Dear Parents/Carers, 

I hope this newsletter finds you well as we come to the end of another vibrant week. Our commitment to providing a rich and diverse learning experience for every pupil remains at the heart of all we do, and this term we are especially celebrating our school value of curiosity, encouraging children to ask questions, explore ideas, and take joy in discovering new things.

A reminder that Parents’ Evenings will take place on Tuesday 3 February and Thursday 5 February. We warmly invite you to book an appointment with your child’s class teacher. These meetings offer a valuable opportunity to discuss your child’s progress, share insights, and explore any questions you may have. Bookings are now open on the Arbor app, and we encourage families to book early. We look forward to meaningful and productive conversations that support every child to thrive. 

Finally, a gentle reminder about mobile phone use during drop-off and pick-up. We kindly ask that mobile phones are put away during these times so you can engage with your child, perhaps by asking a curious question about their day ahead or something they’re excited about after school. These small moments help build confidence, connection, and a positive start or end to the day.

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and partnership.

Mrs Lloyd & the Forest Academy Team

Our new core text in Reception this week is The Gingerbread Man.  Children have been creating characters from the story from playdough using different techniques such as rolling, pinching and moulding.  Using different loose parts such as buttons, wooden spools and pebbles, the children have been designing their own gingerbread men.  The children have also been creating their own story maps for The Gingerbread Man and then using this to retell the story using actions. As part of their roleplay of the story of the Gingerbread Man, the children have been thinking about what each character would say to each other. They have been using stick puppets to act out the story and sequence the events using words like; first, next, after that and finally.

Within the phonics lessons the children have been developing their use and understanding of digraphs, two letters for one sound and trigraphs, three letters for one sound. This is helping them to read a wider range of words.

In maths, our focus has been recognising the numbers 6, 7 and 8 and creating these numbers in different ways, e.g. 6 can be made from 5 and 1, 4 and 2 or 3 and 3.

This week in English, year 2 have been busy planning and writing a formal letter. The children identified the features contained in a formal letter such as recipient's address, sender's,  address, date, greeting and farewell. They then used their knowledge to write their own letter to Mrs. Lloyd asking for a class pet. 

In maths, the children have been learning to share into groups equally, using division skills to share out objects into equal groups, for instance share 10 apples equally between 5 plates, the children would divide 10 by 5 to share 2 apples per plate.

Elm class have enjoyed participating in RE week this week. We began the week by watching videos about religions around the world and then using what we had learnt in those videos to complete a table and place the correct religious building into the correct column of the table.

Exercise was the focus of science this week. The children investigated the effect exercise had on the body. We took our science lesson into the playground and completed five different exercises, then completed a table to note how many of each exercise we had completed in 45 seconds, the effect the exercise had on our bodies and what parts of our bodies were most affected.

Year 4 Oak worked extremely hard this week in all areas of their learning, especially in maths. They are learning to divide two and three digit numbers by a one digit number, without remainders. They used their previous knowledge of partition numbers into hundreds, tens and ones in a way they can be divided by the divisor, and their knowledge in inverse operation. Later in the week, they were introduced to solving corresponding problems by finding out how many possibilities (probability) and combinations an event could occur. They used inter-locking cubes to create the possibilities and the combinations and then used their knowledge of their times to work  out the patterns without the needing the interlocking cubes. 

In science, they learned about electricity and how electrical energy flows in a circuit. They learned about what a circuit is and its components and how to construct one.  They learned that a closed circuit allows electrical energy to flow from the cell (battery) and back to the cell continuously until the cell is flat. They also understood that an open circuit breaks the flow of electrical energy because that does not allow continuous flow of electrical energy. They experimented with the components of a circuit to light up a bulb in groups. They worked collaboratively and made a simple circuit. To push their knowledge and understanding further, they added another bulb to the circuit and noticed the brightness of both bulbs dimmed. They quickly understood that both bulb shared the same amount of energy used by the single bulb in the first experiment.

We want to start by saying a huge "well done" to all the children for the fantastic resilience they showed during our recent assessments. This hard work culminated in our class assembly, where the children took the lead in planning and performing a brilliant showcase of their learning. It was a proud moment for staff and pupils alike!

In our English lessons, we have been exploring how to make our storytelling more sophisticated. The children have been investigating how dialogue can be used to advance a plot, practicing how to punctuate speech accurately while using reported clauses to describe character actions. We’ve also been "levelling up" our grammar, focusing on using semi-colons, dashes, and conjunctions to link ideas, as well as using commas and dashes for parenthesis to add extra detail to our sentences.

Our mathematicians have been diving deep into the world of decimals. We began by mastering place value up to three decimal places and learning how to round these numbers accurately. We then progressed to more complex operations, including adding and subtracting decimals from whole numbers (integers). To wrap up the fortnight, the children worked hard on multiplying and dividing decimals by integers and applying these skills to solve tricky real-life problems involving money and measures. It has been a fortnight of great progress and "lightbulb" moments!

In history, we have stepped back in time to explore the complex political landscape of World War II. The children have been considering the various alliances formed across Europe, discussing how countries worked together and the impact these partnerships had on the course of the war. Alongside this, our RE sessions have been very thought-provoking as the children explored ideas around different beliefs. It has been wonderful to hear them share their thoughts and show such respect for the diverse range of perspectives within our community and the wider world.

If you have concerns about a child (or their families) welfare, contact Croydon Council’s Single Point of Contact (SPOC) 

Telephone: 020 8726 6400 

Out of hours: 020 8726 6400 (ask for out of hours team) 

Email: childreferrals@croydon.gov.uk 

Office Hours: Monday – Friday 9:00 – 16:00 

If you think a child is at risk of immediate harm telephone 999