Hello everyone!

We made it!  Well done Oak class on finishing year 3!  Both myself and Betsy are so proud of all the progress you have made, and I have seen everyone's confidence grow throughout the year which has been wonderful to watch.

We've had a busy last week of term - particularly on Wednesday with our trip to Shallowford Farm.  Year 3 and 4 were mixed up, and half of the children came with me in the morning, the other half going with Mr Frewin in the afternoon.  We had a great trip, and learnt about the habitat of the Marsh Fritillary butterfly.  I learnt that it lives in marshy land on Dartmoor, and particularly likes to eat Devils-bit-Scabious.  As well as this, we met some lambs, chicks, and 24 hour-old piglets!  

The end of the year also marks my final blog as a teacher at Chagford Primary school, as I'll be moving to another school in September.  I've loved being a part of the Chagford family, and want to thank both parents and children for being so fantastic and supportive.  With it being my first year of teaching I was nervous about what it might be like, however I shouldn't have been!  I've had the best time, and I am very sad to be leaving.  Thank you everyone for my kind, generous gifts and cards also!

I hope you all have a fantastic summer, and good luck for year 4!

​Miss Paddon :) 

Hello again everyone!

This week has been so full of colourful and fun!

We continued with our topics on time, and began to think a little more about poetry.  The poem we are focussing on involves a beachcomber searching the beach, and finding curious objects each day.  On some days, they just find very ordinary objects, however they question where it might be from, who left it there, what it might become...  Perhaps, this weekend you could try picking up an object, and thinking how it could be curious too!

After a week of not much activity from our little class pets, yesterday and today we began to see our butterflies emerge from their cocoons!  We managed to watch one as it emerged and first opened its wings, which was fascinating!  We now have 5/9 butterflies emerged, and by Monday we are hoping that they all will have emerged.

On Friday, we celebrated 'Rainbow Day'.  This was to celebrate diversity, in all sorts of ways!  In Oak class, we looked at a book called 'My Shadow is Purple'.  It illustrates how there are more than 2 choices to how we live and what we like.  We can like both boy and girl things, and don't have to be one or the other if we don't want to.  We thought about what colours our shadows might be, and (thanks to some expert coaching from an Oak class origami master) we created colourful stars which show all the different things we could be.  We also made a rainbow cake!  We thought about how on the outside we look like one thing, however on the inside we are full of different, wonderful qualities.

It's going to be a hot one next week, Oak class!  Please make sure you have a water-bottle everyday, and ideally a sunhat too.  Please also apply suncream before school starts.  This needs to happen particularly on Friday next week (15th) as we are planning to hold our sports day then!

See you all on Monday!
​Miss Paddon

Hello again everyone,

This week we've got back to normal after a busy few weeks with our play, and have been continuing with our topics. 

In English, we finished our persuasive letters to persuade people to donate to the Rainforest Alliance.  The children used persuasive language, statistics, and emotive noun phrases to try to persuade myself and other teachers to donate to the Rainforest Alliance.  They were certainly very persuasive - so much so that I have donated some money to the Rainforest Alliance!  In Maths we have continued with Time.  We've even created our own clocks to help us in our learning.

We are going to be starting a new topic of poetry for the final few weeks, and we will look at 'Beachcomber' by George Mackay Brown.   The poem describes some curious finds on a beach, so to get into the spirit of finding curious objects, we went to the forest school area today to look for interesting objects.   The children had to draw them, describe them, and explain what made it a curious item.

Our new class pets have changed...into chrysalis'! We've loved watching them everyday wriggling and growing.  I've transferred them into their butterfly habitat, in readiness for when they emerge in about a weeks time!

Now for some news... today the children found out that they will have Mr Frewin and Miss Barton when they move up to Year 4.  Mr Frewin and Miss Barton are super excited to be their teacher, and it's really exciting news!  But with it came some sadder news for myself and the class.  Unfortunately I won't be returning to Chagford after the summer holidays, as I'll be taking up a teaching role at another school.  I would have loved to stay for a little longer, and I will miss all the children and staff very much!  Although this came as quite upsetting news to the class, we're going to be optimistic about the last 3 weeks, and I've got lots of fun ideas for our lessons!

Have a lovely weekend everyone, and see you on Monday!
​Miss Paddon