Every Pupil Matters, Every Moment Counts

Auckland College Newsletter

Dear Parents/Carers

This term seems to have absolutely flown by. I can’t believe it’s mid December already.

It’s been another busy time and there have been lots of exciting activities taking place.

The start of the term saw Mr Davies and the Community Service group, from our 1st half-term Enhanced Curriculum, deliver your kind donations we to Refugee Women Connect. It was fantastic to see how motivated our pupils were to make a difference.

The Prep department entered a Young Writer’s poetry writing competition and I am delighted to say that 33 of our pupils from Year 3, 4 and 5 have been chosen to have their work published in a book in the new year.

Our Reception class enjoyed painting Poppy Rocks for Remembrance Day and journeyed to Sefton Park to hide them for others to find.

Miss Bradshaw and the KS4 Art class visited The Walker Art Gallery and The World Museum to help develop

their ideas for their individual Art coursework.

Year 8/9 went on a cross-curricular Art and History trip to Sudley House with Mr davies and Miss Bradshaw.

Miss Bradshaw and the art students across the school have been extremely busy. If you have Twitter, you can follow @AucklandCollArt and see examples of their work.

We raised £286 for Childreen In Need by wearing our hair in some very wacky styles. The effort made by everyone was fantastic, including the staff! Miss Scholfield and Miss Claire were the winners of the staff prize!

Last week the Pre-Prep and Reception classes held their Winter Performances at The Grace Family Church. The children were amazing and performed brilliantly and with such confidence for age 3-5. It is always fantastic when we can share these fantastic moments with our families and it was brilliant that so many were able to come along.

Last week also saw our Prep classes participate in our Winter Gala event, which this year was Strictly Come Auckland at Kings’

Leadership Academy. Each class worked so hard preparing for their performance and it was a very entertaining show. The scoring was very difficult and although Year 5 came out as overall winners, each class are champions in my eyes. Year 5 enjoyed their Pizza Party, courtesy of the PTA, which was a fabulous way to end the term.

I must thank the PTA committee again for their hard work and for creating such a fantastic atmosphere before the show with the stalls and refreshments they had on offer.

I am certain there are lots of other events I’ve not mentioned, however I look forward to the Spring Term and sharing more with you then.

I hope you have a fantastic break during this holiday season and enjoy a very happy new year.

Kind regards,

Miss Boyd

A Message from Miss Boyd, Head Teacher

Contents:

☺ Welcome

☺ Important information

☺ Achievements

☺ Pre-Prep and Prep Class information

☺ Secondary News

☺ Photographs this term

Every Pupil Matters, Every Moment Counts

All Pupils return to school on Tuesday 8th January 2019.

The last date of Holiday Club for Prep and Pre -Prep pupils is 21st December, we will re-open on 3rd January 2019.

Follow the Art department on Twitter @AucklandCollArt

Follow our Facebook page—Auckland College Independent School Liverpool

Join our closed PTA Facebook group—Auckland College PTA I

mpo

rtant

Mess

age

s

Auckland College Newsletter December 2018


Achievements

What has Pre-Prep 2 been up to? - Mrs Collins

This Half Term has been very exciting for Pre Prep 2, and all the children have worked very hard.

The children have looked at many Festivals and Celebrations over the last few weeks.

Firstly, the children looked at Bonfire Night, and how we could stay safe. They created beautiful Firework pictures and Rockets for our class display.

The children also looked at the Festival of Diwali, and listened to the story of Rama and Sita. The children created Diva Lamps for the class display.

Pre Prep 2 learned about Remembrance Day and the importance it has for many people,

and why we remember our fallen soldiers. The children enjoyed watching the CBBC Remembrance Animation, and talked about the war through the eyes of the animals.

Currently, the children are learning about Christmas, and how it is celebrated by people around the world.

Pre Prep 2 has also been learning many new Phase 2 sounds and meeting more Letterland Characters in Phonics. The children have also started to look at Phase 2 Tricky Words.

In Numeracy, the children have enjoyed learning about Shapes, and going on a Shape Hunt around school.

I would like to wish all the children and their families a Happy Holiday.

Secondary Merits Secondary Attendance Prep Merits Prep Attendance

Gold

Alana Oxley

Gold

Zorzic Ismail

Gold

Oliver Olcay Asan

Gold

Daisy Dodgson

Silver

Hariksan Pushbagar

Silver

Amanda Collins

Silver

Joshua Atkinson

Silver

Erika Wangerin

Bronze

Chloe Brown

Bronze

Tarek Soliman

Bronze

Ella Baker

Bronze

Holly McClelland

What has Pre-Prep 1 been up to? - Miss Lloyd

This half term in Pre Prep 1 has been very exciting. We have learned lots of new things! We have continued to learn new Phase 2 sounds such as b, f and ll and have been further developing pencil control by doing Dough Disco and singing shark finger family.

