Furze Platt Infant School

Newsletter - 24th May 2024

FPIS has a magical start to Walk to School Week!

We began this week with magic tricks, illusions and lots of laughter - all to help us remember some very important road safety rules as we launched our Walk to School Week 2024. Please see below for more about this exciting event... A big thank you to all our families who have made an extra special effort this week by walking, scooting, cycling (or even parking a little further away than usual) when coming to and from school. Thanks also to all those parents who are reminding their children not to cycle or scoot around our school site :)

On the note of journeys to school, as per our recent reminder, please do make sure that your child is accompanied by an adult and supervised as they arrive at school in the morning. Our young children must be dropped off at the classroom door by their adult in order that we know they have arrived safely and to allow Class Teachers to pass on any brief messages, if necessary. Please make sure your child arrives on time for the start of the school day. Should you arrive late (after 9:00 am), please report to the School Office. Please also see below for information from RBWM about changes to Penalty Notices for unauthorised term-time absences or irregular attendance.

We hope you have a lovely half term holiday. We look forward to welcoming our children and famiies back to school for the final few weeks of this academic year on Monday 3rd June.

With very best wishes

Jane Indge

Head of School

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Diary dates - coming up soon!

Here is a look at what's going to be happening in school during the next few weeks...

Friday 24th May - Term ends

Monday 27th May - Friday 31st May - Half term holiday

Monday 3rd June - Term begins

Monday 10th June - Early Years Busy Learning Morning: 9:00 am - 10:00 am

Tuesday 11th June - Class Photographs

Friday 14th June - FPSA Tombola cups - non-uniform day

Friday 14th June - Early Years Exhibition: 2:30 pm

Tuesday 18th June - Parent/Carer SEND Coffee morning with GEMS: 9:30 am - 10:30 am

Saturday 22nd June - FPSA Summer Fair: 11:30 am - 2:30 pm

Friday 28th June - Sports Day: 1:30 pm

Tuesday 2nd July - Family Boat Building Fun - Year 2: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Thursday 4th July - Teacher Treasure Trail - Year 1: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Thursday 4th July - Sports Day (reserve date): 1:30 pm

Friday 5th July - End of Year Reports to parents

Wednesday 10th July - Early Years and Year 2 Parent Meetings: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm

Thursday 11th July - Year 1 Parent Meetings: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm

Friday 12th July - 'Road2Paris' Olympic Workshops - KS1

Saturday 13th - Sunday 14th July - FPSA Summer Camp

Tuesday 16th July - Year 1 Excellent Ending: 9:15 am - 10:15 am

Wednesday 17th July - Transition Day - children meet their new class teacher(s)

Thursday 18th July - Year 2 End of Year Performance 9:30 am - 10:30 am

Thursday 18th July - Year 2 End of Year Performance 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Friday 19th July - Year 2 End of Year Performance 9:30 am - 10:30 am

Friday 19th July - FPSA Year 2 Leavers Disco: 4:30 pm - 5:45 pm

Tuesday 23rd July - Early Years Graduation: 9:15 am

Wednesday 24th July - Term ends SCHOOL FINISHES @ 1:30 pm

Thursday 25th July - INSET Day (school closed)

Friday 26th July - Summer Holidays

Vacancies

FPJS is currently seeking to appoint Teaching Assistants for September 2024.

Please use the link below if you would like to find out more about the opportunities available:

https://www.furzeplattjuniorschool.co.uk/vacancies/

School Attendance

SAM - our School Attendance Mascot, is our FPIS teddy bear who helps our children think about why it is so important to attend school every day.

Our children are busy learning right from the start of the day, so being in class on time each morning matters just as much too. Registration begins at 8:50am and we expect all children to be in class by 9:00am.

Each week, during our Celebration Assembly, the attendance figures are shared. The class with the best attendance overall gets to look after SAM until the following week.

SAM will be staying with Oak Class over the half term break as they had the best attendance overall with a super score of 99.7%! Well done!

Our latest school attendance figures for each class are shown in the table. Our school attendance target is: 97%

You can read our full Attendance Policy here.

Oak 99.7%

Holly 99.3%

Caterpillar 99.0%

Willow 99.0%

Hazel 99.0%

Silver Birch 98.7%

Dragonfly 98.4%

Bumblebee 97.6%

Beech 88.9%

FPN Information for Parents.docx

FPIS SEND Signpost

1000+ loans for our School Library!

Well over 1000 books have been borrowed from our School Library since it was re-opened for after school sessions earlier this year. We are really pleased that so many of our children are accessing the wonderful range of books that we have and enjoying them at home.

We currently have 3 volunteer librarians - Mrs Green, Mrs Hull and Mr Thompson who are facilitating our after school sessions on a Monday, Tuesday and Friday. However, we would love to be able to open on a Wednesday and Thursday too, so are still looking for more volunteers to help us.

