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ABOUT IT

Issue 26

MESSAGE FROM THE HEADIt is hard to believe that term 1 has come to a close already! However, I am sure the children are all looking forward to a well earned rest and some quality family time.

This term we introduced our new maths scheme ‘Power Maths’. This scheme follows the maths mastery approach. Maths mastery is a relatively new way of thinking and teaching. When teaching maths for mastery, the whole class moves through topics at broadly the same pace. Each topic is studied in depth and the teacher does not move to the next stage until all children demonstrate that they have a secure understanding of mathematical concepts.

The children have enjoyed the maths learning and feel that it supports their understanding of the subject.

Here are a few quotes from some of our pupils across the school; the pupils were asked, what are your thoughts about the new maths scheme?‘Maths is fun. I love counting’ year R pupil‘The power up each morning gets me in the mood for learning!’ Year 5 pupil‘I always thought I was bad at maths, but now I enjoy it and I know that I can do it.’ Year 4 pupil‘My teacher makes the maths fun and she gives me lots of things to use to help me understand.’ Year 2 pupil‘Year 6 is an important year and I worried about not doing well, but power maths has given me the confidence to try things. I have learned that I can be flexible, like Flo!’ year 6 pupil. If your child has not yet spoken about ‘Power Maths’ to you, then have a chat about it over the break. School now closes for two weeks. I wish you all a lovely break with your children. Here at Tiger, we look forward to welcoming you all back on Monday 4th November.

CONTACT DETAILS

Tiger Primary School,Boughton Lane, Loose, Maidstone, Kent, ME15 9QF

Telephone: 01622 745166Email: tigerprimary@futureschoolstrust.com

Follow us on social media at:

Facebook: @TigerPrimarySchool Twitter: @TigerPrimary

Individual Twitter Accounts:

Foundation Year: @TPS_Found Year 1:@TPS_Year1 Year 2: @ TPS_Year2 Year 3: @TPS_Year3 Year 4: @ TPS_Year4 Year 5: @ TPS_Year5 Year 6: @ TPS_Year6

Accelerated Reader: @TPS_AReader

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

November

4th - Beginning of Term 1 - Friendship Day8th - Grandparents’ Tea Party (Reception)11th - Open Morning Tour 12-13th - Parents’ Evening 15th - Children in Need20th - Open Morning Tour 22nd - Dragon Fly Class Coffee Morning 29th - Spider Class Coffee Morning

December

4th - Open Morning Tour5th - Pantomime6th - School Disco9th - Enterprise Week13th - Christmas Market - Christmas Jumper17th - Christmas Performance (Reception) - Christmas Carols (KS2) - Christmas Performance (KS1)18th - Christmas Lunch 19th - Christmas Performance (KS1) - Christmas Carol (KS2) 20th - Class Christmas Parties - End of Term 2

MEET THE STAFF

Everyone, meet the new teacher of Bee Class - Johnathan Crockett!

Johnathan is a very experienced early years teacher and has settled in almost perfectly

since joining us.

He discovered his interest in teaching after volunteering at an after school club. His volunteering had a snowball affect and

Johnathan soon became a Teaching Assistant for early years children. He has since stayed in Primary School Education and is now working

with us!

Johnathan is an avid football fan and runs a sports coaching business in his spare time (so hit him up if you want some sports coaching)!

We hope you’re settling in well Johnathan and look forward to working with you throughout

the year!

Staff Achievements

Macmillan Coffee Morning

Staff at Tiger are constantly finding ways to raise money for both the school and important charities.

This term we held a coffee morning in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support.

Parents were invited in to buy a coffee and some morning treats as

they dropped their kids off for school.

It was a great way of quickly making some money for charity.

In total we raised £256.22 from a simple coffee morning, how great is

that!

TIGER FUNDRAISER

Love reading? Love Tigers? Please donate!

At Tiger Primary we are desperate to develop a love of reading amongst our children. On top of the work we’re doing in lessons and the reading initi-atives already in place, we would like to invest some serious money in to

developing our library and improving the range of books on offer.

At Tiger Primary we are very proud of our name and the link we have to one of the big cat species. Our logo resembles a tiger paw and our houses named after critically endangered sub-species of tiger. This event is one of the ways we’re looking to raise funds for the Aspinall Foundation’s conser-

vation work.

How is this a staff achievement you ask? Well it will be!