We have continued to develop our number recognition and counting skills and have also introduced some positional language. A snowman came to our class and froze some of our toys! We talked about how the ice felt and what happened to it when it melted, we then made some pretend snow to write our letter sounds in!

In Expressive Art and Design, we have been singing to familiar songs and responding to music with dance. We have also been creating autumn pictures and our own rockets for

Bonfire night, as well as learning a little about Remembrance Day and why we wear poppies. Physical Education lessons have involved lots of listening and communication games and we have started to look at balance.

We have recently taken part in our class Winter Performance, this involved lots of practising and singing.

The children loved this and were brilliant during the performance!

What has Pre-Prep 3 been up to? - Miss Smith

This half term Pre-Prep 3 has been learning about 2D shapes and repeating patterns. The children found lots of shapes in the environment and hexagons were popping up in the most unexpected places!

We have had a visit from the Snow Queen and she turned our den into an ice cave and froze some of our animals in ice. The children had lots of fun figuring out ways to melt the ice and release the animals. We looked at the story of the Snow Queen and talked about the characters before working in groups to sequence the story. We have also looked at igloos and Eskimos and some of the animals that live in the North and South Poles.

Pre Prep 3 have learnt lots of new songs and actions for the Christmas performance and it was a resounding

success on both days! The children were delighted to receive a letter from Santa praising the performance, which he heard all about from his little Robin redbreast. We have also been making our own salt dough to make a Christmas decoration and talking about changing textures.

In PE we have been practising moving in a variety of ways, including crawling, slithering and skipping. We have also started to look at the different ways to jump from a bench and how to land appropriately.

Finally, in Spanish children have been experimenting and mixing coloured liquid to make new colours and learn the Spanish names.

Reception have had a wonderful Autumn term! We have been learning lots of carols for our winter performance, along with this the children have been practising dancing to the music and keeping in tine with the rhythm.

We have also had a very special visitor this year, he arrived all the way from the North Pole! Alf the Elf came with a letter from Santa and lots of treats. He has been very mischievous in our classroom every day! He has also been rewarding the children for good behaviour!

In Art, the children have been using salt dough to make Christmas decorations and they have made observations of the dough changing

state from moist and malleable to dry and hard.

In Literacy, the children have been really focusing on learning new sounds of phase 2 and 3. They have been working on their blending skills in both reading and writing. They have also been starting to write short, simple sentences too. They have been practising reading and writing high frequency words and this has greatly improved the pace of their reading.

We have been reading lots of fairy tales this term and acted them out too!

Meanwhile in Numeracy, we have been looking at shapes, space and measurement, measuring length and

weight. We have used our hands, gloves and shoes to compare length and weight too. The children have also really enjoyed working with money and learning about coin value.

What has Reception been up to? - Miss Scholfield

What has year 2 been up to? Miss Bainbridge and Miss Quinn

What has year 1 been up to?- Miss Kelly

What has Year 3 been up to? - Miss Lyons and Miss Crowley

Year 1 has been working hard this term and continue to produce wonderful work in all subjects.

In Literacy this term, pupils have completed the unit ‘Playing with Language within Poetry’. Pupils have read several ‘Tongue Twister’ poems and studied ‘Nonsense Poems’. They have thoroughly enjoyed creating their own poems, like the ones read in class.

In Numeracy, Year 1 have been focussing on numbers in relation to other numbers and where they belong on a 100 square. Pupils have worked on partitioning numbers into tens and units, as well as doubling and halving even numbers.

This term, pupils have thoroughly enjoyed practicing and rehearsing for the Annual winter performance. The children enjoyed coming up with the idea of doing a dance based on the this year’s film of ‘The Greatest Showman’. It was a fantastic evening and really we think Year 1 should have won!

Year 1 look forward to the challenges of next term and I am sure all pupils will continue to make excellent progress across the Year 1 curriculum.

We have been working extremely hard in Year 3 during this half term. In Literacy, we have been focusing on non-fiction texts, identifying the ways in which information texts are created. We have used the key features of report texts to create our own reports on our favourite sports. We have tried extremely hard to proof read and edit our independent writing and use this skill to identify the ways in which we can improve and up-level our own writing. Meanwhile, in Numeracy, we have focused on multiplication and division, using this understanding to work out fractions of amounts as well as equivalent fractions.

