Al Sedra Juniors - Week 2

Dear Parents,

This week has been an exciting one in Juniors as our swimming programme began for our Year 3 & 4 students. Swimming is a vital part of our curriculum and a life skill that every child should develop. We encourage all relevant parents to ensure their children bring the correct kit and attend every session, as missing lessons can quickly impact progress and confidence in the water.

Attendance continues to be a key focus for us. Regular attendance is one of the most important factors in achieving success at school. Even a few missed days can affect learning and continuity, so we ask for your continued support in helping us maintain excellent attendance across all classes.

To the right, you can see this week’s attendance highlights – the three classes with the highest attendance and the class with the most minutes of lateness. We will continue to celebrate strong attendance and punctuality throughout the term and encourage all families to help us ensure every student arrives on time, ready to learn.

Yours faithfully,

Mr. Gary
Head of Juniors

This week, Year 3 made a splash—literally—as they dove into their very first swimming session in the school pool! There were big laughs, a few nervous smiles and some very enthusiastic splashing as the children took to the water like ducks. It was fantastic to see their confidence grow with each kick.  Whether they were perfecting their strokes or just figuring out which way - up their goggles go, every student gave it their all. The children were absolute stars in the water, learning new skills, and having a blast. Bring on next week’s aquatic adventures—and hopefully fewer mixed-up shoes! Well done, Year 3.

This week in Year 4, the children have been learning about numbers up to 10,000. The children used practical resources to help them see how numbers can be split into parts and to understand the value of each digit.

The children have also been rehearsing and learning the actions for a story map. This helps them remember the key features and sequence of the explanation text we are studying, making it easier for them to retell the text and use it as a model for their own writing.

In Writing, Year 5 have blasted off into the exciting world of Alien Landing as part of our Talk for Writing (T4W) journey! We’re in the imitation phase, where the children are learning the story by heart using a lively story map and fun actions to bring it to life. As well as enjoying the adventure, they are also weaving in their “golden threads” of grammar – powerful tools like fronted adverbials, expanded noun phrases, personification, similes and metaphors – to make their writing as vivid and imaginative as possible. It’s been wonderful to see their confidence grow as they act out the story and experiment with language to eventually create their own out-of-this-world alien narratives.

The second week of the new school year has been a fantastic one for Year 6! The children have settled in wonderfully and truly hit the ground running. Their enthusiasm, teamwork, and eagerness to learn have already made a brilliant start to the term.

This week, we’ve been delving into our writing lessons as part of the topic “Moving People.” To bring this to life, the children have been using a much-loved writing stimulus from the Paddington Bear stories. Drawing on Paddington’s journey from Peru to London, the pupils have been imagining his first experiences of life in a new country.

In particular, the children have been crafting informal letters written in Paddington’s voice to his beloved Great Aunt Lucy, sharing what it was like to meet his new adopted family, the Browns, and describing the excitement (and challenges!) of arriving in London. Their creativity, humour, and ability to capture Paddington’s character have been very impressive, and it’s clear we are in for an exciting year of writing ahead!