School Council Update

The School Council have been working hard to improve life at Great Gaddesden.

So far this term, they have attended a charity fundraising event at Hemel Ski Centre (thanks to Rowan for the invitation!); they have created an initiative to encourage children to walk to school and they have met the mayor.  On top of this, they have used their weekly meetings to share suggestions from class suggestion boxes - including:

New play equipment for the bark area
More lunch-time clubs
An opportunity to have quiet time in the library or church
A Winter Ball
A girls football team

To name just a few!  We look forward to updating you with our progress with these suggestions.

Visits and Visitors

This term, children in Years 5 & 6 are learning about Buddhism.  To support this work we have visited the Amaravati Monastery and have been fortunate enough to have a visit from one of the nuns who was able to answer questions such as:

"Why did you decide to become a nun?"
"Are your family buddhists?"
"Which of the five precepts is most important to you?"

Years 5 & 6 are using the knowledge gained from their trip; their visit from the nun and their own research to create non-fiction, digital books.  We look forward to sharing them!

School Council

Congratulations to Krysta, Hattie, Eleanor, Aidan, Aaron and Fallon who make up the school council this year!


We will meet every Monday lunch-time to discuss any suggestions put into suggestion-boxes.  The school-council will then feed-back to their classes and there will be an entry regarding the school council made in each newsletter, so that the whole school is kept informed about the work of the school council.


So far this term, we have discussed:


e-Safety
Our school council representatives have been talking to their classes about what e-Safety is and how to stay safe online.


A wish list for FOGGS
They have shared a wish list with the PTA to provide suggestions for any fund-raising this year.


Anti-bullying
The school council will be hosting an anti-bullying assembly on Monday 12th October.  They will talk to the school about what bullying is; what bullying isn't and what you should do if you ever feel you are being bullied or you ever witness bullying.


Traffic (before and after school)
They are also going to be launching a campaign to encourage children to walk to school (or, at the very least, walk part of the way to school!) to help keep children healthy and to ease the congestion at the beginning and end of the school day. Keep your eyes on our newsletter to find out more!


I am confident that the school council have a productive year ahead of them!

Buddhist Monastery

During the Year 5/6 trip to Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, we had opportunities to:

Experience what meal-times look like with monks and nuns
Visit the temple
See a stupa (buddhist monument)
Meditate.

All of this helped us to gain a deeper understanding of the Buddhist faith.  Below are just a sample of the interesting facts we discovered:

Kaia:  Buddhists don't worship a God.  Instead they follow the teachings of the Buddha who lived approximately 2500 years ago.
Ben:  You can meditate in four ways: sitting, standing, walking or lying down.
Grace:  If a monk is in training they wear white robes; once they have become a monk, they wear saffron robes.
Dylan:  There are 227 precepts (rules) that a Buddhist monk must follow.
Chloe:  The monk showing us around had not touched money since 1994!

School House Garden

We were excited to see how well everything had grown in the garden during the summer. There is a lot of jobs to do over the coming half term and Mr Trueman has kindly given us some spring flowers to plant. We also have the bulbs that we found when clearing the flower beds last term to replant into tubs too.  

Yrs 1 & 2 were the first out today and they found the abundance of caterpillars and their eggs on the radish leaves. Thankfully the pumpkin plant has fuzzy leaves protecting them, although unfortunately the slugs have eaten a few of the flowers. We hope of the 11 flowers left, we will get some more pumpkins and our one current baby pumpkin continues to grow and turn orange. 

 

 

 

The Strawberry plant is doing really well and seems to have bedded down well in its stacked troughs,however all of the fruit is still green. Years 3 & 4 we're quick to tell us that the strawberry plants need sun as well as water and suggested we moved the plant to the sunniest spot we could find in the garden, so we did. All the children that came into the garden today helped to pick up the rotting apples from the grass. Various tools and methods were used for collecting them with the children showing great energy and enthusiasm, with over 120 collected in under an hour!

 

Nursery and Reception were quick to find the bright yellow tomato plant flowers and then counted four green baby tomatoes that still have a long way to go.  They pulled up a few carrots and decided to replant them for a little longer as they were no bigger than our little fingers. Two of the sunflower plants have grown so tall that they are taller than Mrs Johnson and Mrs Upton, we're going to measure them next week and look forward to collecting all their seeds.

Welcome Back!

We have returned to school ready for another fantastic year!  We have enjoyed welcoming our new families and children.

Our value for September is 'Sharing' and yesterday I heard about a lovely example of this value being displayed at home by Dexter in Reception.  Dexter had helped to share out pancakes for friends and family and he designed a super assault course in his back garden so that all the children coming round for a family party could share in playing with it.  Super sharing Dexter - keep it up!

Another special mention for someone in Reception:  Luke has recently used the ipad app 'BookCreator' to produce a wonderful 'How to make a model' guide.  He has used photos and voice-overs to explain his work.  Well done Luke!












Finally, a special mention to Reece who was star of the week in Early Years last week.  Reece has returned to school with a real desire to learn and has been really enthusiastic about all of the exciting opportunities available to him in his classroom.

Reflection

This morning, Miss Groves led our collective worship on our new value of 'Reflection'.

Children from Years 1 - 6 were asked to reflect on what has been particularly enjoyable over this academic year.  Examples were varied and extensive as you will see...!

College Lakes trip (Maddie)

Christingle Service (Krysta)

R.A.F. Museum (Jack)

Egg-rolling competition (Aaron)

Discos (Hattie, Simeon & Aidan)

Football (Hannah, Callum & Hattie)

English lessons (Callum, Andrew & Simeon)

Maths lessons (Hannah & Andrew)

Bark area (everyone!)

Viking Day (Hattie, Eleanor, Andrew & Simeon)

Story-writing (Callum, Hattie & Simeon)

Hudnall Park

Being with friends (everone)

PGL (All of Years 5 & 6!)

The Globe Theatre

Egg-decorating competition

P.E. with Mr Murphy

Swimming at Berkhamsted School (Meadow & Grace)

Rounders Club

Cheerleading

Street Dance (Meadow)

Celtic Harmony trip

Getting my cards (Rowan)

Using 'Scratch' software in Computing lessons

Harry Potter World trip

Oxford University trip

Watford Penalty Shoot-out

War Horse trip

Bollywood dancing

Art Club

Football league (Years 5 & 6)

Drama in English lessons

Sapphire Gymnastics (Meadow)

 Years 3 & 4 at Celtic Harmony to support their learning of the Stone Age.

 Years 1 & 2 at College Lakes in Tring to support learning in Science.

 Years 3 - 6 visit the Globe Theatre to participate in a Macbeth workshop.

Years 3 & 4 have a one-night residential trip to Hudnall Park.

We will use the information gained to ensure we continue to provide a varied and dynamic curriculum as we move into the new academic year.