If you would like to get involved with our school library and help to run our after school sessions, please get in touch via the school office for more information.

'Get Out of your Seat and onto your Feet' for Walk to School Week 2024

We were delighted to welcome magician, David Tricks to our school on Monday for a Road Safety Magic Show.

The show was the perfect way to launch our Walk to School Week, with lots of top tips for our children to remember in order to help keep themselves safe when out and about. The key message was to 'STOP, LOOK, LISTEN, THINK!' before crossing the road. Alongside this, and other important road safety information, there was lots of magic tricks, fun and silliness which the children thoroughly enjoyed too!

Our thanks to the wonderful FPSA for funding the costs of the shows :)

The final day of our Walk to School Week could not have been more colourful - with a truly sensational array of socks of many kinds being worn by the children and adults alike!

Whole School Poetry Parade!

On Tuesday 14th May, our school celebrated all things poetry themed!

We started the day with an exciting assembly led by Simon Mole, local Poet and parent! He shared some of his poetry with us and we even got to join in. This prepared us nicely for our afternoon Poetry Parade. The theme for our parade this year was 'Our World'.

Each class moved around nine different stations all celebrating our world at school. At each station had an activity and a poem related to that. Stations included: meeting the guinea pigs in Early Years, painting mountains, going inside a cave, cloud watching, going on a forest walk and creating the ocean using a parachute.

Once the children had travelled around all nine stations they went back to their classrooms to listen to the poems again and then became illustrators! Each poem has now been illustrated by each class and the Poetry Book stands pride of place in each classrooms reading area.

A huge thank you to Simon Mole for supporting our special poetry event! :-)

Early Years

The Bumblebee, Caterpillar and Dragonfly children have been practising their retelling of the traditional tale 'The Gingerbread Man'. They have read and re-enacted the story and explored alternative endings. Over the next few weeks our children will be 'having a go' at reading their very own story map of 'The Gingerbread Man' which we will share with you on Seesaw!

They were extremely excited to make their own Gingerbread Man. We worked together to weigh out and measure the ingredients that they needed. Then the children took turns to knead the dough and cut out their own gingerbread man biscuit. Much to the children's surprise, Miss Hare's Gingerbread Man ran off before she could eat him, so the children have been super busy creating 'WANTED' posters, letters and traps to help find Miss Hare's Gingerbread Man!

In maths the children have been revisiting 2D and 3D shapes. They explored tangrams and created transport pictures using a variety of foam stickers. Our walk to school poster gave us the opportunity to revisit our learning on tally's and the children enjoyed working out how many children came to school by foot!

This week, our Early Years children have been learning all about vehicles during our project time. They have been accessing the non-fiction books and technology to find out more information and exploring the mechanisms of how vehicles move. Following this, they created a carefully drawn plan of a vehicle they wanted to build. The next day, they used their plan to build some wonderful models using recycled materials, construction resources and crates. They learnt how to join and assemble and used various resources and techniques. It was great to see how some of the children adapted their original plans and the resilience that they showed when their models weren't going to plan! When reviewing our models many of them said how proud they were of their vehicles and also made lots of kind comments about each others creations.

Early Years Journey to Windsor

On Monday the 13th May our Early Years children went on a school trip to Windsor as part of their learning this term about 'Journeys'. To prepare for the journey our Bumblebees, Caterpillars and Dragonflies learnt about landmarks in our local area, map reading and different ways to travel. We begun our journey at school and boarded a coach with maps of the local area. The coach then took us on a journey around Maidenhead and we spotted local landmarks before travelling on to Windsor. We walked across Alexander Park and boarded our boat. Captain Jack took us on a trip down the Thames before returning to our starting point for lunch. The children excitedly talked about the places that they recognised and everyone had a fantastic day. Thank you to all the adults that helped make the day a success and our brilliant Bumblebees, Caterpillars and Dragonflies who were all fantastic role models for our school.

Year 1

In outdoor learning we have enjoyed some improved weather! We have been busy clearing the main bed behind Silver Birch ready for planting new seeds and seedlings. We have been enjoying cloud watching, bug hunting, creating observational drawings of the pond and its surroundings as well as quietly reading books listening to the bird song.

We have been thinking about how technology is integral to the supply of our food as it is grown and transported from all over the world. We enjoyed planning and making a fruit salad before reviewing it. We have also been busy applying our Sticky Knowledge of primary and secondary colours to designing and painting our own flag.

We have learnt about five groups of animals: mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles and thought about the special characteristics that enable them to be classified in one of the groups. We have also been thinking about the way that animals adapt to their environment, such as the symbiotic relationship between clown fish and sea anemones and how different types of frog are either brightly coloured to warn off predators or how they can camouflage into their surroundings.

