Furze Platt Infant School

Newsletter - 27th January 2023

Brilliant Beginnings (and Marvellous Maths!)

So far this term, we have launched our new projects in each year group with some very exciting events indeed! It has been great to see how enthusiastic and passionate our children have been as they begin to discover and learn about new things. Please read on to find out more about all the amazing experiences and opportunites the children have already been involved in during the last two weeks.

We had an incredible number of parents and family members join us for our Busy Learning Afternoon Maths session for Year 1 last Friday - and also this afternoon for our Year 2 event. Thank you to all those who came along. We hope you found it useful and that you enjoyed the Maths activities in the classroom alongside your child. If you were not able to make it, you will find the presentation slides on our website: https://www.furzeplattinfantschool.co.uk/parent-workshops-and-information-sessions/

Our Early Years Busy Learning Afternoon is next Friday 3rd February. Similar to the recent KS1 sessions, the focus will be upon Maths. We will also be sharing news of an exciting new national project which FPIS will be getting involved in later this term aimed at engaging parents and carers with their children's early learning in maths at home. We hope to see you there!

On Friday 3rd February we will also be supporting the NSPCC Number Day 2023. We will be having a fun day of maths activities as we 'Dress up for Digits' as well as raising money that will help to fund vital work and services provided by the NSPCC. You can find out more about the NSPCC’s work at nspcc.org.uk For more information about the NSPCC's recent 'Listen Up, Speak Up' campaign, please see below.

Have a lovely weekend :)

With best wishes

Jane Indge

Head of School

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Diary dates - coming up soon!

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

Wednesday 1st February - Police Community Support Officer visiting Year 1

Friday 3rd February - NSPCC Number Day 2023 (non-uniform: Dress up for Digits!)

Friday 3rd February: 2:00 - 3:00 pm - Early Years Busy Learning Afternoon

Monday 6th - Friday 10th February - Children's Mental Health Week

Tuesday 7th February - Safer Internet Day

Thursday 9th February - Primary Dance Festival - Silver Birch Class

Friday 10th February - Term ends

Monday 13th - Friday 17th February - Half term holiday (school closed)

Monday 20th February - Term starts

Monday 20th February - Willow Class - trip to London

Tuesday 21st February - Hazel Class - trip to London

Thursday 23rd February - Holly Class - trip to London

Friday 25th February - Year 2 1666 Dress-up Day

Wednesday 1st March - Dan The Skipping Man sessions for Year 1 and 2

Friday 3rd March - World Book Day 2023: dress up as a character from a book

Friday 10th March - Farm visiting Early Years

Friday 17th March - Comic Relief: Red Nose Day 2023

Monday 20th March - Parents' Evening

Wednesday 21st March - Parents' Evening

School Attendance

SAM - our School Attendance Mascot, is off to spend time in Silver Birch Class this week. With a perfect 100% attendance overall, congratulations to Silver Birch Class!

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

Silver Birch 100.0%

Willow 98.6%

Holly 98.3%

Caterpillar 98.1%

Beech 97.9%

Dragonfly 96.9%

Bumble Bee 95.4%

Oak 94.6%

Hazel 92.9%

FPIS SEND Signpost

RBWM SEND Provision Consultation

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead is carrying out public consultation on new provision for children and young people with SEND.

We are proposing to open:

an Early Years School Readiness Hub at The Lawns Nursery School, Windsor.
up to four new Resource Bases, attached to schools in Maidenhead and in Windsor, for children with special educational needs.

The proposed Resource Bases are at:

Cox Green School, Maidenhead - Resourced Provision for Cognition and Learning.
Desborough College, Maidenhead - Resourced Provision for Cognition and Learning.
Hilltop First School, Windsor – Resourced Provision or SEN Unit for Communication and Interaction.
Trevelyan Middle School, Windsor - Resourced Provision for Cognition and Learning.

You can find out more in our online consultation.

NSPCC 'Listen Up, Speak Up' Campaign Launch

At FPIS, we firmly believe that everyone can play their part in keeping children safe, which is why we recently shared news of the latest NSPCC 'Listen Up. Speak Up' campaign. Through online training and support, the NSPCC aim to give adults practical advice and confidence to know what to do and who to speak to if they're concerned about a child.

