St Dunstan’s, Cheam,

C of E Primary School

.sch.uk

8th July 2016 Newsletter No. 050

The 2015/16 academic year is nearly at an end and earlier this week we held the last PTFA meeting of the term. Together with Ms Corby and Mr Dawson it was an opportunity to reflect on the success of events this year, consider funding opportunities to continue to enhance and support children's learning in the school and to start to plan school community events for next year. Thanks to those who completed our recent survey, we have lots of great suggestions for future events and activities to consider and take forward. If you would like to support the planning and delivery of future school events or have skills and expertise you think could be of use, then please email us at

StDunstansptfa@gmail.com

I cannot believe it is nearly the end of the school year—it seems to have flown by faster than ever this year! The school has been a ‘hive of industry’ once again over the past two weeks. We have enjoyed an amazing focus on science with our living eggs arriving last week—

the awe and wonder around the school as the children witnessed new life was an absolute joy to see! This week our children have all been budding scientists and have enjoyed a vast array of activities. A huge thank you to Mrs Farrell for her co-ordination of this wonderful and exciting week of learning. Many classes have been on trips both locally and further afield, and Year 6 are well underway with their ‘transition to secondary school’ with all of the high school visits as well as our wonderful Diocesan Leavers’ Service which we attended yesterday at Southwark Cathedral. Over the next two weeks we will be enjoying a concert by our instrumentalists, more trips, ‘welcome’ visits from our new children and sports day for all on Tuesday 19th July. We will finish by celebrating the last day of term with our Year 6 Leavers’ Service at St Dunstan’s Church. I look forward to seeing you all at one or more of our events over the coming weeks! Ms J Corby

PTFA News

On Monday the 4th of July, Year 6 took an amazing trip to Bishop Andrewe’s Church in Carshalton. The trip was arranged to help us think about our transition to High School. When we arrived, we watched a superb play performed by Sutton Schools Work. The play was based on the Bible story Joseph’s Coat of Many Colours. After that, we split up into groups and we did some transition-based activities. They were exceptionally fun! One of the activities was making stick people out of a pipe cleaner. It represented the people that we are thankful for, for giving us a brilliant life. It was a fantastic day and a valuable learning experience for everyone! By Christopher Pepper and Kieran Harris

Year 6 Transition

“This week was an excellent, brilliant science week!” “I can’t pick a favourite part because it was all so

good.” “Dr Karlsson did lots of exciting things with us. She made bubbles turn into smoke!” “She had some dry, blue ice and blew up a balloon with it.” By Andrew Miller, Mia Williams, Eleanor Wallace and Noah Karlsson Year 1

Science week

As part of Science week we spent an afternoon with Mr Dennington (Dad of Charlie in our class). He started off with some videos showing when the Wright Brothers built the first aeroplane (built mainly from wood!). Then we learnt how planes take off into the sky. Using our knowledge of how aeroplane wings work we learnt how to make our own paper aeroplanes (this involved lots of fold-ing). We decorated our aeroplanes with bright colours and then took them into the playground to have a race. It was a lot of fun. We are also going to show the children in Reception how to make their own paper aeroplane – we can’t wait! By Lucy Balcerak and Tillia Stone (Year 4 Orion Class)

Science Week

On Tuesday the eggs arrived! When we came in the next day, we were jumping for joy because one of the eggs had cracked. In the afternoon it hatched! The next day two of the eggs cracked and we were able to watch a little chick come out. It was all wet and kept falling over. Now 8 of the chicks have hatched and they are fluffy and cute. When you put your fingers in their cage they peck your fingers! By Sofia Clifton, Rosie Harris and Tia Cuming -

Year 2 Jupiter.

On Tuesday Year2, Year 1 and Reception went to the hall where there were some owls. There was an eagle owl, a barn owl, a white faced scops owl, a tawny owl, and a little owl. They like to eat mice, worms and insects. Later outside we sketched them! Anton Samchuck - Year 2 Saturn

On Thursday 7th July Year 3 (along with the rest of KS2) built robots using Lego Technic. We worked in groups of 3 to build our robot from scratch. This was challenging but lots of fun too! The eyes of the robot had sensors that used echo location, this meant that if the robot came to an obstruction it would turn around and go to a place where there was nothing in front of it. To help the robot move we attached wheels to it, these wheels were attached to the main part of the body. We had fun trying out our robots around the classroom and we loved investigating and being scientists! Year 3

