Furze Platt Infant School
Newsletter - 29th September 2023
Welcome back!
Wow! What a brilliant start to the new academic year we have had!
Welcome to our very first edition of our newsletter for 2023-24! We hope that the features and photos shared with you in our regular newsletters give you an insight into life here at FPIS. We are always busy learning!
We have been impressed how well our children have settled back into school following the summer break. Our Year 1 and 2 children have been busy familiarising themselves with their new environments, classmates and routines. It has also been wonderful to welcome our new Bumblebees, Caterpillars and Dragonflies into our school. We are so pleased at how beautifully they have settled and how well they are doing! Well done everyone - keep up the good work! :)
We have also been extremely proud of our children this week during our Ofsted Inspection. Given that we are only a few weeks into the new academic year and our youngest children have only been with us for a very short time indeed, we were so pleased with how well they responded during their interactions with the Inspector. As ever, our children all showed a real passion for learning as well as excellent behaviour and good manners!
As you may know, we have been waiting for some time for our opportunity to share all the amazing things that happen here at FPIS with Ofsted. I cannot thank our wonderful staff team enough for all their hard work and support. Our teaching, lunchtime, office and site teams have all worked so closely together to make sure our school is the best it can be over the past few years and that shone through during our inspection. We will of course be very pleased to share the details of the report and the overall outcome as soon as we can, but in the meantime we can certainly say we have lots to be proud of!
I would also like to thank you, our parents and families, for your support. This week in particular we have really appreciated your kind words, messages of support - and the many extra goodies for the staff room to keep us all going!
Thank you also to those who shared their views via the Ofsted Parent View survey. As our children know, it is our priority for them to be happy and feel safe at FPIS. Therefore, we were extremely pleased to see that 100% of parental responses also agreed with this, which is absolutely fantastic. We genuinely value the opinions of our parents and so were also delighted to see that 100% of those who responded would recommend our school! Thank you!
On that note, we are very much looking forward to working with our parents and families in the year ahead - and helping our children to be the best they can be! Our staff team are always very happy to help should you have any questions about school procedures or concerns about your child in any way. Please feel free to speak to your child's class teacher directly - or contact them via the school office: office@fpis.org
Have a lovely weekend :)
Jane Indge
Head of School
Quick Links
Diary dates - coming up soon!
Here is a brief look at what's going to be happening in school during the next few weeks...
Saturday 30th September - FPSA Early Years Tea Party: 2:30 - 4:00 pm
Monday 2nd October - Nasal Flu Vaccinations (all year groups)
Thursday 5th October - Year 1 Busy Learning Afternoon: 2:00 - 3:00 pm
Friday 6th October - KS1 Superhero Dress-up Day
Wednesday 11th October - Year 2 Busy Learning Afternoon: 2:00 - 3:00 pm
Friday 13th October - FPSA Quiz Night: 8:00 - 10:30 pm
Monday 16th October - Individual School Photos
Friday 20th October - Term Ends
Monday 23rd October - Friday 27th October - Half term holiday
Monday 30th October - Term Starts
Monday 6th November - Parents' Evening Meetings: 3:40 pm - 7:00 pm
Wednesday 8th November - Parents' Evening Meetings: 3:40 pm - 7:00 pm
Tuesday 14th November - Asthma Information Coffee Morning: 9:00 am - 10:00 am
Friday 17th November - Children in Need (non-uniform day)
School Attendance
For those who don't already know, 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. This week, SAM will be going to Bumblebee Class who had an overall figure of 99.0%! 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.
Bumblebee 99.0%
Oak 98.7%
Hazel 98.6%
Willow 98.3%
Dragonfly 98.1%
Holly 98.0%
Beech 96.9%
Caterpillar 95.3%
Silver Birch 90.7%
Meet the teachers 2022-23
Say hello to our fabulous teaching team!
Our Early Years Teachers
Miss Hare
Assistant Headteacher - Early Years
Dragonfly Class
Mrs Odeniyi
Caterpillar Class
Miss Parsons
Caterpillar Class
Miss Turner
Bumblebee Class
Our Year 1 Teachers
Mrs Connell
Beech Class
Miss Edmondson
Oak Class
Miss Reike
Silver Birch Class
Our Year 2 Teachers
Miss Aggarwal
Hazel Class
Miss Dexter
Assistant Headteacher -
Key Stage 1
Holly Class
Mrs Presencer
Willow Class
Miss Roberts
Willow Class
Our Higher Level Teaching Assistants (HLTAs)
Mrs Barry
HLTA - Early Years
Mrs Akhter
HLTA - KS1
Mrs Swaffield
HLTA - KS1
FPIS SEND Signpost
Early Years
What a super and sunny start to school our Bumblebees, Caterpillars and Dragonflies have had over the past few weeks! We have been so impressed with how brilliantly they have settled into the school routine, utilising their new environments and forming new friendships with their peers and all of the teachers too.
