Windrush Valley Private School Oxfordshire – Newsletter.
Foundation Unit
Early Years have had a very exciting week. When the children returned to school, they were greeted by 3 more yellow, fluffy ducklings that had hatched over the weekend, taking our total to four. The children have been responsible for their feeding, care and ensuring they don’t get too tired while swimming in the water. They have enjoyed cuddling, stroking and learning how to handle the ducklings safely. We will miss them when they go to their new home on Friday, it has been a brilliant learning experience for all the children.
Year 1 & Year 2
The children have been working hard across all areas of the curriculum. In addition, practising for the school’s sports day is well advanced. There is also lots of other sports and after-school clubs continue.
Year 3
The children had the most amazing day at Chedworth Roman Villa. We spent the morning on a tour with headphones and the children were fascinated by the mosaics and the remains of the different rooms. We even found a Roman Snail – the Romans bought special snails over with them to eat, and they are now a protected species…we had a lovely lunch in the shade, and in the afternoon enjoyed a session making mosaics. The day really bought our Roman topic to life, and the children were a credit to the Windrush Valley Private School Oxfordshire with their behaviour. In art we looked at Michealangelo, and the children had a go at painting upside down under their desks!

Year 4
Activities have included end of term assessments. In Science, we have been experimenting with lights, buzzers, batteries and crocodile clips, predicting and testing a range of circuit illustrations and in Art, we have been looking at the amazing work of Michaelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. We put ourselves in his shoes and attempted to create our own drawings whilst working upside down! There were many mutters of aching arms after 5 mins and they soon appreciated how difficult it was, and clever of Michaelangelo, to have painted in this way for 4 years!
Year 5
In science, Year 5 have been learning about the three different types of mammals – placental, marsupials, and monotremes. We found out lots of fascinating facts such as a baby kangaroo is called a joey and is the size of a jelly bean when it is born! We enjoyed comparing different lifecycles and finding what was the same and what was different. In English and maths we have been working very hard on our end of year assessments.
Year 6
We have settled back into school life after their residential trip. After our maths and English focus during SATs we have spent more time this week on our history topic, learning about the Berlin wall and how it symbolised the ideological split between communism and capitalism. We read a story of a Romanian family trying to flee to West during the last days of Ceausescu’s reign. We also learned about some of the ingenious ways East Berliners tried to cross the wall. We’ve been keeping our hand in at maths, looking at averages. We already knew about the mean but have mean moving into some KS3 work looking at the median and mode.