To raise money for these two great causes, in spring 2020, Mr Norman, with the help of some Tiger’s pupils along the way, will run a little further than a marathon from Tiger Primary in Maidstone to the tiger enclosure at Port Lympne Zoo. All money raised will be split 50:50 between Tiger Primary

School and the Aspinall Foundation.

A link to donate can be found here: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfund-ing/tiger-primary-school

SCHOOL NEWS!NEW HOUSE SYSTEM!!

Tiger Primary School has a new house system. Can you guess what inspired our

house system??

Tigers of course!!

We have Bengal House Siberian House Malayan House

and Sumatran House

We decided on these for tigers as unfortunately all of these tigers are endangered so we hope incorporating them into our house system will help raise awareness!

TIGER VIPs!!

Tiger Primary School have new Prefects, head boy and head girl, deputy heads, and house captains. Like any good democracy, these representatives were voted in by the children and staff for the children and staff!! We look forward to seeing our new representatives in action over the

year.

Our Perfect Prefects

And Our Honest Heads Our Honourable House Captains Our Deserving Deputy Heads

SCHOOL NEWS!Stories in a jar??

Tiger Primary School loves to read and we have been pushing reading in the school for a number

of years now. Reading has become a staple of education and we are very proud to be pioneers

for ways of introducing reading to our pupils. Because our pupils have read so much recently, we decided to run a ‘story in a jar’ competition

which had pupils showcase their favourite books.

Children who entered the competition had to fill a jar with items, clues, and quotes about their

favourite story, thus creating a story jar!

We had some amazing entries and jars were brilliantly constructed, telling different stories in

a very unique and creative way.

Our winners visited Waterstones where they spent their prize money on more books!

What a RAD Assembly!

Early in the term we hosted Sasha who presented an assembly on the Royal Association for Deaf People (RAD).

This presentation proved successful as it demonstrated the ways a person can

communicate with the deaf whilst also being very informative about the disability.

All our young tigers are now that much more informed about deafness. Thank you Sasha for

the presentation.

Nelly the Sea Dog

WHERE HAS THE SUN GONE?!?!

Is the question I ask myself as I type this section of the newsletter looking out at a horribly overcast afternoon in Maidstone, remembering the heat of summer. Nelly is probably

barking the same question as she reflects on an eventful summer in which she saw new sights and conquered new adventures. See said sights and adventures below!

NELLY NEWS FLASHSUMMER TIME

SHINING

Bird Watching

SISTERS REUNITED!!

During the summer Nelly enjoyed her first

time in the sea!

Nelly has always been a bit sceptical of water,

but she braved the waves to retrieve her

stick!

Nelly went bird watching and barked at many a different bird that crossed her gaze.

Nelly met her sister Millicent for the first time

since leaving the breeders home. They were

ecstatic to see each other!!

Nelly the Sea Dog

Nelly took a trip to Millbrook Garden Centre where she went around exploring the sheds!

The sun was all a bit too much on the day so Nelly had to wear her sun hat, matching her

dad’s hat!

Shed Dog Nelly

READing at Tiger

At Tiger Primary School we just can’t stop reading! As soon as the children were back from the summer holidays they could not wait to tell us all about the books they have been reading and could not wait to continue at school.

Our first day of quizzing began and Lexie achieved the first 100% of the term! What a way to kick off the school year!

After our first full week of school the children at Tiger had read 1,312,982 words and a total of 236 books! We could not ask for a better beginning to the school year! - September 13th

The second week rolled around and our tigers just couldn’t help themselves as they almost doubled the amount of books they read, taking the total up to 456 books. As the amount of books we read rose, so did the number of words being read, amounting to 2,358,667 words read. - September 20th

Our reading tigers kept up the pace to finish the month on an amazing 733 books completed and 3,831,287 words read! September might be a tough month to beat in the future. - September 27th

We started off October very strongly having achieved 358 quizzes. Our reading total came to 1,044 books and 5,799,634 words!

This term also had some new Ready Readers who have been flexing their reading prowess and earning AR points. A massive congrats to Arabella, Leah, Sophie and Laura!

Plenty of us don’t like to admit it, but sometimes we need other people’s help to achieve certain tasks and goals; such as finding my pen... you haven’t seen it have you?

Forgetting my pen.. our youngest tigers spent the term learning about the different people that help us and how we can help each other to be better people.. and hopefully locate my pen!

We invited a very important person into our classroom who has a long record of helping people. This person was none other than Police Constable Dan.

