Dear Parents and Carers,

I would firstly like to congratulate the children on their achievements and efforts throughout the first term. They have laid the foundations for the year ahead and although there remains much to focus on, learning behaviours, confidence and routines are in place that will allow them to thrive in the coming months.

Our Harvest celebration was a delightful occasion and I know that the children’s performances both entertained us and left us all with a real sense of pride. Thank you to all of our families who were able to join us on the day, helping to make it so special. This was a perfect end to the term and I am very much looking forward to the Christmas events to come.

I am pleased to report that we have started to see an immediate improvement in the standards of uniform since my request to you all to support this important aspect of school life and would encourage this to continue into term two.

Well done to our cross-country runners who competed so well last week, representing our school in an impressive display of fitness and determination. Equally our girls football team, who represented our school brilliantly. Please see our sports report from Miss Barsby.

Finally, I would like to thank our hard-working team of staff, governors and friends for their commitment to every child at Christ Church, you all make a huge difference. I wish everyone a happy and safe half term and look forward to our return on Monday 4^th November. 

Kind regards

Mark Oldfield

Headteacher

Inset and Academy days for the rest of the year (these are days when school staff are in training involved in other school oepration - children are not in school on these days):

• Monday 6th January - Inset day
• Friday 23rd May - Academy day
• Monday 21st July - Inset day
• Tuesday 22nd July - Inset day

Prayers written by our worship council for Harvest festival:

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Dear LORD,

Thank you for this world and all its beauty; the goodness of the land and the depths of the sea. Sadly though, we haven’t looked after it as you hoped… We caused climate change, and pollution in the environment. We pray that people will stop de-forestation, and decrease the damage we are causing. We need your help, God, to turn this around! Please help us on our mission to recreate what we have lost. We know you understand

Amen

Dear God,

Thank you that you hear us when we talk to you. Please help those who are struggling after the two hurricanes in the U.S.A. Please bring peace to the conflict in Israel and Gaza and the whole Middle East region. Please guide World leaders to put an end to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and help all people who face danger. We pray also for the 1000s of refugees in our world; please work through the aid agencies to bring them the relief and support they need.

Thank you. Amen                                       

Dear God, 

Thank you for all the good gifts you give to us each day; for clean  water, for shelter, for our families, for food to eat, for health, and for our pets. We pray for those in Bristol who use the food banks. And for those who live on the streets of our city. We thank you for our school community; please keep us all safe through the half term holiday, and bring us back refreshed and ready to learn.

Amen

Well done Reception for completing your first term at school. It has been a busy and fun-filled time culminating in your first performance for our Harvest celebration. We are so proud of all that you have achieved and we loved watching your wonderful Scarecrow rhyme in the church!              

We have been busy learning all about what happens during the festival of Diwali and hearing stories linked to this colourful and exciting celebration! Some of us acted out the story of Rama and Sita with masks and made colourful rangoli patterns using loose parts and chalks. We made our own floating lotus flowers and made Diwali cards for our friends. This is a special time for both Hindus and Sikhs and will be happening during half term. Look out for the wonderful firework displays in and around Bristol.                                                                   

Maths has been very ‘hands on’ with lots of practical challenges to find 1 more and 1 less than a given number. This has involved building Lego towers, putting more people on the bus and listening carefully to the amount of beats being played on a drum!

We have been impressing our adults with how many sounds that we have learned and how some of us are now blending them to read and even using them to write some CVC words! Wow!

We are continuing to practise our listening and co-operation skills during our P.E. sessions as well as keeping our bodies safe and healthy. We have enjoyed playing some simple team and spatial awareness games in our insect groups.

We hope you have a restful and enjoyable half term and look forward to seeing you all back after the break. 

The Reception Team

This week in Year 1 we have been busy preparing for harvest festival! In literacy we learned the second half of our poem Autumn Leaves which we performed at the church on Thursday. Year 1 looked fab in their leafy crowns and totally blew us away with their fantastic performance - well done Year 1!

In RE we learned about the Hindu celebration Diwali, the festival of lights. We made Rangoli patterns and drew firework pictures to symbolise the victory of light over dark. 

Finally, we took some well deserved time to celebrate completing our first term of Year 1 by playing some outdoor games in PE. 

The children have worked incredibly hard this term and should be very proud of all they’ve achieved so far. We hope you all manage to get some rest this October half term and we look forward to seeing you again soon.

