This term we have been very busy in the Star Room. Year 6 have been looking at Greek mythology and dragon ology in English and Year 7 have been looking at gothic literature. We have done lots of interventions and Christmas themed activities, which you will be able to read about in this newsletter. All our articles are written by Star Room Children.
We hope Owen, Ethan and Ben have Lovely Birthdays.
Don’t forget to check the Abbey Park YouTube Channel AbbeyParkFederation. Look out for your children in the Twas the night before Christmas and the Star Room Staff in the Do they know it’s Christmas time videos!
We hope you have a Merry Christmas and Best wishes for the New Year!
The Star Room Staff. Mrs Witts, Mrs Talbot, Miss Hemming, Miss Weatherup, Ms Lawson & Ms Frankum
We have been getting into the festive spirit early in the Star room. The children have been doing Christmas themed baking. We have made cranberry sauce, cake pops and gingerbread. We also decorated a Christmas tree in the Star room and have done lots of Christmas themed activities in maths and English.
In the last week of term we watched a Christmas film with pop and popcorn. We also had the pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk streamed in to watch and we split into teams to complete a Christmas themed quiz.
Christingles
Today, the other classmates and I made Christingles. We wrapped a red ribbon around a large orange and stuck in on using pins, then we inserted cocktail sticks into the 4 sides of the orange so they face upwards. After that, we stuck assorted sweets on the cocktail sticks. We would have put a candle in the centre of the orange, but we ran out so we stuck yet another cocktail stick coated in delicious sweets into the orange. It was good fun to learn about the Christingle and make one, I never knew what one was before!
By Cole W.
Over the terms, every Friday we had cooked dozens upon dozens of meals!
We put our hearts into writing the recipe so you can get the star room feeling at home! (See cookbook)
We had enjoyed creating the meals one by one and my (Kristian’s) favourite was the pepperoni pizza. Thank you for reading this page and soon we will do even MORE recipes. ENJOY!
Cook bookOver the last TWO terms we have been working on a cook book! Soon IT WILL BE AVAILBLE FOR SALE! So keep your heads up for some recipes! Here are some of the best recipes: Gingerbread, Pumpkin squares and satay sweet potato curry!
The Boy at the Back of the Class is the book we read this term. It was about a boy called Ahmet who is a refugee. The story takes us on a journey inside the life of a refugee who has lost his family. He makes friends with a group of children who plan to help him find out where his parents are. Here is the class’s opinion on the book!
This book was created immaculately. It is a Heart Warming tale of a boy/girl who wishes to help a refugee to find his parents. Let’s say it went royal… (Foreshadowing!)
Moderately good. Good idea but I don’t love it. Example; Trekking far to find a pomegranate.
Bad Example;
Attempting to break into Buckingham Palace.
Over this term we had watched BBC Newsround every day in the morning. We managed to learn lots from it and multiple topics were introduced by it. The show is a small clip of news with child friendly features. For example the show gave us updates on the US election 2020 along with daily Coronavirus updates. More stuff we heard about was Maradona’s death, TV news, how to boss Halloween and Chistmas and much more! Here is the link:
This term we have covered lots of traditions and awareness from all over the world. We have looked at Christmas around the world, festivals such as Diwali and Hanukah and we covered topics like Children in Need, Anti-bullying week and Disability awareness day. We made a remembrance display to remember all of the soldiers who lost their lives in war, and we watched the BBC’s remembrance service we all stayed really quiet for the two minute silence.
Hi Everyone,
This is just a quick message to let you know that my name is Mrs Witts and I am the new Star Room lead here at Abbey Park, as well as the mainstream SENDco across the whole of the Federation – right from Nursery to Year 7.
I just wanted to let you know that the Star Room Bubble that we have created since September is working beautifully and all our new pupils have settled in amazingly well, despite the Covid lockdown and not being able to do the usual transition visits.
We are SO proud of the way our Star Room pupils are responding to the new ways of working in school such as SAS (Sanitise/Action/Sanitise).
Our highly skilled and motivated Star Room team have been delivering core subjects to our Star Room pupils, as well as interventions like life skills and Zones of Regulation.
We are looking forward to another successful half term in the build up to Christmas and we are excited to see where our new friendships and learning targets will take us all. Let’s all keep enjoying our learning together!
We have been growing fruit and vegetables in the star room’s arts garden since the summer term. We had a big harvest of courgettes and tomatoes so we decided to make a soup. Firstly we prepared the meal by skinning the courgettes with a peeler and cutting the tomatoes. We didn’t have enough tomatoes so we used tomato paste to add additional tomato flavouring. The class had also used a spiralizer to cut the courgettes. They’re cooking the soup right while I’m writing this! I’m sure they’re enjoying cooking this wonderful meal!!!
