Dear Parents/Carers

Please see attached summer lunch menu which will start when children return to school on Monday 19th April.

Dear Parents

The last day of school for the children is Wednesday 31st March - school will be closed 1st April - 16th April. 

Children will return to school on Monday 19th April.

I hope all our families have a restful, Easter break

Many thanks for your continued support

Mrs A Maqsood-Shah

We just want to start off by saying a huge well done to all of our Y6 pupils (as well as the rest of the High Hazels community) for their amazing attitudes and efforts in what has been a very strange term!  

When lockdown was announced, our Y6 pupils rose to the remote-learning challenge and adapted incredibly well to the new experiences and expectations.   They engaged in all areas of the curriculum, enjoying reading, writing, maths and story time with their teachers every day.  They even impressed us with their independent study of the wider curriculum, developing their science, history, P4C and RE skills from home.   

Even though we were so impressed with their engagement online, we couldn’t wait to get back into the classroom.  Since coming back to school, our Y6s have been absolutely wonderful: they have settled back in quickly and have shown excellent attitudes to learning in all subjects.  

In maths, we have revisited our understanding of multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000 to support us when converting metric units of measurement.  We have been impressed with their ability to solve multi-step measure problems involving capacity, length and mass.   

In writing, we have written exciting narratives based on the short film ‘Alma’.  We found the video really creepy, and we worked hard to incorporate tension and suspense into our writing so that our readers felt the same way.   

We have particularly enjoyed starting our painting unit in art.  We are studying the artist Cezanne, and we have researched, analysed and critiqued his artwork.  We can’t wait to start developing our painting skills after Easter.   

Overall, Y6 have had the most fantastic term!  We are so glad to be back in the classroom, and we cannot wait to continue developing our skills and knowledge next term.  

As the end of the half term approaches, Year 5 can look back on an exciting period of learning opportunities and successes.  

Art in Year 5

During art your child has focussed on the artist Stephen Wiltshire. They have applied their knowledge of perspective drawing and created their own Stephen Wiltshire inspired drawing.

Then came lockdown however this didn’t stop our enthusiastic, eager to learn children. The engagement and participation levels were amazing. Y5 have been creative and imaginative, we have taken part in the story slam national competition, we’ve completed beautiful art projects and taken part in E-safety programmes, science weeks and much more. We are so proud of their online learning achievements.

Once again, it has been an enjoyable but busy half term and we look forward to the new summer term ahead.

The teachers want to say a big well done to Y1 on a super term! The children have coped with so much change during the lockdown and responded so well to online learning. We were so impressed with their positive attitudes and smiling faces every day on Teams. A big thank you to the parents too for supporting the children during this time!

We have realty enjoyed returning to school during the past few weeks and the children have settled in well. We have really enjoyed our learning these past few weeks and have had some exciting tasks to complete. One of our favourite activities was during British Science Week. We learnt how to create our own paint using natural resources.

We have also enjoyed reading our new book ‘The Egg Box Dragon’. We received our very own post box this week and the children have loved sending letters to each other and posting them through the letterbox.

We are really looking forward to the Summer term, where the children can flourish and develop even more.

Well done for a fantastic term Y1, we cannot wait to see you back after the holidays.

Spring Term has been a unique time: Year 4 have gone from online learning in lockdown to returning to school and WOW, they have been amazing! The children have built the key skills of independence, resilience, adaptability, confidence and perseverance - the Year 4 team could not be prouder.  

We started spring term with live, online learning, where the children have been engaged and determined to continue their learning journey in Year 4. During online learning, the children participated in many creative lessons. They became newspaper reporters, reporting about an ‘alien invasion’ and publishing their newspapers on the computer. They became poets, creating pieces of poetry using onomatopoeia and performed these poems during a poetry slam with a special guest, Mrs Shah. This was a real highlight of our remote learning and a celebration of the children's hard work. In reading, the children have explored factual texts on inspirational women, and they have explored Arabian legend stories, based on our class book for this term: ‘A Hundred and One Arabian nights’. 

 In maths, children began to develop their knowledge of fractions, a unit which has been continued back in the classroom. They have also been practicing their timetables and completing in battles on TTRS between classes. In PE, the children enjoyed lessons led by Joe Wicks on YouTube and by their very own PE teacher, Mr Joe. These PE lesson gave children the chance to participate in physical exercise and focus on their own emotional wellbeing. 

Another highlight of online learning was World Book Day. Year 4 explored Tom Fletcher’s book ‘There’s a monster in my book’ and spent the day creating their own interactive books which were fantastic. The children also dressed up as their favourite book characters, with the teachers dressing up as Mr Men. We loved having the opportunity to spend the day sharing our love of reading.  

Returning to school, Year 4 have continued to impress us. They have come back with enthusiasm, positivity and respect, it has been a joy to teach them back in school. We have spent time on wellbeing and class communities, with the children continuing to build on relationships with their classmates and their teachers.  

The children have quickly adapted to learning

In Nursery we have been so excited to be back at school with all our friends! We have been so busy this half term! 

