FRIDAY 14TH JANUARY 2022 - Copthorne Prep School
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NEWSLETTER
FRIDAY 14TH JANUARY 2022
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat.’”
(Alice in Wonderland)
On Tuesday I was asked by one of our Pre-Prep children what job I wanted when I was a pupil at school. The answer (for
anyone interested) was the lead singer in a boy band. Clearly, plans changed from performing on stage and it turns out that
I am not going to be headlining Glastonbury this year. On the back of all of this, I decided to do some valuable research of
my own regarding career aspirations of a number of our pupils whilst I was waiting in the lunch queue: racing car driver;
fast jet pilot; artist; vet and snowman are some of the careers of choice for some of our younger pupils. Whilst I do worry
about the longevity and career prospects for snowmen (!) it’s good to hear that the sky is really the limit for our children at
Copthorne Prep.
Current events may lead some of our pupils to consider careers in medicine or public service. Others will grasp all that is
offered by new technology or academia and we will have our share of creatives. Yet, whilst progress along the road of life is
not always linear or predictable, and we don’t always know our future direction, our school can provide a path that I hope
the children will find both exciting and fulfilling.
As we begin 2022 we have an opportunity as a school community to support all our young people to grow and flourish, so
that they are well-equipped to meet the challenge of all that is to come. Which way ought we to go? Well, forward seems a
pretty good direction to me, and by embracing all that we meet on the way with a positive stride and an open-mind, we
perhaps will get to where we need to be.
A Big 'Copthorne' Welcome!
We are so pleased to be welcoming our new Aussie Graduate Assistants; Zoe Ward, Mike
Rich & Daniel Watts. Please do give them a big 'Copthorne Welcome' if you see them
around school!
As well as supporting teachers in the classrooms and on the games field, they will also be
instrumental in providing our Early Bird service, which is now held in the Rendall Room for
all children from 7:30am.
Any Pre-Prep & Nursery children not collected from Waiting House by 5.55pm will be
supervised by them in the Dining Room.
Class Rep Meetings
Our termly Class Rep Meetings will take on a new look for 2022! We will now be holding individual Zoom
meetings for Nursery, Pre-Prep, Years 3&4, Years 5&6 and Years 7&8, with the Coordinators and SLT leading
the meetings. We hope the new format will be well received by our parent body. Please raise any comments
with your child's Class Rep by Monday 31st January.
The Friends of Copthorne are recruiting for a Treasurer, do let Beth
(preprepoffice@copthorneprep.co.uk) if you are willing and able!
Our Covid cases are thankfully very low. However, we have been asked to remind parents that
results should be logged here: report a COVID-19 rapid lateral flow test result.
With effect from Monday 17th January, please also be aware that children who test positive
who are asymptomatic no longer require a PCR test, they must isolate immediately and test on
day 5 & 6. Face masks must be worn by Years 7&8 and parents and please santise when
entering all buildings.
Thank you for your cooperation!
What's on Next Week
Monday Normal Day
Tuesday U13 Cross Country Boys and Girls @ Waterhall
Wednesday Year 1 Visit Wakehurst Place
Year 7 & 8 Second Dose of Covid Vaccine
Year 5 and above Matches (check SOCS for further information)
Thursday Year 3 & 4 Matches (check SOCS for further information)
Friday U11 Netball
U11 & U13 Cross Country
School Uniform
We have noticed that a number of children do not have school hats, coats,
scarves and black gloves. Please can these be ordered via our school shop:
https://directclothing.co.uk/pages/copthorne-preparatory
Please can you ensure that all your child's clothing items are clearly named.
If they are missing uniform items, please contact your child's class teacher,
Beth in the Pre-Prep or Matron in the Prep School.
Rachel Farrow, our FOC Chair, also has a large selection of pre-loved uniform -
please check our Facebook page for more details!
There will be a Direct Clothing Pop-Up visiting soon! Watch this space for more
information.
Good Manners Table
We are delighted to inform you that the Good Manners Table
has been reinstated for Years 3 & 4.
