There was no doubting the highlight across the school this week as we celebrated St David’s Day in style. The school was a sea of red and our whole school Eisteddfod provided an opportunity to, once again, show what great talent there is in Waunarlwydd. The writing, singing and artwork on show from Nursery through to year 6 was incredible and a wonderful way to start a new half term!
It has been a pleasure to welcome our newest and youngest pupils into school this week as our afternoon nursery began successfully. Lots of big smiles all around, which is always a good sign!
We will be celebrating World Book Day next Friday – March 10th. Children are welcome to dress as a favourite character and bring in their favourite book.
Parent workshops
Friday 17th March – The second workshop on ‘Managing Anger’ will now be on Friday 17th March. If you would like to attend, just arrive at school for a 14.25 start.
Dates for the diary
Friday March 3rd – Year 2 and 3 Community Farm trip
Wednesday March 8th – Reception and Year 1 Community Farm trip
Friday March 10th – World Book Day in school (children are welcome to dress as a favourite character)
Week beginning 20th March – Teacher / parent meetings
Friday March 31st – Break up for Easter
As always, if you have any questions or concerns don’t hesitate in getting in touch!
It’s been a marvellous week to end the half term! A massive thanks to the PTA (and DJ Dan) for organising and running such successful discos this week! The children (and parents) enjoyed showing off their dance moves and a magnificent £871 was raised! Wow! Diolch yn fawr pawb!
Our week ended with a wonderful assembly delivered by Mrs Evans and Mrs Thomas’ class reminding us of the importance of looking after our planet. Well done boys and girls!
Nursery have been enjoying serving ice cream in our role play ice cream parlour, writing their names in ice cream sprinkles, matching ice cream letter sounds and working together to play pass the ice cream game. They had a lovely morning on the field on Welly Wednesday pretending to be different sorts of insects and have loved using the magnifying glasses and microscope to look at the plastic insects in detail. Reception had a great time walking around the school discussing their likes and dislikes and have thoroughly enjoyed their art work in preparation for St David’s Day.
Miss Tyrrell’s class have been busy learning about Waunarlwydd and Swansea. They started with a walk around the village where they looked at the features of Waunarlwydd, thought about their likes, dislikes and what they could do to improve their community. Listening to the stories of Swansea Jack and voting on which one they thought was true was another favourite this week. Mrs Wallace and Mrs Howells’ class have particularly enjoyed looking at the work of artist Annabel Dann and starting to replicate it, ready for our Eisteddfod! Learning how to add and subtract, using base 10 and number lines to help us was also a high point. The big highlight in Mrs Evans and Mrs Thomas’ class has been practising their awesome class assembly, while they particulary enjoyed making environmental superheroes and thinking about reducing our carbon footprint. Mr Reid’s class have thoroughly enjoyed their ‘Love where you live’ topic. Despite the rain, they enjoyed a tour around Waunarlwydd on Wednesday with Mrs Howells telling us about how the village has changed over time. They then created their own maps of Waunarlwydd as well as colour coded maps from 100 years ago and looked at the differences between the two.
Mr Jenkins’ class have been presenting their reports this week, celebrating their amazing efforts over the last two weeks and have done a splendid job using PowerPoint to share the facts they have discovered, create quizzes for each other and even word searches to complete! Gwaith da blwyddyn pedwar!
In Year 5 and 6, the children have enjoyed PE as usual. This week, they played a new game and thought carefully about their tactics, showing huge improvements over the half term. In preparation for our Eisteddfod, the children have started to write out the national anthem for the handwriting competition; created their art pieces and learnt ‘Calon Lan’, ‘Diolch Diolch Iesu’ and ‘Siarad Cymraeg’. To create their art, they studied two different Welsh artists and, using the school as inspiration, have replicated the style of one artist. The children have also blown Ms Williams away with their learning about decimals – such a change in confidence.
**Important reminder : What do yellow zig zags road markings mean outside a school?**
‘These markings are used outside schools so that children can see and be seen clearly when crossing the road. Parking here would block people’s view of the school entrance! This could endanger the lives of children on their way to and from school!’
Family support – Early help hub linking with school
We have linked with the City and County of Swansea to enhance understanding and engagement with early Help Hubs. A senior lead worker will be based at our school fortnightly to offer support to families, children and parents in a variety of ways. For example, support with children’s behaviour, emotional health & wellbeing, money, housing, ALN group work, ASD Awareness group, Under 11’s family lives group, understanding adolescents group, healthy relationship work and much more. Contact the school if you would like more information or to arrange a meeting.
Digital Advice for parents
This week’s advice for parents and carers centres around ‘Artificial Intelligence Solutions.’
