Friday February 3rd

It’s been another week full of highlights at Waunarlwydd! The Nursery have been looking at houses as part of H Week. What an exciting morning they had going on a walk around Waunarlwydd!  They saw lots of different types of house, both old and new, learnt lots of history from Mrs Howells and waved to all the buses. We are extremely proud of how well behaved everyone was. 4000 steps is a lot for little legs! This week Reception have been finding out all about how people celebrate Chinese New Year. They have learned about the ‘Great Race’ and used puppets, masks and small world animals to explore the story, found out which year we were all born in and talked about the similarities and differences between our celebrations and Chinese New Year as well as performing their own dragon dance. To end the week they had fun tasting Chinese food – yum! Gong hei fat choi!

Chinese New Year has also been the highlight in Miss Tyrrell’s class. The children tasted Chinese food which was a real treat and they even used chop sticks! Painting numbers and their name in Chinese was fun and so was finding out what year of the Chinese zodiac they were born in. Some super shapes were created when they moved like a dragon and firecrackers during our music and movement session. To end the week they thought of similarities in the Chinese New Year celebration compared to celebrations of their own.  Mrs Wallace and Mrs Howells’ class have loved being scientists and investigating ice this week. They made predictions on what would make the ice melt the fasted and what would make the ice melt the slowest and also learnt the importance of a fair test. It’s been a creative week in Mrs Evans and Mrs Thomas’ class with the highlights being their art work with some incredible winter paintings using hot and and cold colour mixing. Other big hits have been their work on climate change and their brilliant dividing skills. Art was also a big hit in Mr Reid’s class with the use of water colours to paint one of the 7 wonders of the world. They have also enjoyed completing their information booklets on a chosen country and presenting them to their classmates this morning.

Another busy week in Mr Jenkins’ class. Children have been learning their times tables facts and linking this to sharing. They have continued to write reports for their up coming presentations and have been linking this to their art work and water colour paintings. They have also enjoyed looking at food labels and keeping a diary of the different food types we eat each week. In science and technology we have combined our ideas and have made a large parachute. All we need to do now is test this with our eggy friend and hope they don’t crack! What a busy week in Year 5 and 6! The Moki bands have been used to record our exercise, which has inspired more activity during break and lunch times. As always, PE has been a hit – dodge ball this week with some excellent tactics on show. In maths, the children have been learning about mathematical expressions and equations and by the end of the week, they were having a go at solving them. In Literacy, via pictures and video, the children have been transported to Pandora. Their setting descriptions were amazing, using many different sentence structures and fabulous language choices. Ms Williams’ shoes even got a work out being dragged across the table top to investigate friction. A great week!

Family support – Early help hub linking with school

We have linked with the City and County of Swansea to enhance understanding and engagement with early Help Hubs. Our school’s senior lead worker will be based at our school weekly to offer support to families, children and parents in a variety of ways. We will be holding a coffee morning on Friday 17th February (9am) where the senior lead worker will be on hand to give more details on the service and answer any questions.

Who will the Early Help Hubs work with?

Children, young people and their families where there are identified wellbeing needs that the family need assistance to achieve. It is really important that we think about what outcomes the child and family want to achieve by talking to an EHH member of staff.

How can family’s access support directly from the Early Help Hub?

Children, young people and their families can access support from requesting an appointment via the school to speak to the EHH confidentially at the school about what matters to the family. This will be the start of the referral process to identify the right service at the right time to help families live happy, healthy and safe lives.

What will Early Help Hubs do?

As part of the referral EHH will provide information about our services and other services that may be of help to the family. We provide advice in relation to how we or other services can support them and also provide assistance if the services we provide are the right ones to help the family achieve their wellbeing goals.

• One to one appointment

• Advice and Guidance

• Information about what other services can help you

• Support with children’s behaviour, emotional health & wellbeing, money, housing, ALN group work, ASD Awareness group, Under 11’s family lives group, understanding adolescents group, healthy relationship work and much more.

