As another fantastic year draws to a close, it’s the perfect opportunity to pause and reflect on what an incredible year it has been. It’s so easy to race through the weeks without stopping to appreciate the wonderful experiences our children have enjoyed, both in and beyond the classroom.
From our Year 5 and 6 trip to London, taking in the capital’s famous sights, to the unforgettable shark sleepover at Plymouth Aquarium for Years 2–4, the children have embraced every opportunity with enthusiasm. Our youngest children have loved exploring our local community through beach and woodland walks, visits to the library, museum, Ilfracombe Lifeboat Station and local aquarium. Dolphins Class shone in their performance of Little Criminals at the Landmark Theatre, while our Christmas performances and festive visit to Bodmin Jail created lasting memories. Alongside these, we’ve enjoyed an Ancient Egypt experience, first aid training, Walkability and Bikeability sessions, and so many other opportunities that have enriched learning throughout the year.
Sports Day was, once again, one of the highlights of the year, with so many families joining us for our picnic before cheering on the children. Thank you for helping to make these occasions so special.
A huge thank you must go to our amazing PTFA for the countless hours they dedicate to organising events and raising funds for our school. We are also incredibly grateful to our fantastic volunteers who come into school each week to read with children, garden, accompany school trips and work tirelessly behind the scenes to support fundraising and create those extra special moments for our children. A special mention also goes to the lovely Peaches, who visits us each week as part of our Paws to Read programme. In a time when school budgets are under increasing pressure, your generosity, kindness and willingness to help make an enormous difference. We genuinely couldn’t do it without your support.
We also say a fond farewell to Mrs Bayes as she begins her well-earned retirement from education. We would like to thank her for the dedication, care and commitment she has shown throughout her career and for the positive impact she has had on so many children and families. We wish her every happiness in this exciting new chapter and hope she enjoys the many adventures, opportunities to relax and special moments that retirement brings. Thank you, Mrs Bayes, and very best wishes from all of us at school.
A very special mention must also go to our wonderful Year 6 children. We are so proud of the kind, resilient and thoughtful young people you have become. Your enthusiasm and commitment to learning have been reflected in another set of excellent end-of-key-stage results, once again above the national average, but even more importantly, you leave us as confident, caring young people who are ready for the next chapter. Watching you proudly wearing your leavers’ hoodies and carrying your yearbooks brings a mixture of pride and sadness. We will miss you enormously, but we know you will go on to achieve wonderful things, and we wish you every success and happiness at secondary school.
Finally, thank you to our wonderful children, dedicated staff and supportive families. Everything we have achieved this year has been possible because of the strength of our school community, and we are incredibly proud of all we have accomplished together.
As we look ahead to September, we hope you all enjoy a safe, happy and restful summer break. Please remember to check dojo for key dates and updates before the start of term, ensure all uniform is clearly named, and encourage children to keep reading over the holidays—it really does make such a difference. We can’t wait to welcome everyone back for another exciting year of learning, friendship and adventure.
Mrs Seddon and the Combe Martin team
Whole School attendance this year - 94%
Monday |
Creative Writing Club - Free - Run by Miss Lucas KS2Max 12 children Collection at 4.15pm |
Tuesday |
Football Club - Run by Exeter community trust - £5 per session bookable on Schoolmoney
Max 18 children Collection at 4:15pm |
Wednesday |
No Clubs |
Thursday |
8am - Tennis Club - Run by Devonshire Tennis Academy - Bookable at bookings@devonshiretennisacademy.com
Cricket Club - Run by Primary Sports - Bookable at www.primary-sports.co.uk Collection at 4.15pm |
Friday |
Lego Club - Run by Combe Martin Baptist ChurchMax 15 children Collection at 4.30pm |
OTHER CLUBS
Monday 7th September - FIRST DAY OF 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.
Autumn Term:
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/