
Dear parents and carers,
Welcome to our latest newsletter! It has been an exciting time at school, with plenty of great opportunities for our pupils to enjoy both in and out of school.
A big thank you to everyone who was able to attend a recent parents’ evening consultation. We truly appreciate the opportunity to share the wonderful progress your child is making and to answer any questions you may have. Also, it has been lovely to see so many of you at our school events including our Easter Fayre, Easter Service and Book Day Biscuit and Book Session.
As a school community, we have been focused on three key Character Virtues
Kindness, Respect and Responsibility
Please talk to your child about how they can demonstrate these virtues in and outside of school.
Below, we’ve shared some highlights from this term, along with other important updates. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, don’t hesitate to get in touch via email or dojo.
We wish you all a wonderful Easter Break and look forward to welcoming you back for the start of the Summer Term on Tuesday 22nd of April.
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Safety Notice
Road Safety
We have had concerns raised by local residents regarding our children’s road safety awareness and parental supervision on the way to and from school. There have been a number of near misses of children on bikes and scooters who are going ahead of parents and not looking when going out onto the road. Every day 6 children are killed or seriously injured on UK roads so educating your children on road safety regularly and ensuring they are supervised is absolutely essential to avoid a tragedy like this within our community. The website below can support you with keeping your children safe.
School Site Safety- Our old KS2 Block is now out of use. This is the building to the right as you enter the site via the side gate. While we await gates being installed around the building, please ensure that your children do not run around the back of the building and walk through the site between this and the main building. Many thanks for your support with this.|

Whole School Attendance (This academic year) | 94.1% |
Whole School Attendance (Last Term) | 94% |
Starfish Class | 94.1% |
Jellyfish Class | 95.5% |
Striped Dolphins Class92 | 92.4% |
River Dolphins Class | 92.4% |
Seals Class | 95.8% |

Monday |
Lunchtime - Music club with Mrs Mortlock |
Tuesday |
Football Club - Run by Exeter community trust - ÂŁ5 per session bookable on Schoolmoney
Max 18 children Collection at 4:15pm |
Wednesday |
No Clubs |
Thursday |
Tennis Club - Run by Devonshire Tennis Academy - Bookable at bookings@devonshiretennisacademy.com |
Friday |
No Clubs |
OTHER CLUBS
Thursday morning 8am - 8.45 - Tennis Club - Run by Devonshire Tennis Academy - ÂŁ38.50 for the half term bookable at bookings@devonshiretennisacademy.com

Tuesday 22nd April - Start of new term
Friday May 2nd - Meet the lifeguards
Monday May 5th - Bank Holiday Monday
Thursday 8th May - VE day celebrations
Monday 12th May - Thursday 15th May - SATS week Year 6
Monday 19th May - Wednesday 21st May - Calvert Trust Residential - Dolphins
Thursday 20th May - Olympic Athlete Visit
Friday 21st May - Non Pupil Day.
Monday 2nd June - Start of half term
Thursday 5th June - Tempest Class Photos
Friday 6th June - Ilfracombe Aquathlon
Monday 9th June - Thursday 12th June - Bikeability
Monday 16th June - Bikeability beginners course
Tuesday 17th June - Dolphins play @ Landmark theatre
Friday 20th June - Oceanfest Football tournament Year 6
Thursday 26th June - Sports Day
Wednesday 2nd July - Thursday 3rd July - Pilton Transition days
Thursday 3rd July - Friday 4th July - Ilfracombe Academy Transition days
Wednesday 9th July - Essex Dancers
Friday 11th July - Summer Fayre
Thursday 17th July - Y6 leavers party
Monday 21st July - Y6 leavers celebration for families
Tuesday 22nd July - Last day of term
Thursday 4th September - First day of Autumn Term
All dates can be found on our website at https://combemartin-sch.org/calendar/


Hot Chocolate Friday Children : For always going above & Beyond
Class Updates
Head Teacher Award : For always going above & Beyond
Spring Term
Y6 - David & Seb
Y5 - Ziggy
Y4 - Zethan
Y3 - Delilah
Y2 - Lewis C
Y1 - Arlo & Emelia JD
Rec - Ivy

Tiddlers
This week the Tiddlers did a sound nature walk talking about different sounds we could hear. We collected leaves and painted with them and other natural resources.
We read the Gruffalo together and explored a gruffalo themed tuff spot.