In maths we have been having ‘Fun with Fractions!’, learning all about halves and quarters of objects, shapes and quantities. We have proved that two equal parts make a whole (halves) and four equal parts make a whole (quarters) and shown our understanding in different ways.

Year 2

We have continued to research interesting facts about the 5 oceans of the world using our class iPads and books to support us. We have also located them on a map and globe.

Following our exploration into J.M.W. Turner's technique and paintings and our research into the five layers of the ocean, we have created our own ocean themed artwork and we have also painted each layer of the ocean. We have thought carefully about the creatures that live in the ocean and represented them in our paintings.

This term we are focusing on the religion Islam in our RE lessons and Mrs Akhter kindly led an assembly on wudu to help us think about how Muslims most feel like they belong.

This week we have been focusing on our Inventor Sticky Knowledge and exploring different ways to join materials together to support us in our design, make and testing boats activity after half term. This included the flange, L brace, split pins, tape, glue, tabs and many more!

Lastly, as mathematicians we have been busy learning how to tell the time on an analogue clock. This has entailed us building our own representations of a clock and also thinking about the different periods of time throughout the day and night.

Little Musketeers Fencing Festival - Hazel Class

Hazel class had an amazing morning on Thursday at Little Musketeers Fencing Festival at Braywick Leisure Centre! We took part in lots of different fencing activities which involved a variety of fencing skills and techniques. We learnt about the correct footwork, the fencing stance and how to advance and retreat. We thoroughly enjoyed all the games we played and even took part in a mini fencing tournament at the end! What a super fun morning had by all and some great skills learnt!

Nurture Group

In nurture over the last few weeks, we have busy using water in different ways. We have played a fun 'float or sink?' game where we had a range of objects and for each one we had to predict if it would float on the surface or sink to the bottom. We were surprised with some objects having guessed that they would sink but instead they floated and vice versa. For another activity, we set up circles of Skittles sweets on paper plates, we added some water and watched what happened! It was fun to see the different colours and how they looked over time. Finally, we sowed some cress seeds onto damp cotton wool in paper cups and were very surprised at how quickly they germinated and looked, after only a few days.

Sometimes, we play Orchard Toys boards games including Spotty Dogs, Shopping List or The Lunchbox game. These games are excellent in developing communication and social skills as well as obviously helping children learn to take turns.

Finally, we took lots of pleasure in making some sandwiches with either a strawberry jam or marmite filling. Yum!

Eco Team

Our Eco Team have been getting their hands dirty in our outdoors space by weeding, planting and caring for our Sunflower plug plants! We were super pleased to see that our tallest sunflower is currently 20cm and we are excited to see how much they grow over the next term as we care for them. The children worked really hard when planting. They had to make sure that they dug a deep hole, planted the sunflowers and then they covered it with soil to help it stand high and tall. The biggest challenge of all was being extremely gentle with the roots as they removed the Sunflowers from their little pot and transferred it into the planter. Our Eco Team did a super job!

Look out for our beautiful sunflowers as they start to grow taller.

We are still continuing to recycle more batteries for the recycling centre. PLEASE do bring in any old batteries, you can hand them to your Teacher.

Eco Team Top Tip: It is not too late to plant some seeds and to grow sunflowers, either in your garden or on a window sill. I wonder if they will grow as tall as ours? Do let your Teacher know if you are already growing sunflowers and we can collect the results and find out who has the tallest sunflower in our Furze Platt Community!

School Council

School Council have started making posters ready for our Summer Fair in June! We are so excited to support this event hosted by the FPSA as it is a really important fundraising event for our school which raises a lot of money! If you haven't yet signed up to volunteer, please do so soon! Don't forget to look out for our posters in each classroom!

Awesome achievements!

We love finding out about and celebrating our children's achievements outside of school!

If your child has an achievement that they are very proud of and would like to share with us all, they will get the opportunity to do so during our Celebration Assembly on a Friday.

Congratulations to Isla who received her certificate for her continuing hard work and enthusiasm at her performing arts club. Well done Isla!

Well done to Benjamin who was awarded his football medal for, "Helping someone when they fell over and for my football skills." Congratulations Benjamin!

Congratulations to Iasonas who is proudly wearing a medal he received from Rugby! "I love playing rugby, it's so much fun." Keep up the excellent effort Iasonas!

Olive received a certificate from Rainbows for learning the Rainbow Promise! Well done Olive, we are very proud of you!

Harley was incredibly proud of himself for achieving this medal at his football club. He got this medal for being a good passer and being great in goal too. Well done Harley!

Well done, Isabelle for Star of the Week for gymnastics. You definitely are a Super Star!