PC Dan came in to aid our investigation into the missing toys that had disappeared from the playing area in the classroom. PC Dan’s assistance was much appreciated by our Reception Class and Dan was happy to offer his help and teach Year R that it is always wise to ask for help when stuck or in need of a solution.

Next, we were off to the field in search of Chase and the Cat in the Hat. Pupils had to work together and help each other to decipher the clues and make sense of the map they had been provided. Through teamwork and understanding, Chase and the Cat in the Hat both were found safe and sound!

We have all learnt a very valuable lesson about receiving help and helping others, and going forward we feel our Year R class are going to be some of the most helpful children in the school.

P.S. No children were arrested by PC Dan!

RECEPTIONPeople Who Help Us

YEAR 1DINOSAUR PLANET

Did anyone else hear that roar?!?! No? Well our Year 1 class certainly did! The constant roaring and stomping led our class to investigate these strange noises and occurrences; and what they discovered truly shook the classroom. DINOSAURS!!

Yes you read that correctly, our Year 1 class have discovered some dinosaurs.. Okay, maybe they didn’t discover them; but they certainly discovered interesting information about Earth’s previous occupants. To access this information we took a look at different dinosaur fossils and excrement to see if we could determine whether different dinosaurs were herbivores or carnivores. Based

on our new found knowledge we were able to make dinosaur eggs and sockosauruses!

To gain even more information about these large monsters from time before, we brought in a very special visitor who showed us some marine life related in some way to dinosaurs!

Our final act of the term was creating the soon-to-be world famous Tiger Dinosaur Museum (name still up for debate)! It is here that we catalogued all of our created artefacts and displayed them to the public.

Our lucky members of the public could only view in amazement as our Dinosaur Museum really brought the prehistoric ear of giant monsters to life.

With all of this knowledge and creativity and coming forward from our Year 1s, I would

not be surprised if we had some future archaeologists in the room!

We have had the best time learning everything we could about dinosaurs and can only hope that next term’s topic is just as fun.

YEAR 2Bounce

Bounce Bounce Bounce was the topic of our first term back for the new year, and what a fun topic this was!

Almost everything bounces, basketballs will bounce, your phone will probably bounce (we don’t recommend you try bouncing it), and at times children will bounce off the walls with excitement.

With bouncing comes experimentation, and with experimentation comes fun. Our experiment was to test the bounce of different materials and balls. Basketballs, footballs and other objectives made of various materials were tested to see how well they bounced.

Out Year 2 class were able to get some amazing bounces!

What animals can you think of that bounce? Kangaroos, grasshoppers, and frogs to name a few. We decided to look more in-depth at frogs and why they bounce everywhere. First, we needed to know what frogs looked like, so we made our own frogs based on different frogs we had seen.

One day, whilst we were out, something completely ruined the classroom, leaving a right mess everywhere. Our class narrowed their investigation down to a couple of suspicious frogs thanks to our knowledge of them and the slime each frog produces.

Thanks to our incredible Year 2 class there is one less messy frog on the loose.

It has been a brilliant term and we look forward to coming back after half term to another fun filled couple of months!

YEAR 3Tudors

This term our Year 3 class focused on the Tudors who are probably the most famous monarchy in British history. We learnt all about the Tudor period and how the monarchs and people lived during this period. Of course, we learnt all about Henry VIII, his six wives and the changes he made to the English Constitution. We also learnt about Elizabeth I and how her rule brought some stability to England and Ireland

The Tudor period was a little bit different to how we live now.. Okay, it was very different! For one they cooked all of their fruit.. Yes. All of it! The rich would eat 1-2 kilos of meat per day and the poor had to eat a lot of vegetables as they couldn’t afford meat. Punishments were less than humane during this period so lets just say you wouldn’t want to get caught committing a crime back in those days.. NOT to say you would want to get caught committing a crime nowadays either.. crime is bad. Medicine during this period was almost non-existent with many people relying on herbal remedies to recover from illness.

Alongside the Tudors, we looked at heroes and villains, specifically real life heroes such as Rosa Parks. We created biographies on Rosa Parks and her involvement in America’s civil rights movement. Learning about Rosa Parks also tied in with our learning of Black History Week at the school.

We were also visited by the police, not because we were up to anything nefarious, but because they came to give a talk to us on what the police do and how heroic they can be.

On the topic of heroes and villains, we had to have a heroes and villains dress up day! Teachers and pupils came in dressed up as their favourite heroes and villains!

This term has been plagued with historical learning.. get it. Plagued - the Tudors ha ha ha! But we have all had a fantastic time learning about this period of British History and hope next term brings something just as interesting to learn.

