaching the features such as ears, eyes, noses, mouths and manes they were careful to position each of the characteristics as accurately as they could. The joining techniques used were pins, glue and wire. Finally, the fabric was chosen for the body and further patterns or features adjoined to complete their designs. The overall finish of each puppet was very impressive. The puppets all showed great resemblance to their chosen animal and an enormous amount of character! Don’t they look Grrreat!
Year 2’s African Adventure Year 2 were lucky enough to receive a visit from Kwame, a practitioner who teaches African art and music. They were very excited to share with him everything they had learnt so far from their Kenyan unit in Geography and looked forward to finding out more! First up was African Art, Kwame taught the children about Adinkra fabric printing and everyone leapt at the chance to print their own African fabric. They learnt that Adinkra is a printed or stamped traditional cloth made by the Ashanti people in Ghana. The symbols each have a name and a special meaning to do with human values such as ‘family’. The children loved using the bright colours with potatoes and stamps to create some very effective fabrics. Kwame reminded them that nothing is wasted in Africa; they try to recycle everything they use and think of other ways to use their waste. Finally, the eagerly anticipated lesson arrived - making lots of noise in the African drumming session! Kwame introduced the various African drums and showed the children how to get different sounds from them. They played along with a number of African songs and by the end were fantastic at all stopping on Kwame’s command. Some were even brave enough to get up and join in with African dancing to the wonderful music! Everyone learnt a great deal from Kwame and did not want it to come to an end.
Year 4 Royal Visit Year 4 recently had the great excitement of visiting Windsor Castle as part of their History theme studying Knights and Castles. The children started the visit with the changing of the guard and were very impressed by the wonderful band. They were also impressed by the way the band could march and play their instruments at the same time. A visit to the State Apartments followed, in order to learn about the history of the Castle and the lives of the people who had lived there. Some children were able to try on a helmet from a suit of armour and then everyone dressed in velvet cloaks and large hats with feathers to take part in a ceremony to become Knights of the Garter in the real Throne Room!
From the outside the Castle looks rather cold and grey, but everyone was very impressed by the splendour within. Everywhere the children looked shone with gold, silver and jewels together with ornate carving. They also saw amazing paintings by some of the world’s most famous artists such as Rubens and Rembrandt. One of the most interesting parts was Queen Mary’s dolls house with its functioning plumbing! Everyone returned home dreaming of thrones, chandeliers, Henry VIII’s armour and hundreds of clocks. What a wonderful day!
www.stmargaretsprep.org.uk Magical New Library The new St Margaret’s Library was officially opened on 25th February by celebrated children’s author, Chris d’Lacey. During the morning, Mr d’Lacey, best known for his series The Last Dragon Chronicles, held workshops with Year 5 and 6 pupils from St Margaret’s and Cherhill Primary School. In the afternoon, he joined specially invited guests, including school governors and fundraisers, to officially open the £250,000 library extension, which is now home to hundreds of fiction and non-fiction books. The white walls of the library have been transformed by Calne community artist Josh Simpson who has created murals containing favourite book characters such as Harry Potter and Alice in Wonderland. During the opening, Mr d’Lacey unveiled a commemorative dragon plaque of ‘Gruffen’, one of the most popular dragons from his books. We were delighted that all pupils, staff and guests managed to squeeze into the library for the celebration and everyone agreed that we are so lucky to have a wonderful, multifunctional learning area.
Bowood Sports Ground - Home to St Margaret’s Preparatory School January 2014 saw the addition of a new sports facility for St Margaret’s. Bowood Sports Ground is a 6-acre site only five minutes’ drive from the school, which will provide our Key Stage 2 children with extended facilities where they will play many of their home sporting fixtures throughout the academic year. This term the boys have played their home football matches at Bowood and have benefited from the vast space and pitch quality on offer. The facility also boasts outstanding indoor changing facilities which have meant the children can now prepare for their fixtures in a professional manner. The boys have played no fewer than 11 football fixtures this term and the U8 and U9 boys are yet to be beaten at home. The U10 and U11 footballers finished off their season on a high with comprehensive victories against Sidcot. The U11/10A boys won 5-0 whilst the U11/10B boys won with an amazing score of 9-1! The Key Stage 2 girls have yet to play at Bowood, but are looking forward to playing their home fixtures there in the summer term. We hope they have the same success as they have experienced this term on the netball courts, winning the majority of their home and away matches. Bowood Sports Ground will be utilised throughout all three school terms for rugby, football, cricket, rounders and athletics. The children from Years 3-6 are looking forward to the summer term when they will all compete there in cricket and rounders fixtures, as well as an athletics competition. The addition complements our existing facilities and further enhances our sporting provision.
St Margaret’s Preparatory School, Calne, Wiltshire, SN11 0DF Tel: 01249 857220 Fax: 01249 857227 Email: office@stmargaretsprep.org.uk Website: www.stmargaretsprep.org.uk