A consistent theme this week has been remaining safe online. Safer Internet Day on Tuesday allowed the children to show all that they have learnt around the importance of this in and out of school and our digital leaders did a magnificent job of pulling it all together during today’s whole school assembly.
Some of our year 4 children represented the school brilliantly during this weeks football festival and showed the talent we have coming through the school. Another big well done to our year 5 and 6 footballers who remained unbeaten during their football festival. Unfortunately, today’s rugby match against Gowerton was postponed but will be rearranged for after half term.
The Nursery have had another busy H Week. They have been doing mono painting of their houses, rolling hoops and hopping in Gym. The children thought of ways that they could be helpful and helped their friends cross some stepping stones. To end the week they have decorated cakes like hedgehogs.
A clear highlight for all the children in Reception, Year 1, 2 and 3 was the amazing visit to St Fagans where history was brought to life for them. Once again, they made us all extremely proud with their superb behaviour and absolutely loved learning about life in Wales long ago.
Children in Year 4 have loved writing and presenting their animal reports. In numeracy they have been learning to find areas and perimeters of shapes and have also now made all their improvements to test their egg astronaut with their group parachute. Year 5 and 6 have enjoyed practising their attacking and defending skills in PE. As part of their science work, they felt the effects of air resistance and drag by running across the playground with a plastic bag above their heads. It was definitely harder than running without one! In maths, we have been impressing Ms Williams with our understanding of place value and decimals -knowing the value of each digit (even thousandths), rounding and adding and subtracting decimals. For safer internet day, children made fortune tellers to warn of the dangers online and possible solutions.
Family support – Early help hub linking with school
We have linked with the City and County of Swansea to enhance understanding and engagement with early Help Hubs. Our school’s senior lead worker will be based at our school weekly to offer support to families, children and parents in a variety of ways. We will be holding a coffee morning on Friday 17th February (9am) where the senior lead worker will be on hand to give more details on the service and answer any questions.
Who will the Early Help Hubs work with?
Children, young people and their families where there are identified wellbeing needs that the family need assistance to achieve. It is really important that we think about what outcomes the child and family want to achieve by talking to an EHH member of staff.
How can family’s access support directly from the Early Help Hub?
Children, young people and their families can access support from requesting an appointment via the school to speak to the EHH confidentially at the school about what matters to the family. This will be the start of the referral process to identify the right service at the right time to help families live happy, healthy and safe lives.
What will Early Help Hubs do?
As part of the referral EHH will provide information about our services and other services that may be of help to the family. We provide advice in relation to how we or other services can support them and also provide assistance if the services we provide are the right ones to help the family achieve their wellbeing goals.
One to one appointment
Advice and Guidance
Information about what other services can help you
Support with children’s behaviour, emotional health & wellbeing, money, housing, ALN group work, ASD Awareness group, Under 11’s family lives group, understanding adolescents group, healthy relationship work and much more.
Parent workshops
Friday 10th February – Unfortunately, the 2nd part of the ‘Managing Anger’ workshop has had to be postponed. We will let you know the rearranged date as soon as possible!
Digital Advice for parents
This week’s advice for parents and carers centres around ‘10 ways gaming can support positive outcomes in children and young people.’
It’s been another week full of highlights at Waunarlwydd! The Nursery have been looking at houses as part of H Week. What an exciting morning they had going on a walk around Waunarlwydd! They saw lots of different types of house, both old and new, learnt lots of history from Mrs Howells and waved to all the buses. We are extremely proud of how well behaved everyone was. 4000 steps is a lot for little legs! This week Reception have been finding out all about how people celebrate Chinese New Year. They have learned about the ‘Great Race’ and used puppets, masks and small world animals to explore the story, found out which year we were all born in and talked about the similarities and differences between our celebrations and Chinese New Year as well as performing their own dragon dance. To end the week they had fun tasting Chinese food – yum! Gong hei fat choi!
Chinese New Year has also been the highlight in Miss Tyrrell’s class. The children tasted Chinese food which was a real treat and they even used chop sticks! Painting numbers and their name in Chinese was fun and so was finding out what year of the Chinese zodiac they were born in. Some super shapes were created when they moved like a dragon and firecrackers during our music and movement session. To end the week they thought of similarities in the Chinese New Year celebration compared to celebrations of their own. Mrs Wallace and Mrs Howells’ class have loved being scientists and investigating ice this week. They made predictions on what would make the ice melt the fasted and what would make the ice melt the slowest and also learnt the importance of a fair test. It’s been a creative week in Mrs Evans and Mrs Thomas’ class with the highlights being their art work with some incredible winter paintings using hot and and cold colour mixing. Other big hits have been their work on climate change and their brilliant dividing skills. Art was also a big hit in Mr Reid’s class with the use of water colours to paint one of the 7 wonders of the world. They have also enjoyed completing their information booklets on a chosen country and presenting them to their classmates this morning.