Starfish
Last week we moved onto Julia Donaldson's 'Room on the Broom' in drawing club, the children are always really excited by drawing club and it is really helping to develop confidence in fine motor skills, vocabulary (whoosh, swoop, fiery, horrible, passenger) and story telling. We have been using the story in provision to create potions and construct things we can carry a passenger on. The year 1's have also continued with writing setting descriptions using their senses.
In Maths the Reception children have been working on recognising and creating patterns and the Year 1 children have begun their addition and subtraction unit to 10.
This week in History we will be drawing simple maps of Combe Martin and talking about how the shops in the town have changed over the years,

Jellyfish
Maths - We have started our addition and subtraction to 20 unit. We started by using paper plates and counters to represent wholes and parts.
English - Reading- We have continued our learning around where the wild things are - we have done some performance poetry, each table taking a verse of a poem linked to the story and have continued our retrieval and summary skills throughout.
English - Writing - We have started our setting writing unit. We have looked at an Autumnal picture and thought about what we could see, smell and hear in the picture. We have then used these ideas to write some sentences - making sure we remember full stops, capital letters and finger spaces.
RE - The children really enjoyed the visit from Neomi - she is a practising Muslim. She told us about her day to day life, demonstrated how she might pray and talked us through her son’s wedding. She also had some wonderful artefacts for the children to handle and ask questions about.
Computing - This week we continued to learn how to use our chromebooks - we are still practising our keyboards and our mouse pads. This week we used a drawing app to help us learn how to use the mouse by double clicking and selecting tools.
Art - Mrs Railston taught some of the children this week to do some careful observational drawings of shells using continuous lines. They drew using handwriting pens and concentrated and worked hard!

Dolphins
This week, Dolphins have been planning and writing a narrative story based on the wordless book, Journey by Aaron Becker. They have explored a variety of adjectives and adverbs to describe the setting and actions of the character.
In maths, they have looked at rounding numbers to 10 and 100.
They have embraced being historians and scientists, thinking critically about the Palaeolithic period and how to group rocks by their properties. This will link in with their art over the next few weeks where they will be turning the class into a stone age cave!

Puffins
On Monday we were visited by Neomi who is a practising Muslim. She travelled from Exeter to tell us about her faith and show us some artefacts. This links with the Religious Education topic which the children are currently doing where they are learning what it means to be a Muslim in Britain today. Thank you to Mrs Adams for arranging the visit.
We have completed our Place Value unit in maths and will now move onto a short one week unit on Addition and Subtraction.
We have also completed our narrative unit in English. The children have written stories based on the events of Shackleton’s expedition in Antarctica. They have been inspired by the resilience and determination shown by Shackleton and his crew.

Seals
Seals class have finished their pieces of writing ready for the parents/carers to look at during our parent consultations at the end of half term. Seals have been working really hard. They will be visiting our friends at Woolacombe on Thursday for a Football and Tag Rugby festival and joining the rest of KS2 in a workshop and show at the Plough Arts Centre at the end of next week.

Spring Term:
We have had a really busy Spring term.
Our younger children enjoyed time on our local beach fossil hunting followed by a visit from a local fossil expert who brought in a huge amount of fossils for the children to look at and draw. The children and staff really enjoyed this.
The whole school has had some lovely visits this term. Firstly we had a wonderful team from the NHS visiting us. They spoke to all the children about what they do and what happens if you hurt yourself.
We then had the Odyssey Space Dome visit us which was kindly funded by the customers of The Castle Inn. All the children took it in turns to go into the dome where they were immersed into an age appropriate experience. This is a regular favourite of both the children and the staff.
Our Year 5 & 6 children had a fantastic Residential visit to Normandy where 160 children and 25 staff from across the trust joined together and shared a chateau for 5 days. They visited the landing beaches, memorials, Mont st Michel, The Bayeaux tapestry and cathedrals to mention a few things. They also sampled the French way of life and food.
As always we celebrated World book day with the children and staff dressing up as their favourite book characters. The older children spent time with the younger ones reading them stories and the whole school spent time enjoying books.
Our jellyfish class have also been enjoying Sea school lessons on the beach. They have been exploring materials, making pictures with pebbles and shells and lots of rockpooling whilst learning about the beach.
Our KS2 children took part in a swimming Gala on the last day of the Summer Term. They all did an amazing job of representing Combe Martin School. We had some winners and some finalists but all of them did their best which was amazing!
This year, throughout the school we will be introducing and using the Zones of Regulation. The Zones of Regulation is all about developing our social emotional regulation skills and competencies.
The first concept (unit) explores how regulation also helps us have more control over how we manage our feelings, energy, and behaviour. We will explore the same concept over a few weeks before moving onto the next one. These will be introduced in assemblies and then discussed in class. Each of concept expands upon skills, lessons, and vocabulary taught in earlier ones.
We have attached some information so you can continue to support your child at home with the current concept.
Further explanation on The Zones of Regulation can be found via this link https://zonesofregulation.com/how-it-works/