The children have been exploring the different areas in their own classroom and investigating our outdoor areas. They have been learning and applying some new skills such as, digging and raking in the 'digging pit', pouring, mixing and sieving in the mud kitchen and learning how to be independent at school by changing their own shoes to wellies for the woodlands. The children are embracing the responsibility of hanging up their coat, putting away their bags and looking after their water bottles too! As the Autumn weather begins to show, keep practicing those self-help skills of putting on coat and doing them up!
We have been incredibly impressed with all of the 'Me and My Family' posters that you took your time to do over the summer holidays. These posters have gone up on the wall in the children's 'special space' and they have felt comforted and excited to share them with their new friends and teachers. These creative posters have given us a chance to learn more about the children and their families and bond over things that are important to them so that they feel valued in our classrooms.
Our Bumblebees, Caterpillars and Dragonflies have shown great enthusiasm towards learning at school and they were extremely excited to take home their first phonics reading book the other week! The children have impressed us with their 'fast eyes' in maths when subitising and they have been creating ABAB patterns in the woodlands and classroom using natural objects such as conkers, stones, sticks and leaves.
The children have been really interested in our first project 'Me and My Family'. We have been reading The Colour Monster and using our school Zones of Regulation to support the children to understand their emotions and how we look, feel and act when we experience these different feelings. The children loved designing their own Colour Monster as well as acting out the different expressions represented by the colours! We have displayed a picture of the children acting out these emotions in our classrooms, so that the children can show us how they are feeling each day!
We have been learning more about our amazing bodies and what they can do through our circle times and our project books, such as 'Your Body is Awesome!' This has inspired the children to challenge themselves to use their bodies in different ways such as balancing, hopping and risk taking in the woodlands!
Following this learning, our Bumblebees, Caterpillars and Dragonflies have been using mirrors to notice their own features in their reflections. After creating a giant self-portrait as a class and discussing the different facial features we have, the children were eager to get busy with designing their own self-portrait using a mirror to help them along the way.
We are beyond proud of how our Bumblebees, Caterpillars and Dragonflies have settled into school and it is exciting to see them learn and explore in their new indoor and outdoors environment with so much passion!
Our Early Years Curriculum
At FPIS we have used the EYFS framework and Development Matters as a starting point when designing an ambitious, inclusive curriculum which reflects our school community and provides no limits or barriers to children’s achievements. Throughout the year this enhanced through three projects, starting with 'Me and My Family!'
Here is our project overview for this term. It includes key language and questions that the children will be covering each week, key project texts and some helpful tips for supporting your child at home. Our overviews will be shared with families via Seesaw at the start of each project.
Thank you to all those who came along to our Busy Learning afternoon today. If you were unable to join us, we will be sharing information via Seesaw and well as signposting the relevant links on our school website.
EYFS 2023 Project Overview Me and My Family.pdfSimon Mole visits KS1
Our Key Stage 1 children have been busy learning all about our School Promises and Values. To help us think about these in a fun and creative way we have been visited by Simon Mole, a well known person in our local community who is a Poet and an Author. Simon ran a workshop with each class focusing on rhymes and raps. In Year 2 he focused on the kennings style of poetry. We then had the time to mind map our ideas associated with each promise and value. Year 2 focused on our Values and Year 1 focused on our School Promises. A creative writing team was chosen from each class to work closely with Simon to come up with some imaginative and exciting raps and poems all about our School Promises and Values and what they mean to us.
Simon Mole kindly came back to visit on Wednesday where we had the opportunity to share and perform our poems in our Establishment Phase Excellent Ending. The children did a fantastic job and Simon gave us some great feedback. Look out for the video of your child's class poem on Seesaw!
National Fitness Day
On Wednesday 20th September our KS1 children took part in the National Fitness Day activity called 10@10. The intiative set up by the Chief Medical Officer recommends that children should get 60 active minutes every day. To promote this there is the 10@10 campaign, where they encourage as many children across the country to take part in 10 minutes of physical activity at 10am. Hundreds of schools took part in a zoom run by Leisure Focus where we completed lots of different warm up activities and exercises. As well as this the children took part in fitness bingo throughout the day and had some exciting activities set up at lunchtime.
Year 1
Our Year 1 children have transitioned into Key Stage 1 so well and have enjoyed exploring their new classrooms and Outdoor Learning areas.
They have been learning all about our Lanyard Challenge system and have been exploring the different resources available in their new learning environments. They have become Explorers, Designers, Discoverers and Investigators, learning how to demonstrate these key skills during their Busy Learning sessions. They had loads of fun playing in the Log Park, learning the new rules and exploring the various pieces of outdoor equipment.