Another busy week in Mr Jenkins’ class. Children have been learning their times tables facts and linking this to sharing. They have continued to write reports for their up coming presentations and have been linking this to their art work and water colour paintings. They have also enjoyed looking at food labels and keeping a diary of the different food types we eat each week. In science and technology we have combined our ideas and have made a large parachute. All we need to do now is test this with our eggy friend and hope they don’t crack! What a busy week in Year 5 and 6! The Moki bands have been used to record our exercise, which has inspired more activity during break and lunch times. As always, PE has been a hit – dodge ball this week with some excellent tactics on show. In maths, the children have been learning about mathematical expressions and equations and by the end of the week, they were having a go at solving them. In Literacy, via pictures and video, the children have been transported to Pandora. Their setting descriptions were amazing, using many different sentence structures and fabulous language choices. Ms Williams’ shoes even got a work out being dragged across the table top to investigate friction. A great week!
Family support – Early help hub linking with school
We have linked with the City and County of Swansea to enhance understanding and engagement with early Help Hubs. Our school’s senior lead worker will be based at our school weekly to offer support to families, children and parents in a variety of ways. We will be holding a coffee morning on Friday 17th February (9am) where the senior lead worker will be on hand to give more details on the service and answer any questions.
Who will the Early Help Hubs work with?
Children, young people and their families where there are identified wellbeing needs that the family need assistance to achieve. It is really important that we think about what outcomes the child and family want to achieve by talking to an EHH member of staff.
How can family’s access support directly from the Early Help Hub?
Children, young people and their families can access support from requesting an appointment via the school to speak to the EHH confidentially at the school about what matters to the family. This will be the start of the referral process to identify the right service at the right time to help families live happy, healthy and safe lives.
What will Early Help Hubs do?
As part of the referral EHH will provide information about our services and other services that may be of help to the family. We provide advice in relation to how we or other services can support them and also provide assistance if the services we provide are the right ones to help the family achieve their wellbeing goals.
One to one appointment
Advice and Guidance
Information about what other services can help you
Support with children’s behaviour, emotional health & wellbeing, money, housing, ALN group work, ASD Awareness group, Under 11’s family lives group, understanding adolescents group, healthy relationship work and much more.
Parent workshops
Friday 10th February – Today’s workshop focused on ‘Managing Anger’. This workshop is in 2 parts with the second part being delivered next Friday (10th February). If you would like to attend, just arrive at school for a 14.25 start.
Digital Advice for parents
This week’s advice for parents and carers centres around ‘Encouraging open discussions about digital lives.‘
It’s been another busy week full of learning and laughter at Waunarlwydd. The highlight for me would have to be the awesome assembly presented by Miss Shaw’s class which reminded us of the importance of looking after the environment and wildlife.
A reminder that, due to industrial action, school will be closed to pupils on Wednesday February 1st.
Parent workshops
The North Gower Partnership has linked with the NHS and CAMHS to provide support and strategies for parents in approaching the emotional wellbeing of children at home. This will take the form of a series of workshops at school (14.25 in the school hall):
We have received positive feedback form our first workshop, ‘When to Worry About Your Worrier’.
Friday 3rd February – The next parent workshop will focus on ‘Managing Anger’. If you would like to attend, just arrive at school for a 14.25 start on the given dates.
It has been a week of stories in Nursery, with our activities based on Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, The Gruffalo and The Billy Goats Gruff. The children have especially enjoyed playing in the 3 bears’ cottage, tasting porridge with different toppings, building their own bridge and acting out the Billygoat story as well as scoring goals in gym. This week Reception have had fun learning all about Polar Bears and Penguins. They have sorted facts, made their own fact files, measured their feet compared to a polar bear’s giant foot and explored ice in our small world play. Children also had fun pouring water into different sized containers to see which holds the most water.
Year 1 have been learning about the polar regions this week. They sorted facts before writing a fact file, as well as discussing what they could do at home to help save the polar bears. Superb vocabulary was used during their science investigation when describing what happens when you add salt and food colouring to ice. Percy’s hut role play area has been a huge favourite and the children especially enjoyed having hot chocolate and marshmallows to warm them up this week. Similar highlights in Mrs Wallace and Mrs Howells’ class who have had the most wonderful week learning more about the polar regions and its animals. They have particularly enjoyed researching penguins and writing a fact file. Making hot chocolate with marshmallows was a big surprise! Mrs Evans and Mrs Thomas’ class highlight has been their bird watching activities using binoculars and they also enjoyed creating ‘Staying safe online’ posters and thinking about how too much screen time can make us feel. The standout in Mr Reid’s class this week has been the wonderful independent writing on the 7 wonders of the world, where the children showcased some great sentence structures and vocabulary choices. Their work on division also showed huge progress and was another high point.
