Dear parents and carers,
Welcome back to school and a very Happy New Year! I hope you all had a restful and enjoyable Christmas break. We are excited to welcome our returning pupils and families, as well as those who have joined us recently. It’s wonderful to see our school community grow, and we look forward to building many new memories together in the coming months.
I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all of you for your support and attendance at our Christmas events. Your involvement truly makes a difference, and it was a joy to see so many of you at our festive activities.
As we begin the Spring Term, we have many exciting opportunities lined up for the children. Each class will begin their Sea School lessons with Mrs. Adams, which will be planned in blocks throughout the coming terms. These lessons will offer hands-on experiences, promoting teamwork and environmental awareness, and we know the children will love the activities ahead.
Additionally, we are eagerly anticipating Science Week, which will include an immersive Space Dome experience for our students. This will be a fantastic opportunity for our pupils to learn about space in a dynamic and engaging way.
We are also excited to announce the Year 5 and 6 residential trip to France, which will be a memorable experience for all involved. Further details will follow soon, but we’re confident it will be a wonderful learning and adventure-filled trip for our students.
In other news, Key Stage 2 will begin their swimming lessons this term, and we are delighted to be able to offer this valuable skill to our students. Later in the year, we will also be offering Bikeability sessions, catering to a range of skill levels. More information will be sent out soon, so please keep an eye out for updates.
To keep you updated on your child’s learning this term, class teachers will be sending out their own letters with specific details relating to your child’s curriculum. They will also continue to keep you informed of each week's focus across subjects in their weekly updates on dojo.
As a whole school, we are excited to be working on a trust wide art project this term celebrating our wonderful locality through a variety of art projects. We will be exploring the PSHE topic of ‘Keeping Ourselves Safe.’ This important subject will give our pupils the tools and knowledge they need to navigate their world safely.
Our Character Virtue focus for the term is ‘Resourcefulness,’ and we will be encouraging students to think creatively and make the most of the resources available to them. In addition, our Zones of Regulation concept for the term is ‘Zones Check-In,’ where students will learn to identify and understand their emotions in the moment, which is essential for developing self-regulation and emotional awareness.
As always, we are grateful for your ongoing support. Together, we can make this term a fantastic experience for every child.
Best wishes for the term ahead,
Whole School Attendance (This academic year) | 94.% |
Whole School Attendance (Last Term) | 94% |
Starfish Class | 92.41% |
Jellyfish Class | 94.59% |
Striped Dolphins Class | 87.09% |
River Dolphins Class | 95.19% |
Seals Class | 96.43% |
Monday |
No Clubs |
Tuesday |
Starts Tuesday 14th January Football Club - Run by Exeter community trust - £5 per session bookable on SCHOOL MONEYMax 18 childrenCollection at 4:15pm |
Wednesday |
No Clubs |
Thursday |
Clubs Begin 14th November |
Friday |
No Clubs |
OTHER CLUBS
Thursday morning 8am - 8.45 - Tennis Club - Run by Devonshire Tennis Academy - £38.50 for the half term bookable at bookings@devonshiretennisacademy.com
Wednesday 8th January for 12 weeks - Incredible years Parenting course 9am - 12noon - Please see Vikki Goodchild if you are interested in attending
Tuesday Jan 28th - Ilfracombe Academy Year 7 Head Mr Tilley in school to talk to Year 6
Friday 14th February - Non pupil Day
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
Character Recognition Awards this week:
Starfish
- Bodhi - Resilience
Jellyfish
- Emilia-Grace - Determination
- Caellan-Roy - Curiosity
Fantastic Walking Awards this week:
Starfish
- Emelia-Grace
Jellyfish
- Lewis
Handwriting Awards this week
Starfish
- Hamza & Connor
Jellyfish
- Chloe
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.
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/