grafton primary school

autumn 1 2025

letter from mrs bana

Dear parents/carers,

As we bid farewell to the first half of the Autumn Term, I would like to extend a big thank you to all the children and staff at Grafton Primary. It has been wonderful to see everyone return with such excitement, settle in so well, and give their very best efforts in all they do.

This term has been full of celebrations and achievements. We kicked off the year with our new class names, and it’s great to see everyone getting used to them! Year 5 swimming lessons have started, and our aim is for the majority of all Year 6 pupils to be confident swimmers, able to swim 25 metres by the time they leave us. Thank you to all the parents who attended the Parent Consultation Evening this week—I hope you found it a valuable opportunity to learn about your child’s progress. These evenings are always lively, with staff selling refreshments and the book fair creating a buzz! We were also pleased to welcome the Leisure Centre swim team, who spoke to the parents and children about the importance of swimming. Please encourage your child to participate fully in these lessons—it’s a vital skill for life.

Year 4 impressed us all with their Diwali Assemblies, which they proudly presented to parents. We are very proud of all our pupils and their achievements.

Thank you, parents, for your continued support. Enjoy the holidays, and if you can, try to encourage a little less screen time to help everyone recharge.

Warm wishes,

Mrs J. Bana

Headteacher

a very sad goodbye

Farewell to Ms. Siobhan King

As we say goodbye to a valued member of our Grafton Primary School family, we want to take a moment to celebrate Ms. Siobhan King’s incredible contribution over the past 12 years. Ms King's last day will be the 7th of November. Ms. King began her journey with us as a Teaching Assistant and progressed to become our Lead Behaviour Mentor, playing a pivotal role in supporting pupils facing social, emotional, and behavioural challenges.

Her dedication, hard work, and relentless pursuit of ensuring all children, especially our most vulnerable, receive the support they need have made a lasting impact on our school community. Ms. King’s commitment has been instrumental in fostering positive behaviour and helping pupils thrive.

We are actively recruiting a specialist to fill this important role, with Mrs. Robinson, our Assistant Headteacher, leading the transition and arrangements to ensure continuity of support for the pupils.

Thank you, Ms. King, for your unwavering dedication and service to Grafton. We wish you all the best in your future endeavours.

R daffodil class

What a wonderful start to the year it’s been in Daffodil Class! The children have settled beautifully into their new school environment. We’ve been so proud to see them building new friendships, learning classroom routines, and showing great enthusiasm as they explore their new surroundings.
Our phonics sessions are now in full swing, and the children have been excited to begin taking their very first reading books home! We’re already seeing their confidence grow as early readers and can’t wait to see their progress.
During 'Time to Learn', the children have really enjoyed free flow, choosing where they’d like to play and explore across all the Reception classes. Whether it’s water play in the garden, imaginative adventures, or building and constructing, there’s been no shortage of fun and creativity!
We've also just launched Drawing Club, which has been a big hit! The children are bursting with excitement to become independent writers, using their imaginations and developing their storytelling skills.
We’ve shared lots of wonderful books together so far, including Owl Babies, I Love Me, Baby Goes to Market, and We’re Going on a Lion Hunt, among many others. It’s been lovely to see the children engage so thoughtfully with the stories and characters.
We’re so proud of how well the children have adjusted to life in Daffodil Class and look forward to a term full of learning, laughter, and growth.

1 fox class

This half term, Fox class have been very busy settling into year 1 and they have risen to all the new challenges of this incredibly well! In Literacy, the children have been reading the story "We're going to find the monster" and have been focusing on the use of adjectives. They have then been incorporating these into their writing! We have continued our phonics learning with some recapping of sounds taught in reception and then we have moved onto learning some new phase 5 sounds, which the children have also been incorporating well in their reading and writing! In Math,s we have been working on numbers to 10 and the part whole model. The children have worked incredibly hard working from new maths workbooks. In Science, the children have LOVED learning about the 5 senses and in particular enjoyed being able to use their sense of taste when tasting a variety of different foods. Geography this half term has been all about our local area and map work. We went on a walk around the local area, where we looked at different key landmarks. The children were incredibly sensible and showed members of the public how sensible children from Grafton are! When we returned to school, we recounted our route and the children then placed the key landmarks on a map. The biggest challenge the children have faced this half term has been computing, with many children using laptops for the first time; this was a daunting task. Some children were a little worried after their first lesson as they found typing in their usernames and passwords a little tricky, but after our second lesson, they really showed their determination and resilience and we worked together as a team to help one another log into the laptops. They then worked incredibly hard on their trackpad skills with clicking a dragging, with all children finishing the lesson with smiles and feeling much more confident!