Further information is available via the NSPCC news story: Listen Up, Speak Up campaign provides training to spot and report abuse

You can sign up and take the training via: https://www.nspcc.org.uk/support-us/listen-up-speak-up/

Early Years

Last week we our Bumblebees, Caterpillars and Dragonflies enjoyed sharing their Me and My Family scrap books with their grown ups. Thank you to all parents, grandparents and carers who joined their child to celebrate their learning.

We launched our new project, All About Animals, through our Brilliant Beginning. This involved dressing up as our favourite animal and taking part in animal themed creative activities. We drew and extended patterns, explored animal movement and made animal masks.

As part of our RE curriculum our Early Years children learnt about celebrations. We role played having a party and shared our experiences. This week we learnt about about Chinese and Lunar New Year. Maya in Bumblebee class helped us discover more about the similarities and differences between Chinese and Lunar New Year. For example, this year is the year of the cat for Vietnamese Lunar New Year whereas it is the year of the rabbit in the Chinese zodiac.

We have retold the story, Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell through actions and created wonderful story maps that we have shared with our friends. This week we explored the question, Does a bird have feathers or fur? This sparked a fantastic discussion about the characteristics of different animals. The children described animals and created their own, What am I? fact sheets. Our Early Years children also used various media to create a picture of an animal of their choice. We were so impressed with their beautiful art work.

Year 1

We have continued to immerse ourselves in our 'Emergency!' project and have been very fortunate to have had a few very important visitors over the last two weeks which have inspired us to reflect our understanding in a range of creative ways during our Busy Learning sessions.

During our Outdoor Learning sessions we have been focusing on untuned instruments and have been creating our own soundscapes to match various emergency situations.

Year 1 Busy Learning Afternoon

The maths focus during Parents Busy Learning Morning was a roaring success and the children were delighted to share their mathematical expertise with their grown-ups. We hope the presentation (that can now be found online) was illuminating! Some key points to remember: children are taught a mastery approach to mathematics which involves going into depth by exploring concepts in multiple ways and giving children a variety of physical and pictorial representations of numbers. As well as giving them a more solid foundation of mathematical skills and knowledge, this also allows fluency to be built before moving on to bigger numbers and different operations. To help with this at home, we highly recommend using both Numberblocks and Numbots as well as showing a positive attitude to maths. Please ask your class teacher if you need any help or support with anything. Thank you to all the parents who joined us and we hope you all enjoyed your time in the classroom too.

Year 2

Inspired by our recent dragon visit we have been planning, editing and writing stories about, 'The day I brought my dragon into school'. We have been thinking about including descriptive words and phrases such as adjectives, expanded noun phrases and similes. We also acted out some possible scenarios as part of the planning process and created some art work.

As part of our Inventor Sticky Knowledge we have been busy planning our own dragon stew and have been learning how to weigh ingredients properly using scales. We have also continued to explore warm and cool colours: creating our own paintings to reflect the different moods created by these colours.

In PE we created our own dragon dance to mark Chinese New Year after watching a video clip of some amazing dragon dancers! We had lots of fun trying to recreate some of their moves in time to some traditional music.

We joined in the annual RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch by observing, identifying and counting the birds that we could see around school. Our resident expert Mr Vogel joined us to lend a hand in the identification of birds and their different songs. Afterwards we returned to class to create a bar chart. Next we will submit our data to the RSPB.

During maths we have been learning about multiplication and division and finding different ways to show our learning. We have also been looking at doubles and halves and how these are linked to multiplication and division.

We have also been focusing on our music Sticky Knowledge, learning how to play tuned instruments and using our voices expressively.

Finally, thank you so much for your support during our Busy Learning Afternoon, it was great to see so many of you enjoying a range of maths activities with your children. Photos to follow in the next newsletter! :-)

Year 1 Paramedic and Doctor visits

The Year 1’s were fortunate to have not one but two visits from medical personnel as part of our project 'Emergency'. Paramedics John and Bex talked to the children all about the ambulance service and the importance of calling 999 in an emergency. They presented various scenarios and asked the children to identify whether it was a 999 emergency or not. They brought various equipment from their ambulance for the children to see and some children were called up to get dressed up as a paramedic.

We also had Dr Browning visit each class and explain what a GP does. The children were allowed to role play being both a patient and a doctor. They used medical equipment to diagnose their patient and check that everyone had a clean bill of health.