They have also been showing their new teachers what amazing mathematicians they are! They have been choosing resources to count forwards and backwards to 10, as well as practising writing their numerals and learning to spell number names to ten correctly.
As well as being Busy Learners inside the classroom they have also been busy exploring their Outdoor Learning space. It has been wonderful to see the children building dens, collecting bugs and even helping cultivate our vegetable patch - ready for planting our herbs! Alongside their investigative activities, the children also had the opportunity to use the new running track, which they saw being built last year! During their Outdoor Learning sessions, they have been on an Autumn walk and discovering and exploring the different changes that occur through exploring the different textures that you can find, looking at different trees and collecting pine cones.
Phew! We have been busy! It has been wonderful to welcome the children into Year 1 and we hope to see lots of you at our Busy Learning afternoon session on Thursday 5th October at 2.00pm!
Year 2
We have had an amazing start to the new school year! We have been getting to know one another, learning where everything is in our new classrooms as well as investigating the resources in our continuous provision areas. We have enjoyed examining and using the resources in our Maths shape, space, and measure area by making patterns and measuring objects in different ways.
In Maths we have started a new year of 'mastering number' and have been looking at a large variety of number lines from 0-100 trying to place numbers in the correct places.
During our Establishment Phase we have transformed into poets, after enjoying not one but two sessions with Simon Mole, exploring different poems, the kennings style poem and writing and performing our own, we felt inspired and during our Busy Learning Sessions were busy creating our own poems about things we loved. Everyone has been so impressed with how imaginative, creative, and brave they have been with their creative writing!
We have also been busy reminding ourselves of our School Promises and Values and thinking about how we can best model these to others. Thinking carefully about our Values: Passion, Well-being and Respect we had a lanyard challenge to complete which was thinking about how we could model our values to the new Year 1 children. We decided that a good way to do this would be to think of some team games we could teach them thinking carefully about how we could model the values too. We did a fantastic job and the Year 1 children really enjoyed learning more about how we can use the big playground responsibly and safely.
We are very proud of how the Year 2 children have settled in and are looking forward to an exciting year ahead!
We are also looking forward to welcoming you to our Busy Learning Afternoon session on Wednesday 11th October at 2.00pm.
Active 60 Festival: Willow Class
Willow Class had lots of fun whilst participating in the Year 1/2 Active 60 Minutes Festival, organised by the Ascot and Maidenhead Schools Sports Partnership which took place at Altwood School. They all entered into the spirit of 'Run, Jump and Throw' agility challenges, displaying great athleticism and sportsmanship, whilst completing their active 60 minutes daily target. Well done Willow Class, you were fantastic role models for your school.
Rosh Hashanah celebrations in KS1
The children in Key Stage 1 have been learning all about the Jewish New Year and how this celebrated as part of their Religious Education learning. They learnt that part of the Jewish celebration involves eating apples dipped into honey to help them think about all the sweet and exciting things which will be happening in the New Year. The children enjoyed trying some apples dipped in honey too!
Our KS1 Curriculum
Our exciting Key Stage 1 has been developed over the last few years to be a purposeful, exciting and engaging curriculum which reflects our school community and the interests of our children. We have three exciting projects which begin at the start of each term. Our Autumn project for both Year 1 and Year 2 is called 'Super-Duper Heroes'. We plan our projects carefully and our motto is that everything in our curriculum has to earn its place!
As well as the focus on our core subjects; Maths and English we have been evolving our Foundation Subjects to make them even better than they were before! For each project we will have the core subject focuses and our new 'Sticky Knowledge'. This term refers to all of the important facts that we want our children to be continually exposed to and reflect on this learning at the end of each project. On Monday you will be receiving our Autumn Project Overviews via Seesaw which will include our core subject, RE, PE, PSHE and events focuses, our new 'Sticky Knowledge' and as always our Brilliant Beginning, Magnificent Middle and Excellent Ending events which are at the heart of each project we teach. Below is a sneak peak of our Project Overviews which will be shared with you on Monday via Seesaw
Please do come along to our Busy Learning Afternoon to find out more and visit our learning environments.
Year 1: Thursday 5th October 2.00-3.00pm
Year 2: Wednesday 11th October 2.00-3.00pm
Key Stage 1 Project Overviews Autumn 2023.pdfNurture Group
In nurture we have had a great start to the new school year. The children have been busy making portraits of themselves to put up on the wall. We have also been creating lots of autumn themed crafts for our room display, including autumn paperchains, squirrels and hedgehogs.
Before the summer holidays we published regular updates on our nurture growing beds out in the front playground. Upon our return we found our beautiful sunflowers had just about finished flowering, so we spent a fun afternoon cutting them down and tidying up the area. We decided to keep and dry out some of the seed heads to use for next year.