Parent workshops

Friday 10th February – Today’s workshop focused on ‘Managing Anger’. This workshop is in 2 parts with the second part being delivered next Friday (10th February). If you would like to attend, just arrive at school for a 14.25 start.

Digital Advice for parents

This week’s advice for parents and carers centres around ‘Encouraging open discussions about digital lives.‘

Dates for the calendar

Wednesday 1st February – School closed to pupils (Industrial action)

Friday 10th February – Parent workshop – ‘Managing Anger‘ part 2 (14.25 in school hall)

Tuesday February 7th – Safer Internet Day

Wednesday February 15th – School Discos

Friday 17th February – Early Help Hub coffee morning

Friday 17th February – Break up for half term

Wednesday March 1st – St David’s Day (children can wear Welsh colours, kits or costumes)

Thursday March 2nd – World Book Day (children can dress up as their favourite book character)

Week beginning 20th March – Teacher / parent meetings

As always, if you have any questions or concerns don’t hesitate in getting in touch!

Have a great weekend!

Mr Jamie Evans

Deputy Headteacher

Friday January 27th

It’s been another busy week full of learning and laughter at Waunarlwydd. The highlight for me would have to be the awesome assembly presented by Miss Shaw’s class which reminded us of the importance of looking after the environment and wildlife.

A reminder that, due to industrial action, school will be closed to pupils on Wednesday February 1st.

Parent workshops

The North Gower Partnership has linked with the NHS and CAMHS to provide support and strategies for parents in approaching the emotional wellbeing of children at home. This will take the form of a series of workshops at school (14.25 in the school hall):

We have received positive feedback form our first workshop, ‘When to Worry About Your Worrier’.

Friday 3rd February – The next parent workshop will focus on ‘Managing Anger’. If you would like to attend, just arrive at school for a 14.25 start on the given dates.

It has been a week of stories in Nursery, with our activities based on Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, The Gruffalo and The Billy Goats Gruff. The children have especially enjoyed playing in the 3 bears’ cottage, tasting porridge with different toppings, building their own bridge and acting out the Billygoat story as well as scoring goals in gym. This week Reception have had fun learning all about Polar Bears and Penguins. They have sorted facts, made their own fact files, measured their feet compared to a polar bear’s giant foot and explored ice in our small world play. Children also had fun pouring water into different sized containers to see which holds the most water.

Year 1 have been learning about the polar regions this week. They sorted facts before writing a fact file, as well as discussing what they could do at home to help save the polar bears. Superb vocabulary was used during their science investigation when describing what happens when you add salt and food colouring to ice. Percy’s hut role play area has been a huge favourite and the children especially enjoyed having hot chocolate and marshmallows to warm them up this week. Similar highlights in Mrs Wallace and Mrs Howells’ class who have had the most wonderful week learning more about the polar regions and its animals. They have particularly enjoyed researching penguins and writing a fact file. Making hot chocolate with marshmallows was a big surprise! Mrs Evans and Mrs Thomas’ class highlight has been their bird watching activities using binoculars and they also enjoyed creating ‘Staying safe online’ posters and thinking about how too much screen time can make us feel. The standout in Mr Reid’s class this week has been the wonderful independent writing on the 7 wonders of the world, where the children showcased some great sentence structures and vocabulary choices. Their work on division also showed huge progress and was another high point.

Mr Jenkins’ class have been learning how to multiply by partitioning, grids and adding. Three steps! They have also continued to develop their understanding of the features of reports and selected topics to investigate. In science and technology they have loved making parachutes and will now make a group design before dropping our egg astronaut from a height of 3m. The aim is not to have any cracks in our little friend! Mrs Cornish has been keeping the children busy, completing a bird survey around the school. There seem to be a lot of pigeons around. Hopefully they won’t be dropping too many messages for us! Year 5 and 6 have enjoyed learning about how to look after our mental health, for example eating healthily or taking deep breaths. Teachers have been impressed at how well the classes have used their Zones of Regulation board, even checking in with each other. Another highlight was working with Mrs Howells to improve their Welsh skills. In maths, the children have found learning about function machines and algebra challenging, but there were still a lot of smiles. PE is always a favourite – this week we played Tag Ball and nearly hit Mrs Davies! 

