April 2021

We have noticed LOTS and LOTS of litter around the perimeter of the school and this seems to be getting worse lately. Please make sure that you do your bit too and don’t add to the problem!

A group of children from Lea Forest will be working with local residents to carry out regular litter picks to keep our school environment clean, tidy and safe.

In our school, it is very important that we care for and look after each other. We work hard to encourage all of the children to be a really good friend. At Lea Forest Primary Academy this means:

• Being kind to everyone

• Never asking anyone to do something they don't want to

• Encouraging the children to tell a teacher if they one their friends at school is doing something that is not right

• Asking children to be honest if they have made a mistake or done something wrong

• Making sure all children understand that is is not right to ask friends to keep secrets if they have done something wrong

• Teaching children the importance of respecting everyone in your class and in the school

We want everyone at Lea Forest Primary Academy to come to school feeling safe and happy and you can help us by talking to your children about how they know they are a good friend and how they show the values of the school. We will be talking to all of the children about what it means to be a good friend over the next few weeks. We will talk about it in class and in assemblies because we care about each and every one of our pupils and we want them to have the very best time at school and have the confidence to speak up and share any worries they may have.

Lea Forest is being used as a polling station on Thursday 6th May. School will therefore be CLOSED to all pupils and staff on this day to ensure everyone’s safety. For this day we will be setting Character Curriculum tasks to complete.

On Saturday 17th April, the district footballers of Erdington and Saltley were crowned champions of Birmingham, beating South Birmingham Primary Schools' FA 4-0, they completed a 100% league campaign and once against showcased the immense talent in our schools. Well done to Jack for representing Lea Forest as the team's goalkeeper.

District football is a huge honour for those selected. It offers them the chance to play schools' district football the length and breadth of the country, to play at Premier League stadiums, to make memories for life and all of this is free.

This week has seen the launch of our 'Reading for the curriculum' initiative. During these weeks, all learning stems from one high-quality text that our teachers have selected to showcase and use as a stimulus for fun, engaging and memorable experiences! It is yet another opportunity for us to encapsulate books into our curriculum and and do what we love to do - READ!

All year groups have had great fun engaging in book-related activities, from glossary work, to drama and role play. From historical clay making structures to storytelling puppet shows. Children and staff alike have throughly enjoyed the week and look forward to it returning again in the near future! The only question is, which book's world will we enter next?...

At the end of last year, all of the schools in AET came together both at home and at school to celebrate Remarkable Lives and the day was a huge success.

Building on the success of the AET's popular Remarkable World Programme of competitions, which challenge our children to find their remarkable, we decided to discover what's possible with a new set of competitions this year! We will be setting more competitions throughout the next half term and look forward to seeing all of your entries! Take a look at what Remarkable World 2021 will look like: AET Remarkable World 2021

We've had a remarkable first week of attendance! Well done to everyone for making such a great start… Our attendance for the week has smashed our 96% target this week! Congratulation to this week's champions! 6CF and 4TH are the champions overall this week with an incredible 99.19%

2BS are the champions of Key Stage 1 with 98.33%

RCG are the winners in Early Years with 98.65%

We love a good competition at Lea Forest and this week we are excited to announce three amazing competitions.

Keep Lea Forest Tidy - Can you create an amazing poster that tells our neighbours not to litter the streets around our school.

Closing Date - May 7th

Royal Mail - Royal Mail is creating a new set of Hero Themed stamps to honour key workers, local heroes and people that have helped their community during the pandemic. Closing Date May 26th

Travel Tracker WOW Badges 2021 - Can you create an amazing travel tracker badge based on the theme of Walk for the World. Closing Date May 28th

Entry forms can be collected from Mr Croxon's office.

At Lea Forest we aim to develop our pupils’ character through the growth of relationships that define us as human. Through our curriculum, we develop a set of competencies (behaviours) which enable each and every one of our pupils to lead a remarkable life. These competencies can be found at:

https://sites.google.com/aetinet.org/lea-forest-primary-academy/curriculum/aets-character-curriculum.

In addition to the tasks provided by individual class teachers, a ‘Character Curriculum Challenge’ will be set fortnightly on the newsletter.

On this occasion, we would like you to plant some bulbs or seeds either in your garden or plant pot. Remember that, just like people, seeds and bulbs have needs that must be met in order for them to thrive and grow. (For more information about taking care of your plants, visit: http://www.thekidsgarden.co.uk/teachkidsaboutplantingwithseedsandbulbs.html) It would be amazing if you could then observe the growth of your plants and draw pictures of them as they grow.

I hope you had a good and restful Easter break. I am looking forward to this term enormously; full of hope that we will continue to ease out of lockdown and get back to an increasing sense of normality. Everyone has been utterly remarkable and to have the school full of children with the energy and enthusiasm they bring is a pure delight. The children have settled back brilliantly this week and have fully embraced our ‘Reading for the Curriculum’ themed week where all of our learning has been based around high quality texts.

We surprised our Year 6 children this week with the first of many planned treats for them. Each and every child (and staff) received their very own personalised Lea Forest leavers’ hoodie.

Year 3, Year 4 and Year 6 also took to the pedal this week with their bikeability training sessions. Check out some of the photographs from this week on the back page of this newsletter.

I would like to continue with the pulse surveys this term but instead of them being weekly there will be three bursts each two weeks long: the start of this term, the run into half term and the end of term. This will allow me to continue to hear your thoughts and respond to your feedback, but also through an evolving set of questions, consider the future more. Here is this week’s survey - https://edurio.com/poll/TftLxP - which will only take 3 minutes to complete and I would love to hear from you before Saturday at 3pm when the survey will close.

We continue to develop our vision for a Remarkable Education in 2025 with our trust, AET. We would welcome your thoughts and comments on our Golden Ideas we have initially selected from the hundreds of ideas submitted by staff, pupils and parents/carers at the end of the Autumn and beginning of Spring terms. Please click here (http://bit.ly/AETVoiceParent) to access AET Voice, register an account and add your thoughts to the ideas so we can shape the future of our childrens' education together.

There is so much to look forward to this term with our Remarkable World competitions, our Festival of Remarkable lives on Tuesday 13th July and much more. In the meantime and as always, should you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to me or a member of my remarkable team.

Wishing you all a fabulous weekend - fingers crossed for some more lovely weather!

Mr Clarke

We would like to remind parents regarding changing their child from dinners to sandwiches and sandwiches to dinners. This is supposed to be half termly with notification to the office. If you have any questions about this, please contact Mrs Ruff in the main office.

With Easter fast approaching, Dr Spartacus thought that it would be an eggcellent time to try some of his Easter STEM Challenges, which can be accessed using:

https://www.science-sparks.com/easter-stem-challenges/.

He would LOVE to see your experiments and creations if you try any, so please share photos with him on Class Dojo, Facebook, or Twitter. There will be some eggstra special prizes for the best experiments when you return to school too.