Last week we had a lovely afternoon scavenger hunt, exploring the woodland and looking for signs of autumn. The children had a list of autumn-themed items to look for like, acorns, twigs, different coloured leaves and squirrels, they did a brilliant job and managed to find nearly all the items on their sheet.
Awesome achievements!
Congratulations to Bryony who is proudly sharing her Level 2 Swimming certificate! "Swimming is lots of fun!" Keep up the excellent effort Bryony!
Well done to Findlay who is proudly wearing his medal for completing the Summer Reading Challenge! "I read 6 books!" Congratulations Findlay!
Daisy has been an amazing gymnast and received Star of the Week in her class. Great work Daisy!
Ethan has been a super busy athlete and mathematician. All his efforts have paid off with his Stage 2 swimming achievement and he has completed the Doodle Maths Summer Challenge.
Hadiya has worked really hard on her reading over summer and got a medal for the Summer Reading Challenge. Keep up the hard work!
Hannah has spent the summer working on her reading skills and got a special medal for completing the Summer Reading Challenge. Excellent work!
Lily has been super busy over summer and read enough books to complete the Summer Reading Challenge- great job Lily!
Olivia has taken the school promise to ‘Be Kind’ very seriously and raised an amazing £20 for The Brett Foundation by selling dog treats. What an amazing member of the community!
Maya has worked hard on her reading over the summer holidays and has been awarded a medal from the Summer Reading Challenge. Congratulations Maya!
Isla spent her summer working on her reading skills with lots and lots of book. Congratulations on completing the Summer Reading Challenge Isla!
Arthur has received a medal for listening carefully and trying his best at football. Well done to you Arthur!
Isabelle has worked diligently during the summer and has completed the summer reading challenge. She has received a medal for her hard work.
Adora has successfully achieved her Kickboxing certificate and been awarded a yellow stripe. Well done Adora!
Matthew is proudly sharing his medal he was awarded at football. "I got this for good listening and scoring goals." Well done Matthew!
Flora was excited to share her medal that she received for the Library Reading Challenge. Well done Flora!
Well done to Sienna for working hard over the summer holidays to complete her Summer Reading Challenge!
Well done to Seamus who has received the Bronze Award from the Wildlife Gardens Awards 2023 for the work he (alongside his dad) to support wildlife.
Amber has been graded at kickboxing and has achieved her orange belt. Well done!
Joel has received a medal from football for always listening and following his coach’s instructions. Great job Joel!
Poppy is proudly sharing her Learn to Swim Level 2 certificate. Great swimming Poppy!
House Points
House points 2023-24.pptxHead 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 29th September.pdfSuperPoWeR 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.
FPSA update
The Furze Platt Schools Association (FPSA) would like to welcome back everyone to a new school year and a huge welcome to our new Early Years children and families.
We have a busy autumn of fundraising events, please see below for more details.
Dates for your diary:
Early Years Tea Party - Saturday 30th September (2.30pm - 4pm)
Our annual EY tea party is a great opportunity to meet other EY families and find out about the FPSA. The tea party is open to all families with children who started at the Infants this September (sibilings are invited too). Cakes will be on sale (free drinks!) as well as 2nd hand uniform. There will be a pop-up village in the hall.
Book tickets (£5 per family) here: www.pta-events.co.uk/fpsa
Mr T's Quiz Night - Friday 13th October (8pm - 10.30pm)
The FPSA Quiz Night is back! Join us for a fun evening as we raise money for both schools whilst testing our general knowledge and having a drink or two. The quiz includes 4 picture rounds, a music round, a connection round and a mystery round.
Book quiz night tickets at www.pta-events.co.uk/fpsa
Tickets (£16pp) include food from Palmieri's. A licensed bar is also available. Book and either come as an individual/pair (and we'll join you with others) or get a full team of 6 together.
Happy School Bags - Tuesday 14th November (school drop-off)
Bring your bags with filled unwanted clean clothes to help raise money for both schools. Bags can be left outside the Infants main gates between 08.00 and 09.00.
Christmas Fair - Saturday 2nd December (11.30am - 2.30pm)
Our 2nd biggest fundraiser of the year is back. Spread across both schools, there is fun for all the family including Tombolas, Secrets Room, Raffle & Silent Auction and much more!
Junior School Discos - Friday 8th December (4pm-5pm & 5.15pm-6.30pm)
It's time for the Juniors to get down and boogie!
Useful Information for Parents and Families
Back to School online safety.pdfwhatsapp-2023.pdfcoffee morning flyer Furze Platt Infant School.docxMove Happy Kids Yoga Autumn 2023.pdf