2 tHAMES CLASS

The children in Thames class have made the transition to year 2 with great resilience and enthusiasm and have settled in well to the new routines, expectations and learning, and are being great role models for their peers - I am very proud of them all.

Within our Science unit - Living things and their habitats, the children enjoyed exploring and examining the microhabitats of the Hive garden, the leaf litter, log piles, grass and soil provide a home for many minibeasts. They have researched some of the different global habitats, thinking about how the conditions provide for and support living things, including both plants and animals.

In our English learning, we enjoyed sharing the book Handas’s Surprise, a familiar and fun story based in Africa (the focus of our Geography learning). We used the text to develop our understanding of sentences, including questions and adjectives, describing words. We then rewrote Eileen Browne’s story, but with a focus on the story told in the pictures rather than her text - some great stories were written.

In Geography, we again travelled to Africa, locating the continent on the globe and focusing specifically on Kenya, considering how this continent and country compared to the UK. We learnt about the human and physical features of Kenya, including mountains, rivers, cities and villages, and ventured on a virtual safari to learn more about the wildlife. As part of our golden time, we painted dramatic African savannah silhouettes and accompanied these with non-chronological reports, researched and written in English, providing factual details of the African animals depicted.

All in all, it has been a busy half term. Next half term, we look forward to our topic - An Island Adventure - where we will write focused story sections, develop our understanding of the UK as an island, explore the properties of different common materials and plan and make our own healthy wraps. Whilst in maths we will continue to embed our confidence with numbers to 100 and develop our understanding of, and strategies used within, addition and subtraction. Another busy half term looms.

Enjoy the half term holiday and work together on the home learning projects shared for our ‘An African Safari’ unit. Thank you for your ongoing support and engagement with your child’s learning journey.

3 Zephaniah Class

We’ve had a fantastic start to Year 3 in Zephaniah Class!

We’ve been busy learning lots of amazing things and we’re incredibly proud of all we’ve achieved so far. We've also shown kindness and friendship to one another, embracing our value of the term – respect. Whether working with learning partners or as a team, we always support each other.

In Literacy, we journeyed through the rainforest and created impressive fact files using a range of non-fiction features. We then began reading a wonderful book called The Tin Forest, which tells the story of an elderly man living in a metal junkyard who dreams of a lush world filled with animals and plants. Inspired by this, we’ve been busy writing our own alternative endings to the story.

In Maths, we’ve been exploring place value using counters and base 10 equipment to deepen our understanding. We’ve also been practising our addition and subtraction skills – and doing an excellent job! We love challenging ourselves in Maths and always give our best effort.

Science has been full of exciting experiments. A class favourite was placing a carnation and a celery stick in red dye and leaving them for a week. When we checked on them, we were amazed to see the petals and celery had turned red!

In Geography, we started off with a visit to an indoor tropical rainforest, where we felt the heat and moisture, heard the squawks of wildlife, and spotted some fascinating animals – what an experience! Back in the classroom, we’ve been learning about where rainforests are found, the people and products of the Amazon, and comparing our lives with the Yanomami Tribe.

In Computing, we learned how computers are connected within a network. We walked around the school to explore its network setup and saw the main switch that connects the entire building. We were amazed to discover how complex the network really is, even though it seemed so simple at first glance. As part of our learning, we went on a scavenger hunt to find and identify physical network devices around the school. It was a fun and exciting way to learn!

In PE, we’ve been developing our football skills, learning how to pass, dribble, and shoot with control and teamwork.
Meanwhile, in Art, we’ve been exploring different techniques including line work, shading, and shapes to create beautiful drawings. Most recently, we created artwork inspired by Dale Chihuly’s famous piece The Sun – and the results were stunning!

We can’t wait for more learning adventures next half term.

4 Ali class

What an exciting start to the year it’s been in 4 Ali. We have enjoyed reading the book ‘The Adventures of the Dish and Spoon’ in our writing lessons and have written our own problem, resolution and ending to the story.