Miss Noble and Miss Beck 

This week year 2 have been creating some beautiful artwork with clay. First the children made pinch pots egg cups with ears and feet just like a bunny. They used moulding techniques and specialist tools to shape and sculpt the designs. Then the children formed bunny figurines using clay by following a demonstration and applying similar techniques to shape and mould their bunnies. We can't wait for you to see them when they have been fired in the kiln and painted.

We made it! It has been an extra long term to kick start year 3 and we are extremely proud that the children have continued to work hard and stay positive throughout. Even though it has been the last week, we’ve still been go go go! The children have mastered column addition and subtraction now, thank you for assisting with this in the homework as well. We have also come to an end for this terms book ‘Into the forest’ which the children innovated into their own story using all the skills we have learnt this term, we hope you enjoyed looking through these at home. Finally, we took on an ‘unplugged’ computing unit trying to understand networks, Wifi, files and how websites work. As suspected, the children probably knew more on this than the teachers did. After being so busy, we didn’t get a chance to take any pictures, apologies for this. Hopefully the wonderfull harvest performance by the children can make up for this.

Happy Half term! See you in Term 2

This week, Year 4 wrapped up their Music unit on motifs with a Roman twist, and it’s been nothing short of legendary! The children composed, recorded, and performed their very own musical motifs, drawing inspiration from ancient Rome. They truly rose to the occasion, creating tunes that were simply Caesar-sational! With creative beats and bold rhythms, they’ve shown they’re ready to march to the beat of their own drum—and the performances were music to everyone’s ears!

Year 5 have been learning all about Fairtrade in Geography this week. Our key questions have been “What is Fair trade?” and “Is Fair trade fair?” It’s been great to explore case studies of banana growers on St Lucia and tea plantation owners and decide what we think about how much money they get paid for their crops. 

In PE we have been continuing to perfect our basketball skills, tackling drills with enthusiasm and thinking about how we can use those skills when we play a match. We’re looking forward to the opportunity to play for Christchurch when the Ashton Park Schools Sports Partnership competition comes around. 

We’ve really enjoyed our Science topic on Space this term and, despite learning lots, we still always have loads of questions showing how curious we are! Last week we focussed on Earth and thought about how the moon orbits the Earth, while the Earth orbits the sun. It got our heads in to a bit of a spin but the models definitely helped. This week we have learnt about the different phases of the moon and we tried to represent this using Oreo cookies. This was definitely one of our favourite lessons!

This week we would like to extend our thanks to Clifton College for inviting us to an author talk by Onjali Q Rauf. The talk which happened last Friday afternoon, was awesome! Onjali was so much fun and her talk encouraged us to think about social issues whilst igniting our passion for stories. She shared personal experiences that have influenced her writing, including her experience as a young carer. In her new book, ‘The Letter with the Golden Stamp’, the main character, Aubrey, is young carer. Onjali read from her book in a Welsh accent (because Aubrey is Welsh) – she said one of her inspirations for becoming a writer was a childhood teacher who would read the class stories with different voices – her Welsh accent was brilliant!

The absolute highlight of this week was our presentation by Sebastian and Kirsty ‘What does it mean if someone is deaf?’ We learned so much. We loved the listening activity and gained so much insight into being deaf. At the end we enjoyed learning the British Sign Language Alphabet and other phrases.

The PTA Christmas fair is just one month away! We cannot wait to see you all there - it’s going to be FANTASTIC! 

Do you own a business or know somebody who does? We are looking for donations for our raffle (big or small) - please email the PTA [email protected] if you can help. 

if you're having a clear out over half term, please keep good condition books, toys, games, puzzles, Christmas jumpers and pyjamas, and empty jars for the Christmas Fair

We’re also looking for volunteers to help everything run smoothly. Your class reps will be sharing more information over the coming weeks. 

Let’s make this the best one yet!

Well done to our cross-country runners who competed so well last week, representing our school in an impressive display of fitness and determination. All of the children who took part should feel a great deal of pride for putting themselves forward for such a gruelling competition - we are certainly very proud of them. A special mention must go to Teddy in Year 4, who topped his group, coming in in 1st place out of 64 runners - quite the achievement. 

Last week a group of our Year 6 girls went off to represent our school in their first football tournament of the year. Our team faced 8 other schools throughout the day, and came away with an equal display of wins and loses. The children were a pleasure to take, and did not stop smiling throughout the whole day! Well done girls - now bring on the league!