Newsletter - 23rd September 2022
Wow! What a brilliant start to the new academic year we have had!
Welcome to our very first edition of our newsletter for 2022-23! 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 proud already of how beautifully they have settled and how well they are doing! Well done everyone - keep up the good work! :)
Like so many, we were deeply saddened with the news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. Our Year 1 and 2 children, together with our staff team took time during our special assembly to reflect together upon her amazing achievements and wonderful life. It was also lovely to share a moment which reminded everyone of her sense of fun too, as we watched the Ma’amalade sandwich Your Majesty? film clip featuring the Queen with Paddington Bear together.
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
Here is a brief look at what's going to be happening in school during the next few weeks...
Friday 30th September - Early Years Information session for Parents and Busy Learning Afternoon: 2:00 - 3:00 pm
Saturday 1st October - FPSA Early Years Tea Party: 2:30 - 4:00 pm
Wednesday 5th October - Year 1 Busy Learning Morning: 9:00 - 10:00 am
Tuesday 11th October - Year 2 Busy Learning Morning: 9:00 - 10:00 am
Say hello to our fabulous teaching team!
Our Early Years Teachers
Miss Hare
Early Years Phase Leader
Dragonfly Class
Miss Parsons
Caterpillar Class
Mrs Trillow
Caterpillar Class
Miss Turner
Bumblebee Class
Our Year 1 Teachers
Mrs Connell
Beech Class
Mrs Presencer
Silver Birch Class
Mrs Ratcliffe
Silver Birch Class
Miss Roberts
Oak Class
Our Year 2 Teachers
Miss Aggarwal
Hazel Class
Miss Dexter
Acting Assistant Headteacher
Holly Class
Miss Edmondson
Willow Class
Our Higher Level Teaching Assistants (HLTAs)
Mrs Barry
HLTA - Early Years
Mrs Akhter
HLTA - KS1
Mrs Swaffield
HLTA - KS1
We are delighted to be introducing a new feature to our Newsletter! Each edition, our FPIS SEND Signpost article will share a website or other resource selected by our Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo), Mrs Singh, which we hope will be useful to parents and families.
To launch our feature, we would like to signpost our dedicated website page, where you will find lots of information about SEND - including our SEND policy, support services and groups which may be a useful if you have a child with a special educational need or disability.
https://www.furzeplattinfantschool.co.uk/send/
Equally, should you have any concerns or worries about how your child is developing and their progress, please speak to their class teacher in the first instance who will be very happy to help and advise.
Our Bumblebees, Caterpillars and Dragonflies have impressed us with how brilliantly they have settled into school. They have been busy making friends and having fun in our indoor and outdoor environments. The Early Years children have quickly learnt new routines and have enjoyed exploring their new classrooms.
This week they have started phonics and maths and will bring home their first school reading book to share at home today. The children were very excited to share their Me and My Family posters and enjoyed talking about who is special to them.
Well done to all of our Early Years children for settling into school so well. We are very proud of you!
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.
Please come along to our Busy Learning afternoon next Friday 30th September when we will share more curriculum information and give you the opportunity to ask any questions.
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. 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. We then had a creative writing team from each class work closely with Simon to come up with some imaginative and exciting raps all about our School Promises and Values and what they mean to us.
Following on from our Simon Mole visits, our Key Stage 1 finished their Establishment Phase on a high! We turned into Rap Stars and performed our newly written raps to two very special guests; Mrs Indge and Mr Wallace. The Year 1 children shared their raps about the School Promises, with each class focusing on two each and the Year 2 children performed their raps all about our School Values with each class focusing on one each. Our special guests were impressed with our raps and we were extremely proud of our amazing transformation into rap stars!
On Wednesday 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.
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.
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. In our block areas we have been busy making castles whilst reflecting and talking about the duty and service of Queen Elizabeth II. We have also 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.
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 Morning to find out more and visit our learning environments.
Year 1: Wednesday 5th October 9.00-10.00am
Year 2:Tuesday 11th October 9.00-10.00am
A visitor to our school grounds during the summer holidays, the hummingbird hawk-moth is a small, day-flying hawk-moth. It can be seen here hovering over buddleia flowers, feeding with its long proboscis. Take a look at Mr Vogel's slo-mo video below!
Did you know? Its wings move so quickly that it 'hums'.
We have made a lovely start back to Olive this year. Every child is adapting well to their new routines and playing nicely together. We are proud of the smooth transitions that the pupils have made.
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 autumn display, including autumn paperchains, squirrels and stain glass pictures for the windows.
Before the summer holidays we published regular updates on our nurture growing beds. Upon our return we found our beautiful sunflowers had just about finished flowering, so we spent an afternoon cutting them down and tidying up the area. We decided to keep and dry out some of the seedheads to use for next year.
We were very proud to receive the Active Stars Bronze Award at the end of the summer term. The award, presented by the Ascot and Maidenhead School Sport Partnership, is designed to 'recognise and reward the great work schools are doing around PE, school sport & physical activity at KS1.' Our thanks to Miss Thompson in particular for all her hard work on our application.
This year, we will be working towards achieving the silver award... more to follow!
Congratulations to Elvis who was awarded a medal at our after school football club for trying his best! Well done, we are very proud of you! :)
Congratulations to Rayan for completing his Summer Reading Challenge and becoming a Gadgeteer!
Congratulations to Emilie who shared her Swimming award she achieved during the Summer Holidays. "I had to swim some lengths to achieve it". Well done superstar! :-)
The FPSA would like to welcome everyone back to Furze Platt Infant School and say a very warm welcome to the new early years children and their families. We have some great fundraising events coming up, so please make a note in your diaries for the following:
Saturday 1st October - Early Years Tea Party, 2.30pm - 4pm
Friday 18th November - Quiz Night, 8pm-10.30pm
Saturday 3rd December - Christmas Fair, 11.30am - 2.30pm
In addition, please look out for more information on Christmas cards which your children will soon be creating in class!
Finally, we have a new secretary on the FPSA team - a warm welcome to Kate Galley who has recently joined.