We have enjoyed participating and rehearsing for our Diwali Assembly, which is on 17th October. Our class will be performing two dances:’Raghupati raghav’, which is another name for Rama and ‘Shubaarambh’. Shubaarambh is a Sanskrit word which means ‘good start’. In addition to this, we created our own Rangoli patterns.

In Music, we have been learning the song “Mamma Mia”, which was sung by a famous pop group called ABBA. Our class has some very enthusiastic singers with amazing singing voices.

We have really enjoyed the start of year 4 and can't wait for the rest of the year.

5 PACKHAM CLASS

It has been a very busy half term in 5 Packham as we have been investigating the journey of a river, tackling place value and continuing to build our writing skills.

In Science, we have been learning about the different life cycles of living organisms. All of us rolled up our sleeves and became young scientists during our exciting planting lesson!

We carefully planted our own potato tubers, onion bulbs or cuttings, and made predictions about what would happen over the next few weeks. Using soil, water, and plenty of enthusiasm, everyone set up their own mini investigations.

We have really enjoyed taking part in our RE and PSHE lessons this half term. Our main topic of discussion in the PSHE Jigsaw lessons was ‘ Being me in my World.’ It was great talking about our aspirations and future goals. We have also been learning about the rights of children around the world.

In our RE lessons, we have been focusing on the big question ‘ What impact do beliefs have on actions?’ First of all, we read four different parables from three different religions. Then, in small groups, we acted out our favourite story and explained what we have learnt from it. Finally, we discussed how our chosen story was linked to one of Grafton’s school values (kindness, respect, gratitude, honesty, determination or working hard).

It has been a fantastic few weeks so far, full of learning and creativity. We are all looking forward to the next half term filled with a lot of new, exciting learning activities and productivity.

6 BANKSY CLASS

This half-term, we have read the narrative version of Macbeth (adapted by Andrew Matthews and Tony Ross). Using our suspense toolkit, we planned, wrote and edited our suspense piece, describing Macbeth’s journey to become king. We are currently publishing our suspense pieces of writing and some will be displayed in the Year 6 corridor and some will be included in our class book for everyone to read and enjoy. In Maths, we have learnt about place value within 10 million and rounding. We then learnt how to use long multiplication and short division.

In Science, we have learnt about the importance of classification. We visited the Hive garden in school to identify and classify animals. We then visited Valence Park to identify and classify different plants. We are currently investigating the conditions that cause mould to grow on bread. The children have been making observations to see how the bread is changing to see if their predictions are correct.

In History, we have learnt about World War II, which included looking at primary and secondary sources, the causes of WWII, the Blitz, evacuation and the role of women. This month is Black History Month and we learnt about Diane Abbott MP and her journey to become a Member of Parliament.

Behaviour

At Grafton, we promote positive behaviours and want to recognise the achievements and successes of children. This half term we have introduced our new Class Dojo system to all of the children. The Class Dojo system is designed to highlight positive behaviours that the children display and rewards them with instant Dojo points. Each child has been able to create their own avatar to display on the Dojo chart, which also displays their points.Points can be awarded for following our Golden Rules or for demonstrating our core values. We have trialled the system with the children this half term and the feedback from them has been really positive. From next half term, children will be able to earn certificates for collecting set amounts of dojo points and they will also be able to visit the virtual 'Dojo shop' to exchange their points for rewards, which can be taken that week or saved up for a bigger reward.

Each week on a Friday, we have a celebration assembly for years 1-6 where we celebrate the children's achievements. During the assemblies, children can be awarded a Rights Respecting Citizen certificate or may get a special letter from their teacher highlighting something amazing that they have achieved that week. We also have the Headteachers Awards on a Friday, where children receive an award from Mrs Bana for trying hard in their learning or by doing something really special. The children really enjoy receiving all of these awards and the recognition of their excellent behaviour choices!

Computing - AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly important due to the rise in its systems and applications. The world is radically being changed by this technology as there is hardly anything in use that AI is not influencing. Our children today are growing up surrounded by applications of AI, from chatbots to virtual assistants, search engines, language translation services, autonomous vehicles etc.

This upsurge in AI-enabled technology points to the fact that not only is AI here to stay but it is also the way of the future. It is, therefore, imperative to equip your children with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning skills. This way, they can understand how the technology works and be prepared for a future that will largely depend on it.