In Geography, we have gained an understanding of the country we live in. We can use an atlas and a compass to locate counties, countries, rivers and seas found within the UK. Both Year 3 classes really enjoyed working together to prepare for the winter performance. They worked so hard perfecting our moves and lines. We were unlucky on the night, but we know we are all winners!

Year 2 Red have had a great half term. We have been practising for Auckland’s winter performance and are were excited to perform on the night.

In Literacy we have looked at information texts, letters and poetry. We have written our own letter to the elves. We have worked on using the key features to identify what we have done well and how we could improve next time.

In Numeracy we have looked at different ways to add and subtract mentally. We have also started to look at telling the time to the nearest 5 minutes in both analogue and digital and have loved using the clocks.

Year 2 Yellow has had a great half term and really enjoyed their winter

performance.

In Literacy we have focussed on letter writing and the children wrote letters to Santa pretending to be a mischievous elf and asking for forgiveness.

In Numeracy we were working on properties of shapes and also data. We did many surveys within the class and presented our data in graphs.

In Science we learnt about habitats of different animals and also food chains and then Miss Bradshaw led an Art session drawing and painting different animals in their habitats.

Happy holidays and best wishes for the new year.


This half term Year 4 has been working extremely hard in literacy and we had a great few weeks working on poetry in particular. We discovered a lot of hidden poets, within our class and wrote some great Christmas poems.

Recently we’ve had some very exciting news, that some members of Year 3, 4 and 5 will have their poems published, after entering the, ‘Young Writers Competition.’ We have also been learning from some great fantasy writers and have learned a lot of different writing techniques and in turn, we’ve written some great fantasy stories.

We have also been focusing on peer and self- assessing our own writing and have begun altering our writing based on the feedback, consequently becoming more confident and

independent writers.

Year 4 has worked extremely hard in Numeracy; we have been looking at several different topics this half term, focusing on working with larger numbers, multiplication, division and how we can use number facts to support us in doing these calculations. Year 4 has become a confident class of problem solvers in working with more complicated word problems.

In the run up to Christmas, Year 4 has worked hard on their Christmas performance and have really come together as a class. The class has developed confidence in themselves and each other and has worked together to choreograph a class dance. I am proud of what Year 4 has achieved and can’t wait to see

them continue to do so, in the new year. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a great start to the new year!

the children have focussed on carrying on mental calculations, identifying common multiples, common factors and prime factors. They also learned about negative numbers where they added and subtracted negative numbers in context of temperature. In shapes and measures the children have learned how to find areas and perimeters of regular and compound shapes and they also learned how to calculate volumes of cubes and cuboids. At the moment we are introducing Algebra and the children are trying to solve missing number

This half term Year 6 children have been working really hard on their Winter Gala performance in addition to their Mathematics and English lessons.

In Mathematics, Year 6 children have been learning about how to do short and long multiplications of whole and decimal numbers using written column methods. They took this knowledge further to solve multiplication word problems in Maths mastery. The children have also learned the order of operations and BODMAS. In numbers, Year 6

problems and to express such problems algebraically.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

What has Year 6 - Mrs Mukankusi


What has Year 4 been up to? - Miss Trainor

ordering, comparing, adding and subtracting fractions with related denominators. Additionally, we have been learning how to classify the properties of 3D shapes and we have been developing our skills in mental arithmetic.

Year 5 has been practising tremendously hard for the 3rd Annual Winter Gala. The children have not only learned how to play the recorder, but they have learned how to play a full song. Their progress has been amazing!

I am proud with how much Year 5 has progressed this half term and I look forward to an exciting term in the new year.

Year 5 has had a busy half term, they have been working extremely hard.

In literacy, we have been focusing on performance poetry, recounts and biographies. We enjoyed performing our own poems, that were based on fairy tales, in class and writing biographies about people we admire.

We have been working hard on improving our writing and helping our peers to improve, by marking each other’s work. Furthermore, we are delighted to announce that a number of our class’ poems have been chosen for publication in a Young Writers poetry book.

In numeracy, we have been focusing on fractions and decimals, including

What has Year 5 been up to? - Miss Dobbins

This term Year 6 has been going under the hood of a computer to learn about computer components such as: the central processing unit, monitor, keyboard, computer data storage, graphic card, sound card, speakers and motherboard.

Year 7 has been researching computer gaming history and has created an interactive presentation using Google slides to present their work.

Year 8/9 has been learning about simple Boolean logic [for example, AND, OR and NOT] and some of its uses in circuits and programming. They have been learning about how numbers can be represented in binary and have learnt to convert and preform simple binary addition sums.

