This academic year has seen many changes; as a result, PE and extra-curricular activities look a little different. As a school, we are currently participating in the Virtual School Games; October saw the start of the Black Country Virtual Skipping Competition. This was a virtual skipping competition against local primary schools over a two-week period, which then lead to competing against primary schools across the Black Country. The skipping competition created a lot of excitement and the children really enjoyed participating with their friends. There were some great performances across KS2.  

Ruby (Year 3) achieved 40 skips in 30 seconds 

Daniel and Emily (Year 4) achieved 55 skips. 

Blake (Year 5) achieved 69 skips. 

Harley and Riley (Year 6) both achieved 56 skips.  

It was great to hear children were practising at home and working hard to improve the number of skips they could complete in 30 seconds. It is also lovely to see skipping has become a popular activity which children are enjoying at break and lunchtime. Keep on skipping Bloxwich!

We love reading at Bloxwich Academy so we were over-the-moon when we found out we would have the chance to have a virtual author visit! It was surreal to hear the actual author, of a book we love, read it out to us live!

Year 1 & 2 listened to Humza Arshad, the author of ‘Little Badman’, read his story out loud. He even brought along his illustrator to teach us how to draw some of the illustrations from the book. The children did a fantastic job of recreating the artwork.

We all enjoyed the author visits, and we can’t wait to read the books in class.

In our writing lessons in year 6 this term, the children have been focused and have improved massively since the beginning of the year. This is evident in the work that they ended up producing around the circulatory system. The children learned all about the roles the heart, lungs and the different blood vessels have in transporting blood around our bodies.

They presented this difficult subject in an engaging way after completing their independent writing where they were then able to be more creative. The work they created was outstanding and the year 6 teachers were incredibly proud of what they produced. The children put their all into this work and the results show this. Mr Seager saw some of their writing pieces and he was blown away by the quality of their work. Amazing work year 6! 

On Thursday 17^th December, children will be invited to have a traditional Christmas dinner during lunchtime. The options available will be as follows:

• Roast turkey or pork (Gluten free)
• Pigs in blankets, sage and onion stuffing and gravy (Contains celery, milk and cereals containing gluten)

Or

• Mushroom and onion wellington (Vegetarian. Contains eggs, cereals containing gluten and sulphur dioxide)

All served with seasonal vegetables, roast potatoes and mash

Angel sparkle cake (Contains eggs, milk and cereals containing gluten)

To ensure the school kitchen is able to meet demand, orders will be taken during registration on Wednesday 2nd December.

If your child does not usually have school dinners and you would like them on this occasion to join in, please ensure your child is aware that they will need to order with their class teacher as above. Children from Reception through to Year 2, and those eligible for Free School Meals will not have to pay. For those children not eligible, please ensure that their Wisepay account is credited with £2.00 in advance.

Children with identified allergies will be given an alternative dessert. Please be aware, if an order is not placed on Wednesday 2^nd December, your child will need to bring a packed lunch.

Nursery rhymes play an important role in early childhood development and education. As well as being fun they are excellent teaching tools. Nursery rhymes and children’s songs boost vocabulary and language development, they help children to develop literacy skills and help children to develop social, physical and emotional skills.

You can support the children by taking part at home and using the World Nursery Rhyme Week website here – https://www.worldnurseryrhymeweek.com/

Virtual learning has been taken to new heights this week with the Early Years team engaging in virtual phonics lessons. Children and parents loved joining in with Fred fingers for spelling and Fred talk for using sounds to read words correctly. It was great to see so many people joining in.

The children and parents were able to join teams for live lessons despite the children not being in school. It was a fantastic sight to see and everyone had lots of fun learning. Remember, if you need to get on teams for remote learning, please see the video on the school website to support you. 

How to access teams – https://bloxwichacademy.co.uk/teams/ 

On Friday 13th November 2020, Bloxwich Academy (primary) will be supporting the Children in Need event. Children can come into school wearing their own clothes. You can wear spots, stripes, patterns – it is up to you! We are asking children to make a small donation to support the charity. The suggested donation is £1, but more or less will be put to good use by Pudsey Bear, I’m sure. 

Throughout the day, we will be finding out about Children in Need and taking part in related activities. One of these activities will be taking part in Joe Wick’s PE livestream. If you are at home on Friday, you can still take part by going to the BBC website: https://www.bbcchildreninneed.co.uk/. For children at home, there will be activities uploaded on Microsoft Teams for you to enjoy. If you are having any issues with Microsoft Teams, there is a support video on the website to help: https://bloxwichacademy.co.uk/teams/

We’re looking forward to seeing the Children’s amazing work from both home and school.

Something really strange happened in year 2 last week. We were just starting our new writing topic ‘The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers’ when some of the children noticed smoke and flashing lights outside the classroom. We were so shocked, but we decided as a class to investigate what was going on. Then, we saw a bright, green alien pop up from out of nowhere. The alien looked like it was lost and started running around the field (it was even chasing Mrs Shepherd).  

After the alien disappeared, we decided to go outside and see what was going on for ourselves. We were amazed to see an alien spaceship. We couldn’t get too close to the scene because it was taped off. Smoke was coming out of the tunnel, which was illuminated by flashing lights. It was so mysterious. There were 2 alien-looking robots guarding the crash site. In the distance, we could see a spaceship and test tubes next to the tree.  

Year 1 arrived outside to help us solve the mystery. We decided it was best to write about what happened in our writing books – so we had some evidence. When we were finished writing, we went back outside to gather some more information. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw that the alien ship had vanished! We couldn’t see a single piece of evidence. Where did the alien go? Did it go back home? Did somebody take it? We will keep reading about the alien and we will post our findings soon on the website.

In Nursery this week, we have been exploring lots of Halloween themed activities. We have been reading Meg and Mog as a class and acted out the story. You can find the story on YouTube if you would like to read it with your child https://youtu.be/NFcXxjdoN4I 

In our tuft spot, we have had lots of fun making potions and turning our friends into mice. We have been chanting ‘bubble, bubble, bubble’, like Meg (whilst mixing our ingredients together). In our creative area, we have been decorating pumpkins using different textures: tissue paper, feathers, paint and orange lentils. We have been having lots of fun singing and dancing to music on the interactive screen. The children have enjoyed dressing up as witches, wizards and bats. They then acted out their experiences.   

This week, year 2 have been learning all about Geography. The children have been looking at maps and aerial photographs of the local area and identified key features. We have been learning about different map symbols and why they could help us when we look at a map. During this topic, the children have found it interesting to see a bird’s eye view of the local area. They were spotting local parks, shops and familiar roads. 

Mr Watters 

They have been using Google Earth to locate their own houses and they have found it interesting to see parks, ponds and other areas around them they wouldn’t normally see from looking on the street. Year 2 also looked at a plan of the school and were able to identify where each of the classes are on the map.  

This week, we have started learning about addition and subtraction in maths. We have been using our knowledge of place value to answer some tricky problems. We have also been using counters and different materials to help us count forwards and backwards.In writing this term, we are learning about poetry. We have been looking at different poems about the sea and have started to create some of our own. Last week, we created actions for the poems and made it into a performance. We will be creating our own poems next week, which will go on display outside our classrooms. The children can’t wait to write their own poems!

Mrs Watkins