By Kristian W.
Today we made a delicious apple and blackberry crumble. Everyone, including me, helped to make the sweet dessert. Ben, Kristian and I picked the apples and blackberries ourselves from the blackberry bushes and apple trees on the school grounds. Once we picked and washed our fruits of choice, we used the apples and blackberries the next day to make a delicious apple crumble. We used flour, sugar, apples and blackberries to make the crumble. We peeled the apples ourselves using peelers and Kristian and I stirred the apples and blackberries into a boiling pot of water. Because we didn’t have many blackberries (We picked them a bit late; A lot of the berries were overripe and shrivelled), Ruby collected some blackberries herself and there were A LOT of them. In the end, we made a lovely crumble and the best part was bringing the crumble home to eat with our families.
By Cole W.
This is going to be a short article because it is about the Star Room reward system. The Reward System, in my opinion, is perhaps the best thing to happen to schools since the invention of the electronic whiteboard. If you are not aware, the Reward System is a scheme in which you can collect “Tokens” for successful lessons and good behaviour. Collecting 10 Tokens earns you 15 minutes of reward time, 15 earns you 30 minutes, 20 earns you 45 minutes and 25 earns you THE WHOLE HOUR. Reward Time is held in the last lesson slot of Friday, and lasts for 1 hour. In case you haven’t earnt the whole hour, you spend the rest of the lesson doing miscellaneous tasks. Personally, I always get the whole hour. A great advance in teaching.
By Cole
Below is the children’s reward jars. They designed the jars and their tokens by themselves.
During the morning of each day, when we first arrive at school, we take part in Discovery Time.
“But what is Discovery Time?” You may ask. When we arrive at the Star Room, we hand in our Home-school Books and put our coats and backpacks in our lockers, we sit down at our desks and watch BBC Newsround’s. Then we have a cup of a hot chocolate or tea and listen to the teachers to find out our tasks for that morning. We often do drawing or colouring. We sometimes play “Multiplication Bingo” in which we solve a certain multiplication equation (I.E 6×2) and look at our card to cross out the answer. Of course not everyone has the same numbers and the first person to cross out all their numbers and shout “Bingo!” wins. It really helps me focus during the rest of the day.
By Cole
My I have a dream……
I have a dream that everyone from black to white to male to female from Asian or immigrant will be treated equally to one another.
I have a dream that none shall be judged by the colour of their skin or their age or status but their personality and pride in who they are.
I have a dream no-one will discriminate another for any reason at all but the bad will be punished.
I have a dream that we can live in a utopia together, Dream together, fight together and most of all, be happy together…..
By Kristian
In Discovery this term we have been watching Newsround. October is Black history month and some of the star room children were really inspired, especially by Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech. They were so inspired that they wanted to write their own. Above is one of the children’s interpretation. It was so good that Miss Scully put it up in her office!
Some of the Star room Pupils access the Evesham Adventure Playground as part of their provision.
The playground is a registered charity that offers support to the local community from bike projects to food banks.
When our children go to the playground they enjoy lots of activities like bike rides and cooking and forest school.
Sometimes the children work with adults on projects. They have made bird houses, helped to repair bikes and below is a picture of a planter that Ethan helped made for our arts garden.
Our Star Room shared reading book this term has been Wonder. The children have enjoyed reading this book this term and as a reward we watched the film with pop and popcorn!
On the 21st October we had Halloween themed day in the star room.
Pumpkins
In the morning we all carved a pumpkin. We scooped all of the insides out and used our fine motor skills to separate the seeds from the flesh. We pureed the flesh and used it in our pumpkin themed cooking sessions. We are drying the seeds out to plant and toast for a snack. All the children designed their pumpkin and carved it themselves.
Pumpkin cooking
We used the pureed pumpkin to help us make pumpkin bread and pumpkin squares. We used lots of skills to help us bake. We used maths to help us measure the ingredients, English to interpret the recipe and teamwork to work together and make the finished products. We even learnt some life skills like washing up!
Quiz
Before lunch we did a star room themed Halloween quiz. We all got separated into teams and had to work together using our general knowledge to answer 30 Halloween themed questions.
Conker Spider web
In the afternoon we did Halloween craft activities. We made a spider web from conkers, cocktail sticks and string. We had to use our fine motor skills to help us. Then we did some Halloween themed activities like colouring pages and code breakers.
