This week, FS teachers have visited children in their homes and this has helped the children to feel more settled in school. Teachers of years one to six have been available for families for a quick word before or after school and we will continue to do this in the future. For families whose children use the bus please remember teachers will always reply to any email within one school day.

As detailed on the app, our parent information meetings are coming up. The dates and times are on the app. These meetings are to learn more about the curriculum for the year and how families can support their children at home. There will be a handbook to accompany the meeting – these will be added to the school app within a day of the meeting. The meetings will take place in our family learning room – please meet in reception and we will take you there!

As a community school – we want you to get to know us so that we can work together to give children the very best education possible.

Over the coming weeks we will introduce key team members – starting this week with our FS team.

Julie Churm has worked in primary schools for the last 12 years, both in the U.K and in Abu Dhabi and has taught across both key stages as well as EYFS. For the last 3 years she has been a very happy FS1 teacher, developing excellent relationships with the smallest children in school and helping them to make outstanding progress. Julie’s husband is Mr Churm, the Inclusion Teacher, and she has two children, Isabel and Jack, who are in year 3 and 4 at The Aquila School.

Julie is amazing at showing patience and understanding with children and adults too!

Saffron has over 3 years teaching experience working within London Primary Schools, she has experience teaching in EYFS, KS1 and KS2. In addition, she has worked as an Early Years Manager within summer camps in London. Having worked with children across the primary age range Saffron is able to plan and teach engaging and relevant lessons. As well as being a qualified teacher, Saffron holds a Masters qualification in Psychology.

In line with The Aquila School’s focus on amazing learning – we are excited to know that Saffron is amazing at baking!

Inside this newsletter you will find details of the school CAS activities for children in Y2-6 that our teachers will be running free of charge and how to book. As we want the children to be involved in decisions and leading their learning – the range of activities has been selected by the children.

You will also find information from IFA who will be running paid for CAS activities for all children.

Don’t forget to keep checking the app to find out what is happening in our busy school!

Have a lovely weekend – we look forward to seeing the children in school ready for learning by 7.45 on Sunday.

Mr. Howsen and Mrs. Cleworth

This week FS1 Builders have been getting to know Miss Eastabrooke and their class friends. They have been super brave by coming into school and settling in really well. They have also wowed Miss Eastabrooke by already recognising their names and self-registering. FS1 builders have listened carefully to instructions and explored their classroom. They have loved listening to the dinosaur story and even started to role-play with the dinosaurs themselves. Next week our learning will be getting to know our class friends and exploring more of the foundation stage areas. You can help your child at home by sending their special toy to school on Sunday 9th September. Well done children you are already superstars and on your journey to amazing learning.

Well done to all the Explorers this week! They have been adventurous and brave on their first expedition into the unknown of FS1. They have explored all of the toys and have even tidied up after themselves. They are settling in very well learning to leave parents and nannies at the door to the classroom and take care of their own belongings. We had some excellent posing for photographs on Wednesday and they popped into to meet Nurse Kim, even having a lie down on her couch!

We have enjoyed different stories this week including Little Rabbit Foo Foo and Dear Zoo. The children were excited to be able to feel the textures in the book and use their animal puppets to make noises.

Next week we will continue to settle in, getting to know each other and the other FS areas in the school including the shared area, soft play and outdoor areas.

You can help your child at home by finding their favourite toy (of a suitable size) to bring to school next week when we are talking about our first topic toys.

FS2 Designers have had an amazing first week! We have been getting used to school routines and learning our way around the classroom. We have enjoyed playing with play dough and making new friends. Next week, we will be exploring other areas of the school and focusing on the topic of food/healthy eating. The children will start to learn about letters and sounds and practising counting/number recognition. You can help your child at home by encouraging them to notice the sounds within the environment and practising counting to 10.

This week in Makers class we have all been so excited to meet each other and get to know our classroom, while beginning to learn about our brand new school!

Miss Walker and Miss Sadia were fortunate enough to visit some of our pupils at their homes to introduce themselves and get to know the children before they saw us at school.