We have been learning all about different concepts such as in, out and on and talking about these in provision with adults and our friends. We have been doing lots of small group work to practise our listening and attention skills, singing songs and making some silly soup!  We also been learning all about Spring and Easter. We have been on a 'signs of spring' on spring eye spy hunt, painted some daffodils after looking at them very carefully and made some Easter nests!  Some of us have enjoyed exploring different textures in the water tray and using new words to describe what we can feel! What a fantastic end to the Spring Term back in Nursery! 

Year 3 have worked incredibly well through the lockdown and have been settling in for the remainder of this very strange term. Thank you to all our families for your continued support.    

Through lockdown, the children have impressed all the year 3 staff with overcoming the challenge of using technology, new experiences, expectations and remote learning. We had a busy day independently engaging with mindfulness, TTRS, Bug Club, and a wider curriculum subject for our morning learning. The children then engaged with the teachers in writing, reading, maths and ended our day with story time.   

In writing, we have been planning and writing narrative and fantasy stories thinking about characters, setting, problem and resolution, ensuring we apply the skills we have been learning, such as expanded noun phrases, speech and including paragraphs. The children have really surprised the teachers with their creative imagination when writing their fantasy stories.   

In reading, we have enjoyed exploring a range of texts around our topic ‘Ancient Egypt’. We have looked at both fiction and non-fiction texts to understand the lives of pharaohs, process of mummification and the River Nile. We have also loved exploring our favourite author Roald Dahl and studied his book ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. We used our knowledge of the story and created a comic strip on the computers as part of our computing lessons. The children enjoyed using the internet and Microsoft word.  

One of our texts was looking at a recipe after we learnt the process from bean to bar and we were excited about making cookie mallows adding lots of chocolate chips in our cookies!  

During the lockdown, in maths, we were learning about multiplying and diving 2 and 3 digit by 1 digit. We have also been practising our 3 and 8 timetables – please encourage the children to keep practising these!   

We have also learnt about adding money and working out change, the children have enjoyed buying toys from our pretend shop. This week, we have moved onto learning about length and converting millimetres into centimetres and centimetres into metres.  

The FS2 children have amazed us with how well they have settled back into the school routine. They have enjoyed being back with their friends and teachers and exploring the classroom and outdoor area. We began by immersing ourselves in the story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. We wrote letters from Goldilocks to the three bears to apologise for eating the porridge, breaking the chair and sleeping in the bed. We ordered objects by size, used playdough to make the three bears and acted out the story with our friends. Then, we learnt all about the changes that occur in Spring and enjoyed planting, painting and searching for signs of Spring in the outdoor provision. To conclude our Literacy learning this half term, we have been learning about Easter. We listened to the Easter story, discussed how and why Christian’s celebrate Easter and have enjoyed lots of Easter crafts. In maths, we have practised recognising, counting and adding using numbers to 10 and have began to use the language of more and fewer to compare two groups of objects. We are looking forward to continuing our learning on ‘Once Upon a Time’ and to begin finding out lots of information about different life cycles in Summer 1!  

The Year 2 team would like to say a big well done to all the children who continued with their learning online during the recent lockdown. We all really enjoyed seeing the children and the children tried so hard. We know that it is no substitute for children being in school, but I am sure you appreciate the effort the children made. The team would also like to send out many thanks to all the parents and older siblings who helped the children during this time. We really do appreciate your efforts.

The children have since settled back into school really well and are working extremely hard to catch up on their learning.

Through our topic ‘The Great Fire of London, we have done lots of learning across different subjects. We have explored the fire in history, reading and writing.  In history we looked at how the fire started and what happened as a result of the fire. The children really enjoy learning about the fire.

In English, we have been using the text The Snail and the Whale. We have explored the language used and used the beautiful pictures to describe the characters in the story.

In phonics, we have been learning all our Set 2 and 3 sounds. We have been finding our sounds in words and practising reading our words quickly without sounding them out.

In Maths, we have finished learning about addition and subtraction. We are using the column method. We are building on our learning in small steps as we know how important it is for children to add and subtract. We have also looked at money and the value of money. We can make different amounts and add amounts together. We have looked at how to work out change.

In D&T, we created a fruit salad. The children had to design their fruit salad and then they made it. They practised the skills that they would need to be able to make it.

In geography, we have been looking at hot and cold places, especially the deserts. We have found out that a desert could be cold as well as hot.

We recently celebrated British Science Week. We made our own paint out of fruit by mashing it and adding water. We also talked about who could be a scientist and discovered that anyone could be. We have some children who can’t wait to be Doctors and Dentists.

Our favourite author is Jeremy Strong, so we are enjoying reading some of his books during storytime. They are really funny and make us laugh. We have been looking at the language that he uses. We have also been reading some of our 10 to read before you leave books.

The Year 2 team have really enjoyed teaching year 2 this half term, even though it was unusual circumstances. It has been fantastic to see them back in school and settling back into their schoolwork so quickly.

Well done Year 2.

The Year 2 team