Year 1 RNLI visit

Mary from the RNLI visited us and gave us some life saving tips to stay safe at the seaside and along a river. She showed us the different signs and flags that are posted around water and the children practised shouting for help when they get into difficulty. Some children role played lifeguards and coast guards and saved their friends from the water.

Nurture Group

The children (and grown-ups) in nurture have been busy making cucumber and/or marmite sandwiches, which we really enjoyed at snack time.

In line with our year 1 project of "Emergency!", we have been finishing off making our firefighter, who is now proudly displayed on our wall. For our year 2 project "Fire Fire!" the children have made fire-breathing dragons using bubble wrap and paint to make a simple scaly effect. We also made lantern collages with a rabbit on, for Chinese New Year.

Finally, thank you to the FPSA for our new playmat with a road on one side and a farm on the other, a car transporter, some new Play-Doh and Play-Doh tools and a new carpet to sit on for board work. The children have been very excited to use all of these.

School Council

Our School Councillors have been busy taking a look at our School Promises and coming up with some new actions to help the rest of our friends and teachers at FPIS remember each and every School Promise. We are hoping to share our new actions with the rest of the school soon so that we can ensure everybody is being a super role model every day!

Eco Team

The Eco Team have been learning more about the bird species that visit our school by taking part in the Big Garden Birdwatch. Birdwatching is a fun activity for all us to enjoy. This week we have been busy making our own birdfeeders ready to place around the school, so we can monitor the different species of birds around the school environment. If you would like to make your own bird feeder and also get involved in the Big Garden Birdwatch please click on the link below for fun activities to do at home -

https://www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/birdwatch/

Wonderful Wildlife!

Despite the continuing cold weather, Mr Vogel has been able to capture some beautiful images to share with us all.

Wonderful Wildlife#8 Redwing

The Redwing has a cream-coloured strip above it's eye and orange-red flank patches that make it quite distinctive. Eating berries and worms, the Redwing is most commonly encountered as a winter bird in the UK.

Did you know? Similar to the Fieldfare featured in our last edition, the Redwing also belongs to the Thrush family - it's smallest member, in fact.

Awesome achievements!

Jamie is very proudly sharing her Swimming Level 2 Certificate. She worked really hard and is very happy for her achievement! Well done Jamie!

Deekshana went to the Maidenhead Tamil’s Harvest Festival where she joined in with the celebrations. She was given an award for her amazing dancing. Great work Deekshana!

Enzo asked Coach Dan how he can win a medal and was told he had to listen carefully and follow all the instructions. He tried his very best and was very proud of himself when he was awarded a medal at the end of football practice.

We are extremely proud of Mariam as she has been practicing hard during kickboxing and received her white belt. Well done!

House Points

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 27th January 2023.pdf

Super-PoWeRs!

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 Mrs Indge, Miss Dexter and Miss Edmondson 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

Happy School Bags

Thank you to everyone who brought along a filled Happy School Bag on the 17th January. you helped to raise an impressive £230, a great start to the year!

Coin & note collection - 21st & 22nd Feb

On Tuesday 21st and Wednesday 22nd of February, the FPSA will be collecting coins and bank notes (both sterling and foreign currency) which may be clogging up your drawers. You can give us ANY currency including current or out of date UK currency and current or out of date foreign currency. We will be outside the Infants gates between 08.35 and 09.05 so please dig deep and get rid of that holiday and old change.

FPSA team

As a result of some recent changes within the FPSA, we are now looking for some volunteers to join the team. Our AGM is coming up on Wednesday 29th March and we are after the following:

Secretary - we are looking for someone that will take on the admin side of things including communication to the schools, parents & carers. Support will be given by the Chair, Vice-Chair, Treasurer and all other team members. No experience necessary!
Team members - we would really appreciate more members to help us plan and run our events in 2023 and beyond. If you have lots of enthusiasm, some spare time, the ability to get stuck in and work together as a team, we would love to hear from you!

If you are interested in any of the above roles, please get in touch at fpsa.ebox@gmail.com or reach out to any member of the FPSA.

Useful Information for Parents and Families

NOS.building cyber resilience at home.pdf

W&M Inclusion summit Nov 22 (1).pdf

Story and Rhyme MBOY Poster.pdf

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