All of the children have settled in well- choosing in their classroom and making new friends. We are looking forward to getting to know the children even better and continuing our learning next week! We will be looking at healthy eating and discussing foods we want to see in the Aquila Café! You can help your child at home by talking about fruits and vegetables and how they benefit us, as well as reading with your child when you receive their reading book and Learning Together Book.

Our Year One Trailblazer class have been working extremely hard all week. They started the week by discussing expectations and helped Miss Bird create a picture perfect display to show everyone how amazing they really are! Later in the week the class met Timmy the Trailblazer, (a toy mouse), he can`t wait to come home with the children at some point during the school year when your child is V.I.P of the week! The amazing learning did not stop there, the children discussed different parts of the human body. This then led onto what foods are good and not so good for us and what they would like to be served in the Aquila Cafe.

Next week the children will be learning how to represent numbers out of different manipulatives such as counters and numicon. In English the children will be talking about what they did over the summer break to write their own recount. It would useful if you could talk to your children about this over the weekend so they can share this with the class next week.

Well done for a super first week children, have a fantastic weekend you are already amazing learners.

What a fabulous first week in Inventors class! We have been busy settling in to our classroom routines and demonstrated amazing learning through exploring our class name – Inventors. We have learnt about important inventors and inventions in history and why our class bear is called John Logie Bear! We became inventors for the week and worked brilliantly creating our own inventions to help Mr Howsen with his busy job as Principal of our school.

Next week we will be beginning our topic ‘A wonderful world of food’. In English, the children will be learning how to use expanded noun phrases to describe food. To help with this at home you can talk to the children about the food you have at home and ask them to describe it using their senses; for example, crunchy apple or sweet strawberries.

In maths we will be learning how to represent numbers in different ways using partitioning. We will be using a range of mathematical resources to this practically including numicon and dienes.

For example:
Year Two Inventors

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What a fabulous first week in Inventors class! We have been busy settling in to our classroom routines and demonstrated amazing learning through exploring our class name – Inventors. We have learnt about important inventors and inventions in history and why our class bear is called John Logie Bear! We became inventors for the week and worked brilliantly creating our own inventions to help Mr Howsen with his busy job as Principal of our school.

Next week we will be beginning our topic ‘A wonderful world of food’. In English, the children will be learning how to use expanded noun phrases to describe food. To help with this at home you can talk to the children about the food you have at home and ask them to describe it using their senses; for example, crunchy apple or sweet strawberries.

In maths we will be learning how to represent numbers in different ways using partitioning. We will be using a range of mathematical resources to this practically including numicon and dienes.

For example:

You can help at home by practicing counting forwards and backwards from a given number.

It has been a great few days in Year 4 getting to know all our new classmates and exploring all the amazing learning possibilities in our brand new school. This week the children created ‘personality silhouettes’ where they drew pictures and wrote words about all the things they love. They turned out brilliantly and they will make for a great display in our classroom. They also had a chance to explore exciting new games and resources for our classroom and had lots of fun doing so. The children participated in some excellent team work on Wednesday. In groups of 4, the children were given a challenge to create the tallest tower using only a marshmallow, spaghetti and duct tape. They had lots of fun doing this activity and showed excellent critical thinking, co-operation and communication skills.

Next week in English we will be reading and learning about some of the world’s greatest innovators. We will be focusing on the children’s comprehension skills. To help with reading comprehension at home you can ask your child multiple questions as they read a story or non-fiction text.

Next week in maths we will be learning about place value in the number strand. We will be learning the value of each digit in a four-digit number (1,000s, 100s, 10s and 1s).

You can help at home by asking your child the value of each digit in any number.

Entrepreneurs class have been learning about the meaning of their class name and have researched well-known entrepreneurs around the world. As a class we discussed the qualities needed to be an entrepreneur such as resilience and creativity. We then designed our own ingenious entrepreneurial business.

As a class we have also been learning about positive thinking and the impact this can have on facing difficult challenges in school and wider life. We have each created our own personal positive mantra to reflect on and remind ourselves when in a tough situation!