Space Odyssey

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To give your child an exciting, interactive learning experience of our science Earth and Space topic, the Year Five classes will be visited by Space Odyssey, a mobile planetarium. The children will go inside a large dome set up inside Ash classroom and they will have a 360° cinema experience. The show will take place on Tuesday 10th January 2023 and will take place during the school day (children will have lunch as a normal school day and wear their school uniform.). It will be as close as we can get to giving them an experience of outer space!

Please log on to your ParentPay account for this trip by Friday 6th January 2023 to give permission for your child to attend the event and to pay your contribution. The trip will be shown as a payment item at the top of the home page. If your child is in receipt of pupil premium funding we request that your contribution covers 50% of the cost (£2.51). If you require any assistance please do not hesitate to contact the school office. Unfortunately if we do not reach 90% (including the schools pupil premium contribution) of the overall cost of this trip by the deadline we would have to cancel.

Many thanks for your continued support,
The Year Five Team

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Year 5 Swimming - January 2023

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We are excited to announce that Year 5 will be starting swimming lessons at LED (Exmouth Leisure Centre). Each class will attend a full term of swimming lessons (dates were emailed to each class). Each session will last 30 minutes and the children will be taught in ability groupings to enable the lessons to be tailored to your child’s individual needs.

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On the day of the sessions, the timings of the school day will not be affected by the swimming lessons and children should be dropped off at school and collected as usual. The children should wear their normal school uniform but will need comfortable footwear (shoes or trainers) as we will be walking to and from the swimming pool.

All children will need to come to school with the following items:
• Suitable swimwear/ goggles if required
• Towel
• Trainers/ comfortable shoes for the walk from school to LED.
• Girls will need hair tied back and/or a swimming cap
• A backpack suitable for the journey and a spare plastic bag for wet kit
• A packed lunch*
*Please note, if your child is entitled to free school meals, a packed lunch can be arranged with the school kitchen – please indicate if this is required on the form provided.

 

Ability Groups
In order to ensure that all of the children get the best from their swimming lessons, and begin in the most suitable group for them, we would appreciate your help in indicating which ability group you feel your child currently fits in. This will help us to ensure that your child feels as comfortable and confident in the pool from the outset.
Many thanks for your help and continued support.

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Sideshore Sea Safety Project, September 2022

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This week, 180 of our Withycombe children (Year 5 and 6) took part in the first ever ‘Sideshore Sea Safety Project’. This project was set up the following aims:

• To inspire and motivate all children to use and respect the local environment

• To equip and educate all children with the lifesaving skills necessary if they should unintentionally fall into water

• To provide education and guidance on safe sea swimming and self-rescue

 

The children started their beach sessions with a ‘meet the lifeguard’ talk from the RNLI beach lifeguards, who carefully explained the flag system on the beach and gave helpful tips on safer sea swimming. The children then completed a series of land based games and sea swimming activities learning about self-rescues, hazard spotting and cold water shock.

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The children absolutely loved the sea swimming sessions and were already asking to go again before they walked back to school. There have been a LOT of smiles on the beach over the last two days and many members of the public have commented on how wonderful our Withycombe children are. Despite the red flag on day one, this project has been a huge success and highlighted the importance of taking care of the environment and checking that it is safe to swim even more. 

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Huge thanks to Edge Watersports, Sideshore learn to swim initiative for funding the event, Jane Hushon (Swim Devon) and the super team that we have here at Withycombe who worked hard behind the scenes to make this all come together.​