Congratulations to Sara who received her blue stripe in kickboxing! She has been working really hard on her kickboxing skills and was very proud!

Tallulah was excited to share her certificate for her Character dance. Well done Tallulah, you are a superstar!

Congratulations to Joseph who was awarded his level 2 badge and certificate for brilliant swimming. Great work Joseph!

Cian was awarded a medal for football because he impressed his coach with his brilliant goal scoring! Great work Cian!

Liam was excited to share his football medal. He scored ten goals during a match. Well done Liam, what a superstar!

Barney received a medal for his excellent team work and skills during a rugyb tournament- what an awesome athlete!

Isla-Rose was incredibly brave and took part in a charity Gala with her drama group. Amazing work, Isla-Rose!

George was given a special headband after completing a muddy challenge where he had to show determination and make it through an assault course. Great work, George!

Ariya is proudly sharing her gymnastics award. "I got this for practising my cartwheels and trying my best". Well done Ariya, we are super proud of you.

Well done Quinton for listening carefully and receiving a medal at football. An excellent achievement!

Congratulations to Joshua who has been very brave this week due to being in hospital. He was also commended by the theatre staff for his bravery. Well done!

Congratulations to Avii for getting a medal from her football club and two rosettes from ballet. It is great to see how hard you have been working out of school!

House Points

Draco win the House Cup!

Our congratulations to our green House Team, Draco for earning the most points overall during this half term - a fantastic 583 in total! Well done everyone!

Head of School Awards

Every Friday, during our whole school Celebration Assembly, Head of School awards are given out to a child or children in each class. The certificates are presented by Mrs Indge to those children who have consistently demonstrated excellent behaviours for learning.

Head of School Awards 24th May 2024.pdf

SuperPoWeR Awards

Miss Dexter pops on her Superhero cape each week during Celebration Assembly to present our SuperPoWeR awards. The awards are given to children who have been demonstrating excellent behaviour through our school values of Passion, Well being and Respect.

Book Bingo!

Every week, during our Head of School Assembly, a bingo ball is selected from our special red bag. The bingo balls are numbered 1 - 30. Each child in Year 1 and 2 with the corresponding register number to the ball chosen will have the opportunity to bring their Maths book and Project scrapbook to share with Miss Dexter, Miss Edmondson and Mrs Indge later that week. During the Book Bingo session, the children spend time looking through the books together with the adults, whilst discussing and explaining what they have been busy learning about.

FPSA update

Junior Discos

The Junior School discos returned last Friday with over 230 pupils dancing the night away in the hall. The FPSA are extremely grateful to Mr Sawle and Mr King (aka DJ's Sawle and King) for playing the music and providing a huge amount of entertainment. In addition, we'd like to thank the teachers that stayed behind to join in and ensure the disco goers had a fun time. The 2 discos have raised around £1,700 for Furze Platt Junior School which is fantastic!

Summer Fair - Oakwood Estates board sponsorship

Thank you to everybody who signed up to have an Oakwood Estates board up outside their house, we had 84 households sign up in total which has resulted in us raising £620! Oaken Grove won the prize for the most boards followed by Alwyn Road and Beverley Gardens. Boards will go up after half term.

Ice-cream Fridays

Our Friday driveway ice-cream sales started recently, thank you to all of the volunteers (many non-FPSA members) that are helping out with these.

Windsor & Maidenhead Community Lottery

This is a weekly lottery that raises money for good causes in the Royal Borough including the FPSA. Tickets for the lottery cost just £1 and from that 60p goes to good causes including 50p to the FPSA. Each ticket has a 1 in 50 chance to win a prize each week with a top prize of £25,000! So please sign up and buy a weekly ticket or two using the following link: https://www.windsorandmaidenheadcommunitylottery.co.uk/support/furze-platt-schools-association

Year 2 Quiz

Please see photographs of both the year 2 quiz winners and the runners up from last month.

Dates for your Diary:

Summer Fair - Saturday 22nd June (11.30am - 2.30pm)

Fun for all the family at our biggest fund-raising event of the year and a wonderful school community event. Please save the date! We have a 'Euro 2024' theme this year. We need lots of volunteers to help run the fair so please sign up using the following link: https://volunteersignup.org/7F477. Some stalls are suitable for your child or children to be with you to help out.

Summer Camp - Saturday 13th July/Sunday 14th July

Please save the date as Summer Camp is back in 2024! There will be options to include either an overnight family camping ticket or a day ticket. The camp includes a BBQ, bouncy castle, a bar and tuck shop.

Year 2 Leavers Disco - Friday 19th July (4.30pm - 5.45pm)

Calling all year 2 pupils, it's time to put on your dancing gear and get down to the year 2 leavers disco in the hall with DJ Dexter playing the tunes.