Mr Jenkins’ class have been learning how to multiply by partitioning, grids and adding. Three steps! They have also continued to develop their understanding of the features of reports and selected topics to investigate. In science and technology they have loved making parachutes and will now make a group design before dropping our egg astronaut from a height of 3m. The aim is not to have any cracks in our little friend! Mrs Cornish has been keeping the children busy, completing a bird survey around the school. There seem to be a lot of pigeons around. Hopefully they won’t be dropping too many messages for us! Year 5 and 6 have enjoyed learning about how to look after our mental health, for example eating healthily or taking deep breaths. Teachers have been impressed at how well the classes have used their Zones of Regulation board, even checking in with each other. Another highlight was working with Mrs Howells to improve their Welsh skills. In maths, the children have found learning about function machines and algebra challenging, but there were still a lot of smiles. PE is always a favourite – this week we played Tag Ball and nearly hit Mrs Davies!
Digital Advice for parents
This week’s advice for parents and carers centres around ‘12 Top Tips for building cyber resilience at home.‘
It’s been another great week. The ice and cold haven’t stopped the children from wrapping up and enjoying a super week of learning. A big well done to the girls’ football team who represented the school with their usual positive attitude, great skills and big smiles!
Strike Action – The local authority has been notified that strike action is to be taken by Trade Unions on 1st February, 14th February, 15th March and 16th March. We will keep you updated but have currently been told to wait for further guidance.
We will be commencing after school clubs next week! You should have received consent forms today.
Parent workshops
The North Gower Partnership has linked with the NHS and CAMHS to provide support and strategies for parents in approaching the emotional wellbeing of children at home. This will take the form of a series of workshops at school. A reminder that the first workshop ‘When to worry about your worrier’, is today (14.25 in the school hall):
Friday 3rd February – The second workshop will focus on ‘Managing Anger’ (more details to follow). If you would like to attend, just arrive at school for a 14.25 start on the given dates.
The Nursery have had another fun week learning about Winter. The water beads in the water tray were a big success and gym was great fun using a tissue as a snowflake. They explored the ice and frost during outdoor learning, making footprints on the field, breaking up the ice with hammers and painting on sheets of ice. What a wonderful week to learn about winter in Reception! Children had lots of fun exploring the ice that formed in our yard overnight and found different ways to break it. The children had some lovely ideas to write a winter poem and created some beautiful wintry paintings. They have also made snowmen with different coloured hats and scarves and sorted them in different ways
Miss Tyrrell’s class absolutely loved their winter walk this week. They touched pointy icicles, made footprints in the frosty grass and noticed that our rainfall gauges had frozen. Back in class they used wow words to make their sentences more interesting when writing their winter poems. Other favourites were making bird feeders during forest school, following instructions on how to draw a snowman, which look amazing, and solving winter addition and subtraction problems. Other highlights in Mrs Wallace and Mrs Howells’ class included making a snowball animation on JIT and learning all about the animals in the different polar regions. Mrs Evans and Mrs Thomas’ class also enjoyed their wintry welly walk this week and have loved learning about temperature and measuring rainfall. They have also been learning about polar animals and how they are adapted to live in such cold temperatures. Highlights in Mr Reid’s class include beginning their information booklets about countries of the world and practising their skills on the apparatus in gym.
It’s been a busy week in year 4 with learning about writing reports and the features reports have to make them successful. Children have also enjoyed learning about maths arrays and factors of numbers to help with dividing facts. In science we have looked at forces and made paper planes to understand push forces, gravity and air resistance. They loved their competition to see who could make their plane fly furthest, recording their work in charts and graphs on J2e. In art, children linked their report writing of Golden Eagles with the story ‘King of the birds’ and learnt how to draw these amazing creatures. Wow! This week has been year 5 and 6’s last on ‘Out of this world!’ What a week they have had – learning about gravity and air resistance with their autogyro investigation; painting planets and galaxies in art and completing homework projects. All teachers have been impressed with the creativity, knowledge and variety of home learning tasks. PE remains a firm favourite – using Real PE to explore tactical game play. White Rose maths has helped children understand ratio, proportion and scaling this week. Great work!
Digital Advice for parents
This week’s advice for parents and carers centres around ‘What parents and carers need to know about TWITTER‘
