This week, we have been considering the power of revising. This is having the readiness and flexibility to change plans, recognising when a plan is not going to bring the success expected and changing plans to better your outcome. Monitoring our progress is something we have to remember to do multiple times in every lesson, but the teachers have been guiding us through the process, asking us challenging questions and helping us to draw our own conclusions about what to do next to improve our learning journeys. We are definitely improving our independence and feeling more confident in the classroom! In your child’s bag today you will find a ‘Cypress Parents’ Guide to Building Learning Power’. At school the children and staff often refer to Building Learning Power as ‘BLP’. Please take the time to read this and familiarise yourself with the learning powers we are developing everyday in our lessons. These learning powers can be reinforced at home too. Ask your child/ren to tell you about which learning muscles they have exercised today! We will be releasing a short video presentation on Building Learning Power, growth mindset, and what you can do at home to help boost your child’s learning powers shortly. Watch this space!
We were also treated to an assembly from Hawthorn class centred around their recent English text, Varjak Paw by S. F. Said. They gave us a very entertaining synopsis, but stopped short of the ending to encourage us to find out for ourselves! Well done Hawthorn class for remembering all of those lines and reciting them perfectly; there was also some very impressive acting on show! Thank you to Mrs Rose, Ms Braithwaite and Miss Joshi for helping the children put together such a fantastic assembly. For any parents who would like to watch the assembly again, the assembly will be uploaded to the class blog this afternoon.
Art Week
It has been Art week and the children have been collaging, sketching, painting and creating all week. We have enjoyed the We have some very talented artists at Cypress! Through developing our art skills this week we have also developed our resilience, determination, communication and concentration amongst other skills. It has been so much fun! Check out the gallery to see a few example of the art produced.
Bike Check & Bikeability
In preparation for Bikeability next week we had a visit from Dr. Bike today, who was busy ensuring that all bikes are safe enough to ride out on the road next week. This included inflating tyres, checking cables and fixing and tightening brakes, seats and handle bars. As children’s bikes should be serviced once a year, we are happy that they can now ride confidently and happily with the reassurance that their bikes are suitable and safe. Thank you to our STARS co-ordinator Miss Powell who organised this service.
Keep a look out for a news story regarding Bikeability training next week!
Cypress Superstars
Cypress Superstars this week: Sam (Cedar) for an independent piece of writing using amazingly ambitious vocabulary. It was a pleasure to read, Sam! Well done to Efe, Ben and Sha’Daniel (Beech), for their well structured stories based on the Year 6 text, Wolf brother. Alesha, Joe, Ashtri and Tamila produced an independent descriptive piece of writing about the colourful creatures they created during their art session. Cavani showed a positive learning attitude and completed his work to a high standard, independently – we are very proud of you! Well done also to Natnale (Rowan) and Evie, Haddy and Sundus (Hazel) for achieving their Accelerated Reading gold award. Keep it up!
Rainbow winners
| Class Name | Rainbow 1 | Rainbow 2 |
| Holly | Rico – for ‘capitalising’ well in English to create a lovely descriptive paragraph. | Meredith – for persevering when learning about time |
| Cedar | Nicole – wonderfully imaginative use of language to create show not tell phrases. | Mete has been making links to previous learning and capitalising on resources to help him successfully learn about time this week. |
| Birch | Maria- for being brave, resilient and stepping in last minute for our class assembly on Friday. | Raul- showing courage and trying something different in our class assembly with your singing/ dancing performance. |
| Lime | Ashvi – for being resilient in her tasks an always taking feedback into consideration. She makes the relevant changes and thinks about how to make her work better | Blake – for always persevering in his tasks and not letting feedback dishearten him. Using his times tables in his maths session. Well done |
| Hawthorn | Saddiq – remaining focused and in his seat during a succession of English lessons which meant that he was able to complete the set task | Billy – consistently working hard to remain focused and on task in all lessons. |
| Rowan | Iqra – for being helpful and showing she cares. Great class participation! | Yasmin – for persevering when learning how to add and subtract fractions and participating in class discussions |
| Hazel | Mustafa – sharing wonderful insights during our reading sessions by making links between previous chapters. | Lily – for showing resourcefulness in lessons and being a wonderful collaborative learner |
| Willow | Brady – for setting a great example in maths and PE. | Saxon – for making really good progress in his writing, showing great independence. |
| Sycamore | Cailen – for showing great resourcefulness and independence in our maths lessons. It is lovely to see you work out problems with Nicky. | Nicky – for showing great resourcefulness and independence in our maths lessons. It is lovely to see your work out problems with Cailen. |
| Beech | Owen- for use capitalising well in science and adapting his plans to achieve a successful outcome. | Holly – for reviewing her plans to overcome an obstacle in her science experiment. |
| Oak | Hisham- for applying his newly learnt BLP skill to plan how he is going to have a successful start to school in September. | Simi – for bringing a smile to his teacher’s face by being resourceful and working hard to catch up after being off sick. |
| Larch | Courtney – improved confidence in maths and using her absorption and noticing skills to solve problems. | Hassan –bringing enthusiasm and positive energy into class, making links with his prior learning and collaborating well with others in group work. |
Changes to Covid arrangements
In the light of the forthcoming changes to government guidance (17th May) relating to Covid arrangements we will be making some changes to arrangements at Cypress Upper. From Monday Bubbles will return to the larger year group bubbles allowing classes in the same year group to come together indoors. The school office will also open again from 9:00am on Monday. We are still asking that parents keep office visits to a minimum and consider whether your query could be dealt with via email or phone call.
After school tuition will now be provided on-site. If your child has been selected to attend these sessions please note that they will revert back to their former timings from next week: 3:15- 4:15pm. If your child is in Year 3 and has been offered extra tuition, they will also remain at school for their booster session, supervised by the Year 3 teachers, but will access this remotely.
Peripatetic music lessons will begin again the week beginning 7th June. If you are interested in music lessons for your child, please contact the office, who will provide you with further details.
We still remain vigilant during this time; these changes are under constant review and are subject to change.
We hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Mrs. Carpenter & the Cypress Upper team