Pupils following the Cambridge

Nationals in Information Technologies in Year 10/11 have been working hard this term covering unit R012 in preparation for their December mock exam and assessment.

Pupils following the Functional Skills Pathway in Year 10/11 have been developing skills using DTP and creating presentations for a specific target audience. Pupils have also begun to understand the correct etiquette when sending and receiving emails in business.

Key Stage 4 pupils have been developing their reading and comprehension skills to explore explicit and implicit meanings in texts.

English

During the term pupils have enjoyed a range of topics:

Year 7 has enjoyed reading the Louis Sachar novel There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom and have been learning how to use PEE chains.

Year 8/9 has been reading extracts from a range of fiction texts such as The Hunger Games and have developed their understanding of fictional characters.

Spanish — Miss Burke

ICT—Miss Hodson

English - Mr Davies History

grammar rules of masculine and feminine and finally reading and writing a class poem about colours.

Year 6 enjoyed a colours carousel of activities and were excellent at using the bilingual dictionaries!

Year 7 produced their first extended piece of writing about themselves, which resulted in some lovely work ready for display.

Year 8/9 have been learning about jobs and saying what they would like to be and why.

Our Prep classes have been working very hard in Spanish this term.

Pre-Prep and Reception have been focusing on colours and clothes.

Year 1 have enjoyed describing their pets and have been very animated with their actions.

Year 2 continue to impress with their recall of questions and classroom phrases and produced some lovely sentences about their school equipment.

KS2 have focused on colours; writing them correctly in Spanish, applying

Meanwhile the GCSE class are working hard on answering a range of questions to a strict time limit.

They have enjoyed our food topic and are desperate to go for tapas next term.


In History this term Year 7 pupils have been studying The Battle of Hastings whilst Year 8/9 pupils have been studying aspects of Britain during the Middle Ages. As part of a cross-curricular project with Art, our pupils visited the William Lever exhibition at Sudley House.

Our Key Stage 4 pupils have been studying The Norman Conquest as part of the OCR syllabus; the Year 11 pupils have also been preparing for their mock examinations at the end of this term.


Science—Mr Kelly Year 7

This term Year 7 have been studying forces. As part of this topic, the Year 7s are learning about the heliocentric model of the Solar System, building their own mobiles to demonstrate the model!

Year 8/9

Similarly, Year 8/9 have also been looking at forces, albeit in more detail. They have been designing their own experiment to help them calculate the density of three different cubes. In addition, the class have also looked at calculating voltage and current, as well as identifying breaks and potential issues in the circuits.

Year 10

This term, Year 10 have been focusing

on inheritance, variation, and evolution. The two classes performed a dissection to gain insight into evidence for evolution. Did you know we share a similar bone structure in our arms to birds? Year 10 worked themselves down to the bone…literally. Well done for all your hard work this term!

Year 11

With Year 11 having now completed the combined science course, this term we have been focusing on areas we found more challenging over the last two years. The class have completed Punnett squares, explained electrolysis, and compared three different types of bonding. Well done Year 11, good luck in your mocks!

Pop Art Portraits, has been the title for year 7 project this half term. During this, year 7 have been developing their ideas through investigations into the Pop Art movement and in particular researching into the work of artist, Julian Opie. Pupils have been introduced to colour theory and warm/cool colour groups. Throughout the term they have experimented with block colour ranges and explored drawing facial proportions accurately. Next term, year 7 will be developing their ideas using the Architecture of the Spanish artist Antoni Gaudi as inspiration for their 3D work.

‘Food, glorious food’ has been the inspiration for year 8 and 9, in Art, this half term. During this project pupils have developed their ideas through investigations into how, for many years, artists have used ‘Food’ as an inspiration for their work. Throughout the project pupils have demonstrated critical understanding of sources, in particular, researching the work of Wayne Thiebaud. They have explored creating tints and shades in paint and oil pastels and drawing 3D ellipses, collage and printing techniques.

During this term, year 10 & 11 have been reaching the final stages of their ‘Pattern’ project. They have been experimenting with various materials and techniques such as painting, collage, printing and drawing, to create their final designs. Pupils have researched into the work of varied artists of their choice to develop a personal and meaningful response relating to their own personal theme. Both year 10 & 11 will start a new project next term, to start on their exam prep. I look forward to seeing the development of their creative ideas at this exciting new start!

Year 10/11 Trip to the Walker Art Gallery.

Art—Year 7 & Year 8/9

Art—Year 10/11

Our Gallery of Stars


Every Pupil Matters, Every Moment Counts

Documents

Transcript of Every Pupil Matters, Every Moment Counts