Did our Year 4 class have the best term ever? I mean this term will certainly be hard to beat considering we went and saw SCHOOL OF ROCK! On October 10th we made the journey to London’s West End by coach. On our way up to the big city we sang songs from the famous musical; all of us were buzzing with excitement.

At 1.33pm we had just about made it to the theatre, but tummies were rumbling and the children wanted to eat, so we ate our lunches on the coach before making our way inside.

Who would have thought that School of Rock was so popular with schools? We met many different schools on the way in and most of the audience were school children. As you can imagine there was a lot of noise from excited children before the show began.

The lights went dim and performers began their singing and dancing routines, it was a real rocking musical that had the audience engaged and singing along.

Of course leaving the capital was not as easy as planned and we ended up getting back to Maidstone a little later than we had anticipated!

Our topic of ‘Playlist’ also covered one of the most famous names in music.. No, not Weird Al Yankovic.. And NO not Flo Rida! We of course covered Beethoven and his influential music during the late 1700s-early 1800s and how he continued to produce music whilst going deaf.

We then looked at how music can be played, starting from the phonograph all the way up until modern phones and playing devices. We can’t imagine having to carry around one of those phonographs just to listen to our favourite tunes!

Finally, we had the opportunity to write poems regarding our favourite musicians; you can read a few here!

A lot of Ed Sheeran and Ariana Grande fans in Year 4 apparently.

YEAR 4Playlist

YEAR 5Pharaohs

The history of the Ancient Egyptians is steeped in mystery which makes it one of the most fascinating civilisations history has record of. Our Year 5 class became egyptologists this term as they took a metaphorical trip to Egypt (unfortunately we couldn’t go to Egypt.. maybe next year)!

Focusing on the kings and queens of Ancient Egypt, otherwise known as Pharaohs, we heavily examined Tutankhamen who was buried in the world’s most expensive coffin, otherwise known as a sarcophagus.

Before bodies were placed in coffins, the Egyptians mummified them! They best way to learn about something is to practice, so everyone voted on a pupil to mummify. The result was brilliant (see right)! P.S, NO PUPILS WERE ACTUALLY MUMMIFIED DURING THIS TERM. IT WAS SIMPLY PILLOWS!

The Ancient Egyptians left many artefacts behind and although we aren’t in Egypt, we think some of the artefacts the British Empire ‘borrowed’ were buried in our playground! Our egyptologists set up their dig site and cracked on with a bit of archaeological work. Many ancient artefacts were found and examined back in the classroom.

Ancient Egyptians relied heavily on the River Nile as it provided moisture for crops to grow and a steady source of food from which Egyptians could be fished.

To show off all they had learnt about the River Nile, our creative youngsters crafted models of the River Nile, explaining its importance and highlighting important details about one of the world’s most famous rivers.

Maidstone Museum welcomed our class with open doors as we took a trip to examine ancient artefacts and other Ancient Egypt related items. We had a fantastic time and learnt a lot of additional information.. Unfortunately Maidstone Museum weren’t willing to purchase any of our discovered artefacts from the playground!

YEAR 6BLOOD HEART

Blood Heart was the topic of the term and we are warning you now, it gets a bit messy. A bit of blood and definitely some hearts were involved.

So, you have a topic called blood heart and you want to ease your class into learning about hearts and blood. How do you ease the children in? Have them dissect a pig’s heart of course. And that’s just what we did, we cut up and examined pigs’ hearts. This task wasn’t for the squeamish as the hearts were squishy and felt strange. A few people gagged but fortunately no one was sick. Although some pupils were a bit grossed out by the hearts, everyone found the dissection fascinating and enjoyed learning about the heart through a practical task.

Now that we’ve dissected a heart, some of us were questioning who discovered how the heart functioned?? William Harvey was the Kentish born man to discover the hearts function within the body. To demonstrate our in-depth knowledge on Mr Harvey, we created biographies on him and his career.

We then made displays of the heart and how it pumps blood around the body using a circulatory system, to supply oxygen around the body. We made some brilliant displays that wouldn’t look out of place in the William Harvey Hospital.

I think it is safe to say our Year 6 class are all heart experts and are potentially ready to become heart doctors.. Although someone is now just telling me they apparently need to go through medical school to become trained heart doctors?? I think we can skip that part!

It has been a great first term with plenty of fun and learning being had by our Year 6 class. We’re looking forward to the October Half Term and returning for more adventurous learning!