Here are this week's Pre-Prep & Prep winners:
RAH Jude 3HJ Anna A
RJD Sashni 3KP Anna B
1JB Hatty 4AH Louis D
1JS Amelia 4TC Maddy L
2DP Alex
2HA Anastasia
LAMDA Results
Huge congratulations to our LAMDA children who all received Distinctions in the
following exams:
Grade 1
Maddy L Ava S-D
Caleb J Isabella D
Samuel S Matthias O-B
Rian P Zara M
Aidan B Valentina L-S
Jack Farrow Isaiah N
Isla CJ
Grade 2
Rohan B Isabella S
Mahi P Riann J
Avyanna S Aarav
Level 1 in Shakespeare
Sorcha C
Certificates will be sent home via sign out in due course - well done everyone!
Copthorne Stars!
Well done to our Stars of the Week
RAH - Alexander for wonderful writing and illustrating
RJD - Tom for fantastic writing in English and RWI.
1JB - Dylan for coming to school with a positive attitude.
1JS - Euan for always being extremely kind and helpful to adults and peers.
2DP - Rupert for brilliant maths and improved concentration
2HA - Annabel for excellent teamwork during creative and writing tasks!
What an impressive star collection, the 'Houses' have amassed!
Rendall 487 Sale 321
Workman 443 Newton 375
Nursery
Happy New Year from the Coach House Nursery!
Oaks class would like to welcome Rahul into the class, he has settled
quickly and already made lots of friends!
This term we are looking at our favourite stories, this week we have
looked at ‘Stickman’.
The children enjoyed learning a new song that Ms. M.C wrote and
then about the story. They made some lovely pictures of Stickman
and the snowman. They have also painted using sticks and enjoyed
making (and eating!) a Stickman out of a chocolate roll and
matchmakers.
It has been an fantastic first week back in Acorns class. We have
welcomed Arabella into the class and all of the children have fitted
straight back in to their nursery ways! On Monday, the children were
busy painting some of their favourite things, Joshua painted a
Pterodactyl! We enjoyed our Forest School session this week with
Mr. Lee, we had roasted chocolate bananas and had fun on the tree
seesaw. We went to explore the new Astro Pitch on Thursday, which
was very exciting!
Reception
This week Reception started their new topic of “On the Farm”. The children have been very excited to share their experiences
of farms and the animals that they like.
In Literacy we have started our story of “The Gigantic Turnip”. The children then illustrated their favourite part of the story
and wrote short captions to accompany their pictures. The teachers were so impressed by how well they used their 'Fred
Fingers' when writing independently.
Maths saw us revisiting 'more and less' using counters. We also learned about the number zero and comparing numbers and
quantities.
In Art we have been using lots of different materials to create our own farmers, which we will be proudly displaying on our
boards.
Staff News
A HUGE well done to
Mr Lee for successfully
passing his Level 3 Forest
School course - the
children are so lucky to
have such an inspiring
teacher!
Year 1 It has been a fun packed first full week back in Year One. We are now feeling much more settled after the Christmas break, with everyone very eager to learn. In English this week, we have started our new book, "The Secret Sky Garden" by Linda Sarah and Fiona Lumbers. The children have not seen the front cover yet and only discussed what they can see in the first two pictures. From what could be seen, a discussion evolved about the effects of litter on animals so we have been researching how to protect the environment and animal habitats by not littering. As you can imagine, the children are very passionate about this topic and so discussions were hot! We then created persuasive posters which the children would like to put up around the school. We even had some children who begun picking up litter in the playground. Lesley Dodson is already thinking about who she can recruit to be a part of the Copthorne Wombles! In Maths this week, we began by learning how to add by making 10 first. The children added numbers within 20 by making 10 first and then adding on the rest, using their knowledge of number bonds to 10 and part-whole models to help them. In pairs, they used tens frames and counters to represent their calculations and worked together to solve them. We have also been subtracting numbers up to 20 (without crossing 10) using tens frames and part-whole models. Once they were secure with using tens frames to subtract, we began working on trickier subtraction calculations crossing 10 using helpful pictorial representations. Finally, we have looked at different structures of subtraction (taking away, partitioning, difference). In Art, we used different materials to make kites to coincide with our learning about Hinduism in RE. Today, it is the Hindu festival of Makar Sankranti and we learnt that in some parts of India, they fly kites as part of the celebration. So this afternoon, we took our kites out to fly! In Science, we began our Plants and Seeds topic. The children learnt all about the different parts of a plant and their functions. This is to help prepare us for next week’s exciting trip to Wakehurst. Don't forget to wear PE kit on Wednesday. In Computing, we worked in groups which will alternate weekly. Group 1 began working on their mouse and keyboard skills using the programme ‘2go’ in Purple Mash. They had to work through a number of exciting challenges which required them to use the arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate a character through a maze. Group 2 used the ipads to access the same programme. We are all looking forward to our next Computing lesson where we will be using our new robot mice!