Digital Advice for parents

This week’s advice for parents and carers centres around ‘12 Top Tips for building cyber resilience at home.‘

Dates for the calendar

Wednesday 1st February – School closed to pupils (Industrial action)

Friday 3rd February – Parent workshop – ‘Managing Anger‘ (14.25 in school hall)

Tuesday February 7th – Safer Internet Day

Wednesday February 8th – NGP – RSE information evening – Gowerton Comprehensive School **Cancelled until further notice**

Wednesday February 15th – School Discos (details to follow)

Friday 17th February – Break up for half term

Wednesday March 1st – St David’s Day (children can wear Welsh colours, kits or costumes)

Thursday March 2nd – World Book Day (children can dress up as their favourite book character)

As always, if you have any questions or concerns don’t hesitate in getting in touch!

Have a great weekend!

Mr Jamie Evans

Deputy Headteacher

Friday 20th January

It’s been another great week. The ice and cold haven’t stopped the children from wrapping up and enjoying a super week of learning. A big well done to the girls’ football team who represented the school with their usual positive attitude, great skills and big smiles!

Strike Action – The local authority has been notified that strike action is to be taken by Trade Unions on 1st February, 14th February, 15th March and 16th March.  We will keep you updated but have currently been told to wait for further guidance. 

We will be commencing after school clubs next week! You should have received consent forms today.

Parent workshops

The North Gower Partnership has linked with the NHS and CAMHS to provide support and strategies for parents in approaching the emotional wellbeing of children at home. This will take the form of a series of workshops at school. A reminder that the first workshop ‘When to worry about your worrier’, is today (14.25 in the school hall):

Friday 3rd February – The second workshop will focus on ‘Managing Anger’ (more details to follow). If you would like to attend, just arrive at school for a 14.25 start on the given dates.

The Nursery have had another fun week learning about Winter. The water beads in the water tray were a big success and gym was great fun using a tissue as a snowflake. They explored the ice and frost during outdoor learning, making footprints on the field, breaking up the ice with hammers and painting on sheets of ice. What a wonderful week to learn about winter in Reception! Children had lots of fun exploring the ice that formed in our yard overnight and found different ways to break it. The children had some lovely ideas to write a winter poem and created some beautiful wintry paintings. They have also made snowmen with different coloured hats and scarves and sorted them in different ways

Miss Tyrrell’s class absolutely loved their winter walk this week. They touched pointy icicles, made footprints in the frosty grass and noticed that our rainfall gauges had frozen. Back in class they used wow words to make their sentences more interesting when writing their winter poems. Other favourites were making bird feeders during forest school, following instructions on how to draw a snowman, which look amazing, and solving winter addition and subtraction problems. Other highlights in Mrs Wallace and Mrs Howells’ class included making a snowball animation on JIT and learning all about the animals in the different polar regions. Mrs Evans and Mrs Thomas’ class also enjoyed their wintry welly walk this week and have loved learning about temperature and measuring rainfall. They have also been learning about polar animals and how they are adapted to live in such cold temperatures. Highlights in Mr Reid’s class include beginning their information booklets about countries of the world and practising their skills on the apparatus in gym.

It’s been a busy week in year 4 with learning about writing reports and the features reports have to make them successful. Children have also enjoyed learning about maths arrays and factors of numbers to help with dividing facts. In science we have looked at forces and made paper planes to understand push forces, gravity and air resistance. They loved their competition to see who could make their plane fly furthest, recording their work in charts and graphs on J2e. In art, children linked their report writing of Golden Eagles with the story ‘King of the birds’ and learnt how to draw these amazing creatures. Wow! This week has been year 5 and 6’s last on ‘Out of this world!’ What a week they have had – learning about gravity and air resistance with their autogyro investigation; painting planets and galaxies in art and completing homework projects. All teachers have been impressed with the creativity, knowledge and variety of home learning tasks. PE remains a firm favourite – using Real PE to explore tactical game play. White Rose maths has helped children understand ratio, proportion and scaling this week. Great work!

