Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back! We hope you had a restful and enjoyable summer break with your families. It has been a joyful week as we welcomed all our children back for their first full week of the academic year. Their positivity and enthusiasm to reconnect with friends have made for a wonderful start.

A special welcome to our new Reception children and their families. We are delighted to have you join the Forest Academy community and are confident that your child will thrive with us. We look forward to getting to know you better over the coming weeks.

This year, class newsletters will be shared fortnightly on a rotating basis. This week, newsletters will be sent home for Reception, Year 2, Year 4 and Year 6. The other year groups will follow next week.

Meet the Teacher Meetings

Our ‘Meet the Teacher’ meetings begin next week. These sessions provide a valuable opportunity to meet your child’s year group team and to hear more about the curriculum, routines, and the exciting learning ahead. We warmly encourage you to attend. We place great importance on open communication between home and school. Your involvement and feedback are vital in helping us provide a positive and enriching experience for all our pupils.

Extra-Curricular Clubs

We are pleased to share our extra-curricular clubs offer for this half term. Clubs will begin the week commencing Monday 15th September, and include:

• Gymnastics

• Homework

• Dodgeball

• Choir

• Basketball

• Board Games

• Chess

• Multi-Sports

• Football

These clubs offer fantastic opportunities for pupils to be active, build new skills, and enjoy time with friends beyond the classroom. Details on how to book will be sent home on Monday. Please note that spaces are limited and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

If you have any questions or require further information, please do get in touch.

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and partnership. We look forward to a happy and successful year ahead.

Warm regards,

Mrs Lloyd & the Forest Team 

The Reception children have settled really well into the routine. They have been exploring different activities within the indoor and outdoor provision. 

The reception classroom has exciting, stimulating learning areas to develop the children’s imagination, creativity and communication skills. This term our role play links to learning about themselves, their family and community, and children are already engaging enthusiastically. 

This term our core book is focused on 'It's OK To Be Different' and will help the children develop a sense of community, belonging and what it means to be inclusive. Our focus in maths has been matching numbers and counting objects to 5.  They have been creating different marks with a range of materials.  

In the creative area, reception children have been creating self-portraits and identifying their similarities and differences. Well done, reception!

Elm class have had a fantastic start to the new school year. We started the term off by making our own class charter, allowing us to create a set of rules for our classroom to adhere to, in order to be ready, respectful and safe. Year 2 have been amazing in practising and perfecting their daily routines, such as moving around the school, lining up in our special number order and transitioning around the classroom.

Year 2 have enjoyed learning all about fairy tales, and how we recognise that particular genre. We looked at the features such as, happy endings, mythical beings such as witches or dragons and special settings like castles or gingerbread houses. The children recalled the features and explored different tales that they knew.

In maths, we have been looking at place value and different ways to represent tens and ones. The children can use a place chart and part-whole models to aid their understanding of the value of the digits exposed to them.

Human and physical features were our main focus in geography this week, where we began to look at what a human feature is and how we know that it is and what a physical feature is too.

Materials is our main topic this half term in science and this week we looked at many different materials and classified them into groups such as metal, plastic, wood and glass.

The children in Oak class have settled in their new classroom and they are familiarising themselves with the rules and expectations.

In maths, the children reflected on their previous experience of place value. They showed great understanding of the place value of numbers ranging from 2 to 3 digits. They used the knowledge of the place value to perform calculations like addition and subtraction, compare values, read and write numbers correctly.

In geography, the children have learnt about two very special countries: the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka. The children were able to recall previous facts and they knew that the UK is in the continent of Europe, while Sri Lanka is in Asia! They compared the two countries, discovering some similarities and differences and identified physical and human features. 

In English, the children wrote predictions about what the core text, 'The Accidental Prime Minister' will be about and discussed the qualities of a good leader. They wrote sentences to describe Mrs Lloyd as a great leader and gave various valid reasons why they think she is.

What a wonderful start to the year it has been! We are so proud of how quickly Rowan Class have settled back into school and embraced their final year at primary school. They have already shown us what an exceptional class they are - full of kindness, intelligence, respect, and a great sense of community. We are excited for all the learning, growth and memories that this year will bring. This week in maths, the children tackled a range of topics, with great determination and resilience. We explored place value, practised rounding numbers to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000, and delved into the powers of 10. It has been brilliant to see the children challenge themselves and support each other's learning. 

We have begun our new core text, 'Pig Heart Boy' by Malorie Blackman. This thought-provoking story follows the life of a teenager facing the challenge of needing a heart transplant, and it has already sparked some fantastic discussions. In reading, we revisited important reading behaviours and immersed ourselves in the text. In writing, we developed our understanding of the main characters and explored diary entries, identifying key features that will help us when crafting our own. 

In science, we have begun our fascinating study of the circulatory system. The children identified the key parts of the system and explored their functions. Linking this learning with our core text has already provided some wonderful cross-curricular connections. 

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