Year 2
Welcome back!
What a lovely first week we have had. On Monday, the children
had a super Forest School session together. There were many
activities for the children to play with and many got very muddy!
We have launched into our new topic ‘Icy Cold’ . Firstly, we
thought about what we would like to see or do in a polar region
and then we looked at the physical features. We learnt new terms
such as tundra, glacier and ice shelf.
In Art, we have created penguin collages using strips of tissue
paper and charcoal pencils and designed our own polar
landscape.
We have also been scientists and looked at the results from our
freezing experiments. Each class put different liquids in a freezer
to investigate if all liquids freeze the same. We worked hard to
make sure it was a fair test and we concluded liquids freeze
differently.
This week we have continued our learning on multiplication and
revisiting key phrases ‘groups of’ and ‘repeated addition’.
We have introduced our new book in English, but the title is to
remain a secret until next week. We have been impressed with
the children’s descriptive writing and fact finding.
STEM club have had time to enter a competition to design a logo,
for the rockets that will be launched from the UK for the first time
in 2022. We are so hoping that one of designs gets chosen. If
anyone else would like to design a logo, please do so and give
your design to Mrs Potgieter by the end of January. Here is some
information on the competition https://www.logoliftoff.org.uk
STEM club used Purple Mash Paint to design a logo but we will
enter in any type of representation.
https://www.purplemash.com/app/tools/2paintapic (our user
name and password are both year2)
After School Clubs
After School
Activities have
returned with a
bang! Here are our
Lego Masters with
no kragle in sight!
Children in Year 6-8
are now even able
to attend floodlit
Archery Classes!
Year 3
This week the Year 3s have been learning about the Iron Man.
‘The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. Where had he come from? Nobody Knows. How was he made? Nobody knows.’
We have used this quote to start off our thinking. From this we have been busy designing our own front covers and making our
own iron men using tin foil. What does he look like? We have also used performance poetry to act out the poem ‘The coming of
the Iron Man’. The videos and freeze frames we created were brilliant!
Year 4 On Friday Year 4 celebrated Roman Day. The children were visited by a Roman Solider who taught them all about life in the Roman army. The children were then taught battle tactics as well as the incredible history of Rome and enjoyed creating mosaics, Roman bread, finishing the day with a royal banquet!
Year 5
The Year 5's have been enjoying their early morning domino and
Jenga time. It’s a great opportunity to use those creative and team
working skills!
They have also have
returned this term with lots
of enthusiasm to learn! In DT
they have been using
Tinkercad to design their
very own chess pieces!
The U11B Team enjoyed their first
away match at St Christophers
yesterday - well done girls!
Year 6
Year 6 have also been working on their team
building skills - look at their Jenga tower!
This week Year 6 Science used light boxes and prisms
to demonstrate incredible DISPERSION: they shone
white light into a prism ….and out came a rainbow. In
another session, children used mirrors and card to
create periscopes using REFLECTION.
Here’s Year 6 in the Theatre in
groups of six, acting out Act 1,
Scene 1 of Macbeth. They paired
up to act out the part of each
witch and this exaggerated what
they were saying, giving them the
confidence to try out witchy
voices and poses.
Year 7
The 1st team girls went to Lingfield for their
under 13 netball tournament. Playing 6 games
in their group and only losing 1. The girls
showed great determination throughout the
Year 7 rolling the dice on probabilities and enjoying the sun
afternoon and should be very pleased with
streaming through the classroom!
themselves for coming away 3rd out
of 14 schools!Year 8
Our magnificent Year 8 artists have been very busy glazing their clay creations and also using the print press to print their
dry point etchings! Aren't they amazing!?
Our buddings Mathematicians have been making
3D shapes!You can also read