Digital Advice for parents

This week’s advice for parents and carers centres around ‘What parents and carers need to know about TWITTER‘

Dates for the calendar

Thursday 25th January – Miss Shaw’s class assembly 14.40 (parents welcome)

Friday 3rd February – Parent workshop – ‘Managing Anger‘ (14.25 in school hall)

Tuesday February 7th – Safer Internet Day

Wednesday February 8th – NGP – RSE information evening – Gowerton Comprehensive School 17.30

Friday 17th February – Break up for half term

As always, if you have any questions or concerns don’t hesitate in getting in touch!

Have a great weekend!

Mr Jamie Evans

Deputy Headteacher

Friday January 13th

Happy New Year to everyone! Let’s look forward to a happy and healthy 2023 at Waunarlwydd School! It has been great to welcome all our amazing children back to school and we haven’t let the rain stop us beginning the year with a week full of learning and laughter. New topics have begun and the children and staff have lots to look forward to during the term ahead! A big thanks for your support of ‘My child’s Christmas’ last term! We made a profit of £189 which will be used to buy resources. As always, we thank you for your continued support and remind you that if you have any concerns or queries, don’t hesitate in getting in touch!

We will be commencing after school clubs during the week beginning Monday 23rd January. Details and consent forms will be sent out next week!

Parent workshops

The North Gower Partnership has linked with the NHS and CAMHS to provide support and strategies for parents in approaching the emotional wellbeing of children at home. This will take the form of a series of workshops at school (14.25 in the school hall):

Friday 20th January – The first workshop is called ‘When to Worry About Your Worrier’. The lead will briefly go through the psychology of worries and anxiety, aim to reassure parents of typical worrying behaviours and offer practical strategies.  

Friday 3rd February – The second workshop will focus on ‘Managing Anger’ (more details to follow). If you would like to attend, just arrive at school for a 14.25 start on the given dates.

We’ve started the term with lots of highlights. The Nursery have been learning all about Winter this week. They have had great fun playing in the igloo in their role play area, following QR codes to draw a snowman and dancing like snowflakes and Jack Frost in gym. Everyone made a melting snowman biscuit to take home. It was also lovely to welcome the children starting Nursery in February to our stay and play session on Tuesday. They all seemed to enjoy themselves and are keen to come again next week. Reception have enjoyed making snowmen using playdough, creating snowy pictures using chalk and using the paint tool on JiT to make lovely snowy scenes. They have used their number skills to play games such as ‘roll and cover’ and ‘beanbag targets’ and have written all about our Christmas holidays. To end the week we learnt the different words for winter clothes in Welsh. 

Miss Tyrrell’s class have demonstrated superb creative skills when cutting paper snowflakes for the Winter display. They have also been exploring cold colours by adding white to blue to see how many different shades they could make. Making amounts to 10p and 20p when paying for winter items has been the focus in maths and they have also practised naming winter colours in Welsh. Mrs Wallace and Mrs Howells’ class thoroughly enjoyed making their own bird feeders to help the birds survive the winter and writing a wonderful poem all about winter, using fantastic adjectives. Mrs Evans and Mrs Thomas’ class loved their ice investigations this week looking at where the ice melts the fastest. They also enjoyed making snowball animations in digital work and learning about groups of and times tables in maths. Mr Reid’s class have enjoyed starting their new topic, working together to make the world map jigsaw and finding out about the 7 wonders of the world and where they are.