This week we have been very fortunate with the workshops that Mrs Farrell has organised for us. On Wednesday Dr Zachariou, a scientist doing cancer research at the Marsden, talked to us about DNA. I was stunned that we actually got to extract DNA from strawberries ourselves. First we chose strawberries and put them in a bag with water and a small amount of washing up liquid. After that we mushed up strawberries and poured the mixture into small containers. The mixture smelt of the most sweet and juicy straw-berries! The next part was amazing; we added small amounts of ethanol and watched as the DNA was released from the cells. The DNA floated to the top and looked white and cloudy. I felt like a real scientist and was really excited to know that I had extracted DNA. On Thursday Helena from Prepare Robo UK came and told us about

robots. In groups of three we got to build our own unique robots

from Lego. The robot had to have a sturdy structure but also we

had to position the ‘eyes’, which were sensors, and the computer,

which acted as the robots brain. Once we had completed our

robot we wired them up

and got to take them

outside and create

obstacle courses for

them to walk round. It

was amazing to think

that I had created it all by

myself from a pile of

Lego! Year 5

[ DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

(Dates may be subject to change)

July

Mon 11th Year 6 to visit Sutton Life Centre

Tues 12th Year 5 Farmers Market 3pm

Instrumental Concert 6pm

Weds 13th TFL Safety Talk for Year 6

Thurs 14th Prayer Group 8.45am

Year 4 to visit London Aquarium

Cygnus Express to Parents 2.30pm

Tues 19th Sports Day - Infants 9am

Sports Day - Juniors 1.30pm

Thurs 21st Leavers Service in Church 9.30am

Last Day of Term school ends 1.30pm

September

Mon 5th INSET Day

Tues 6th Return to school

October

24th - 28th Half Term

Page 3

ST DUNSTAN’S, CHEAM, C OF E PRIMARY SCHOOL www.stdunstans.sutton.sch.uk Tel No 020 8642 5463

Attendance

Stars of the last 3 weeks

The attendance figure for w/c 27th June is:

97.3% Our target is 96.4%

House Points

We have seen a marked increase in the number of children having medical appointments during the school day or leaving early for medical appointments, This is proving to be very disruptive for

classes and office staff. Wherever possible, please make every effort to book appointments after school.

Medical appointments

St George

406

St David

*422*

St Andrew

335

St Patrick

400

Venus Hannah Kingdom Sophia Kent Zara Evans

Pluto Nicole Amarii Yichen Zhan Curran Gygax

Neptune Finlay Vernon Lukas O’Connor Eloise Fry

Mercury Jess Kirk Charlie Boyer Vivi Hudson

Jupiter Conor Towers Sandra Perez-Garcia Nicholas Zhan

Saturn Josh Slater Jessica Hinton Samuel Thorne

Delphinus Daniel Bowling Ella McKenzie Ellen Russell

Phoenix Gemma Skipp-Pinto Emily Watts Harrison Germain

Orion Poppy Colwell Peter Bennett William Le Serve

Pegasus Angeline Nagy Mia Ovesen Diya Patheja

Unicorn Nicolaj Jorgensen Dante Stringer Oscar Grout

Hercules Charlie Hogan-Bennett Sky Smith-Stevens Arvin Mohammadkhani

Aquila Christopher Pepper Mariam Orchard Mackenzie Reed

Cygnus Ryan Sullivan Angelina Caria Joe Suggitt

It was good to see Callum Howson came 2nd in an U11/adult section at the Wey Valley chess event on 19th June. He scored 4/5 and lost to an adult. George Frost had a strong performance and finished 3rd in the U10 section. During chess club this term, we ran a House Competition: 1st St George (28) (Alfie Carter, Callum Howson, Michail Mavrostomos, Jayden Gygax, Daniel Harding , Ashton Stevenson, George Frost, Harry Smith), 2nd St David (26), 3rd St Andrew (25), 4th St Patrick (22). Well done all, keep it up! Mr Buckley

Chess News

London Youth Games

Three of our Year 6 swimmers represented Sutton schools at the London Youth Games at Crystal Palace. Olivia, Joseph and Kacey swam very well and Sutton came 4th overall out of 32 boroughs; this

is the best result for Sutton for some time. Well done to all three of you.