There are several “AI for kids” websites that can aid your child’s learning of AI. In this newsletter, we have put together 10 of them, but first, let’s go through an overview of AI.

What Is AI?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer, a computer-controlled robot, a machine or software to think like the human mind and perform tasks that generally require human intelligence. It involves creating algorithms that allow computers to learn from and make decisions, predictions or recommendations based on data rather than following only explicitly programmed instructions.

Tasks that AI is trained to perform include processing language, perception, learning, problem-solving, and decision-making. Subsets of AI include Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing.

To learn more about AI Click here

Reading at Grafton

Whether it is “Reading is dreaming with both eyes open,” or “Books train your mind to think big,” there is always a quote to remind us just how important reading is. Here at Grafton, we have started the year with a real focus on reading. Our younger children have started their Little Wandle phonics and group reading practice sessions; older children have their whole class lessons with additional reading practice where needed. However, reading is not just what happens in lessons. Developing a love of reading is one of the most important things we can do for our children. With this in mind, we've started the year setting up inspiring reading spaces in our classrooms. We have also introduced the Grafton Reading Spine, a selection of books which each year group uses for their daily Reading for Pleasure sessions. This ensures that, during their time at our school, your child hears a wide selection of books - fiction, non-fiction, poetry and graphic novels - being read aloud. Finally, we also now have a team of Reading Ambassadors from Years 4-6. They’re looking forward to running story telling sessions, selecting books for our reading corners and advising the school what we can do better to develop a love of reading.

However, we cannot develop this love of reading alone. At home, please read to your child every day - even older children love hearing a book being read aloud - and listen to your child as they read. Speak to your child’s class teacher if you need help sourcing books or take a book from our community library at the front of the school.

Polite request: please sign your child's reading record whenever they read with you at home.

Let’s build a love of reading together.

Rights Respecting School

At Grafton Primary School, children’s rights are embedded across the school and underpin every facet of school life. The Duty Bearers (all adults) and children have a clear understanding of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and how it relates to their own lives and the lives of other children.

https://www.unicef.org.uk/what-we-do/un-convention-child-rights/

(UNICEF is the world’s leading organisation working for children and their rights. In 1989, governments worldwide promised all children the same rights by adopting the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. These rights are based on what a child needs to survive, grow, participate and fulfil their potential.)

“Rights are the things every child should have or be able to do. All children have the same rights. Almost every country has agreed to the ‘UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’.”

Grafton aspires for all pupils to succeed and provides quality support to enable all children to access their rights and enjoy a quality education. Children learn about rights in a variety of ways, including through the school values, Rights around the World, assemblies, displays and the curriculum. Teaching about rights is embedded and aligned with the school’s practices.

We remain committed to building a ‘rights respecting environment.’ This involves promoting the values of the CRC and using the principles to underpin the school improvement.

Our commitment to underpin the curriculum with children’s rights has led us to place The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child at the heart of our Curriculum documents.

The children are always our top priority and their best interests are at the heart of everything we do. This year, we are pursuing reaccreditation for our Rights Respecting Gold Award.

What is the Rights Respecting School Award?

The Rights Respecting School Award (RRSA) is an initiative run by UNICEF UK, which encourages schools to place the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) at the heart of its ethos and curriculum.

To achieve this award, staff, parents and pupils need to have an understanding of the Articles which make up the Convention and know how they can use these articles in their daily lives.

For further information, please see

https://www.unicef.org.uk/rights-respecting-schools/

How can parents help children to know their rights?

Look at the children’s (Newsround), local and worldwide news. These will often link with rights learning.
Discuss learning about rights and encourage pupils to relate rights to current issues.
Sing songs they have learnt to help understand their rights.
Join in with local charity events and school charity days.
Take action for positive change in their local community e.g. litter pick, recycle; plastic, metal, clothing, leafleting to raise awareness.
Find out about global issues and the sustainable development mission (By 2030). Talk about how these link to the 17 Global Goals.
Give an hour of your time to charity e.g. the homeless, elderly, a hospice.
Encourage your child to take action for positive change in their local and global community. E.g. clear the plastics from our seas and oceans.
Get involved to make a difference. E.g. Woodland trust.org.uk100k-plant a tree to save the world.

https://www.unicef.org.uk/rights-respecting-schools/resources/linking-events-rights/

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