Year 4 have been writing recounts about Christmas. They all had a wonderful time. They have also enjoyed making super posters for their new years resolutions. The number focus has been been learning how to find factors of numbers using times table facts, while in Science they have been learning about the planets and how they orbit around the Sun. Year 5 and 6 have enjoyed taking part in a daily mile instead of afternoon play this week. They had a very active PE lesson learning attacking and defending tactics. In maths they have been exploring ratio and the teachers are terribly proud of their understanding. Their new topic ‘What a wonderful world’ has started out in space with the gravity experiment linked to the Northern Lights being a highlight. The art lesson was fun and the homework project on space has even been mentioned as a highlight – amazing!

Digital Advice for parents

This week’s advice for parents and carers centres around ‘What parents and carers need to know about BEREAL‘

Dates for the calendar

Monday 16th January – PC Anthony lessons Year 1 and 2

Friday 20th January – Parent workshop – ‘When to Worry About Your Worrier’ (14.25 in school hall)

Friday 26th January – Miss Shaw’s class assembly 14.40 (parents welcome)

Tuesday 31st January – PC Anthony lessons Year 3 and 4

Friday 3rd February – Parent workshop – ‘Managing Anger‘ (14.25 in school hall)

Tuesday February 7th – Safer Internet Day

Wednesday February 8th – NGP – RSE information evening – Gowerton Comprehensive School 17.30

Friday 17th February – Break up for half term

As always, if you have any questions or concerns don’t hesitate in getting in touch!

Have a great weekend!

Mr Jamie Evans

Deputy Headteacher

Well, we’ve reached the end of the term and what a great term it’s been! A huge thanks to our incredible staff and, most importantly, our wonderful pupils for filling the school with learning and laughter! Of course, we’d also like to give a huge thanks to all our families for your ongoing support this term and we look forward to working together during the terms ahead! It has been great to end with our Christmas festivities! I’m sure that you’ll agree that last week’s concerts were superb and ticket sales raised a magnificent £1320 which will be used directly to benefit the children. This week the children have thoroughly enjoyed their parties, and of course their visit from a very special VIP dressed in red! Finally, a reminder that school returns for children on Monday 9th January!

We’d like to wish all our children and families good health, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Nadolig Llawen pawb!

Friday December 9th

We have to start this week with some huge thank yous! Due to the efforts of our amazing PTA, staff and children this week’s Christmas Fair was an undoubted success. Of course, this would not have been possible without the incredible support of our families! It was great to have the school full of Christmas joy and, during a tough economic time, together we managed to raise an astounding £1,009. This money will be used to benefit the children directly! Massive thanks to you all!

Thursday saw the school celebrate Christmas Jumper Day, raising money for Save the Children. There was an impressive variety of jumpers on show and we were able to raise £118 towards the cause. Thanks again for your support!

Highlights this week have been easy to choose for all our classes, with our concert rehearsals in full swing. The corridors have been full of music, drama and, most importantly, laughter as all the children (and staff) from Nursery to Year 6 have been giving their all to their performances! I’ll be surprised if we haven’t got a few future Oscar or Brit award winners in our midst! You are in for a real treat next week! There are still tickets available for all the concerts if you need more! Don’t forget your concert ticket is also your raffle ticket! We won’t be able to film the concerts but you are welcome to take your own photos. WE JUST NEED TO REMIND YOU – PLEASE DO NOT SHARE ANY IMAGES OF OTHER CHILDREN ON ANY SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS. Diolch!

Digital Advice for parents

Dates for the calendar

Tuesday 13th December – Nursery / Reception concert (9.45), Year 1, 2 and 3 concert (14.00)

Wednesday 14th December – Year 4, 5 and 6 concert (14.00), Year 1, 2 and 3 concert (18.00)

Thursday 15th December – Year 4, 5 and 6 concert (18.00)

Tuesday 20th December – Special visitor

Wednesday 21st December – Christmas Party Day

Thursday 22nd December – Christmas Lunch

As always, if you have any questions or concerns don’t hesitate in getting in touch!

Have a great weekend!

Mr Jamie Evans

Deputy Headteacher