St Luke’s Church of England School Newsletter 26 February 2016 Message from Mrs Tyler Thank you to Miss Milne and the girls from St Margaret’s School who are running our weekly Maths Lunch Club, which started this week. We are fortunate to enjoy such a close working relationship with our neighbouring school and are looking forward to their next venture at St Luke’s when their GCSE students will run a carousel of French activities for our International Week. Next week is Book Week and on Tuesday we will be welcoming, Adrian Beckingham, author of “The Diamond Ship” and “The King of the Things”. He will be running storytelling workshops for each year group, involving music and drama. Adrian will stay until the end of the day in order to sell and sign copies of his books. On Thursday morning at 8.30am, Danny from West End Books will be making her annual visit. As well as a selection of books from the bookshop, she will be bringing the books which can be exchanged for national ‘World Book Day’ vouchers. The school has received one voucher per child, so to ensure everyone has their voucher on the day, we will give them out as the children arrive at school on the Thursday morning. To mark World Book Day, we would also like the children to dress up as a book character on Thursday – we will have a parade and a book prize for the best costume. Last night I attended the Camden Planning meeting where councillors approved Mount Anvil’s proposal for the King’s College site. I believe it was imperative that we, who have benefited from St Luke’s being opened, petitioned for the school expansion in order that others living in this area have a local school to attend. On this note, we heard this week that 115 parents have applied for the 15 Reception places this September! Now that we know there will not be a school expansion, our next responsibility is to ensure that the development does not compromise the health and safety of our children, both during the building work and after completion. News from Reception This week we began our new topic on Plants by exploring the texture of flowers, herbs, fruit plants and seeds and playing in our Garden Centre role-play area, where the children have enjoyed playing ‘shop’ as well as digging and planting in the soil. The children learned about the life cycle of a sunflower through a variety of activities and were able to write the stages of the lifecycle in order. The children also practised their cutting skills to make flowers and we used the petals to practise writing addition and subtraction number sentences. In PE the children are learning to jump and land safely and on Tuesday they used the gymnastics equipment in the hall to practise this. They were all very brave when walking along the high beam with Miss Martin! In the coming weeks we will be developing the children’s understanding of plant growth and where fruit and vegetables come from, as well as talking to the children about why getting enough sleep, eating well and exercising are so important. Reception Class Golden Book Jed for lots of independent learning. Reuben for helpfulness in the classroom. Maths Monkey Lex for making lots of ‘flower’ number sentences. KS1 Class Golden Book Aviv for using good punctuation and great handwriting. Edward for solving problems with Maths patterns. Maths Monkey Eado for thinking about tens and units when adding two larger numbers.   KS2 Certificate of Merit Year 3 Carla for such imaginative writing. Year 4 Hannah for her excellent attitude to learning. KS2 Maths Mascot Sahara for persevering when problem solving.

2015-16 and 2016-17 term dates are on the school website. News from KS1 In Maths, Year 1 has been using balance scales and digital scales to weigh ingredients to make play dough. They have been learning the vocabulary - grams and kilograms, heavy, heavier and heaviest. Year 2 has been identifying tens and units and using this knowledge they have added two digit numbers on an empty number line. Ask your child to show you this strategy by solving 52 + 36 =. In English we have written recounts thinking about using the past tense, in particular the ‘ed’ suffix. We have also written invitations, so have a good look in the school bag. Don’t forget it’s our class assembly and morning tea party next Friday – 4.3.16 at 9.10am. News from Lower KS2 The first week back is always a busy one and we have ‘hit the ground running’ with our work around stories from other cultures. We have focused on Aboriginal stories from Australia. The children have even started to turn one of the stories in to a British version – ask to hear about their version of The Rainbow Snake or The Kangaroo and The Porpoise. Today in Maths we have carried out some problem solving. The children were all so engaged in their learning and we are so pleased that even when the problem became quite tricky, nobody gave up! We had always planned for the children to learn about the EU this half term, so what a spot of luck that the in/out referendum has featured so heavily in the news. We are going to learn about Europe in general and get the children to use their knowledge to answer the question - Are we stronger in Europe? Finally, well done to the boys and girls who took part in this week’s sports competition - it was great to hear about so much sportsmanship! Sports News from Mrs Shulemaja We were proud of our Yr 4 Athletics team, who took part in the Camden ‘Sports Hall Athletics’ event on Thursday – the children participated in a range of running, throwing and jumping events. It is still early days for St Luke’s School sports, as many of these competitions are for the older year groups, but we feel we should take as many opportunities as possible for our children to experience competing against other schools. Sports Relief Day – Thursday 17th March: We are planning a day of sporting activities. Children may wear their own sports kit to school that day in return for £2, which we will donate to Sports Relief. Dates for Diary (Spring term) 2015-16 and 2016-17 term dates are on the school website.