Dear Parents and Carers,

We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all the parents and carers who attended Parents' Evening this week. Your presence demonstrates a strong commitment to your child's education and continues to strengthen the vital partnership between home and school.

Parents' Evening offers a valuable opportunity to discuss your child's progress, achievements, and any areas where they may benefit from further support. Your thoughtful questions, feedback and engagement are greatly appreciated and play an important role in helping us provide the best possible education for your children.

If you were unable to attend and would like to speak with your child’s class teacher, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’ll be happy to arrange a meeting or phone call at a convenient time to ensure you stay informed and involved in your child’s learning journey.

We’d also like to remind families that the 2026–27 term dates are available and can be accessed using the link below. In addition, we have now published the 2027–28 term dates to help with your longer-term planning. Click here to view our term dates. 

Thank you, as always, for your continued support.

Mrs Lloyd & the Forest Academy Team

We were fortunate to be given some caterpillars for the classroom. They were at various stages of development - some were eggs, there were a range of sizes of the caterpillars and some were just coming out of their chrysalis. It was exciting for the children to see the different stages and especially to see them hatch out and open their wings. Some were ready to be released back into nature so the children were able to have them sit on their hands before they flew away. There will be more to release over the coming weeks as they grow in the enclosure in the classroom.

The Gingerbread man story has been the focus text for two weeks and the children have been drawing and decorating different gingerbread men. Then they were gived a baked gingerbread men to decorate with icing, sweets and sultanas. Excited and proud children held their gingerbread men when it was hometime. Some were thinking about it the gingerbread man would run away, like in the story, when they took him out of the bag at home.

Odd and even numbers has been one of the focus areas in maths. The children had to match up some socks into pairs and see if the number of socks they had was on odd or even number (Was there one left over?). Exploring patterns in numbers was one of the activities where the children had to use their fine motor skills to put the pom poms in pairs onto the numicon blocks. They were able to see which one had a circle left over and was odd. 

Elm class have been busy writing to inform this week. They have learnt all about newsletters and their features and have written their own newsletter all about the crimes in Offley street, from our core text Hermelin. We planned what we would include in our letters and the topics that we wanted to cover,  then,  children wrote in the past tense, used a catchy headline as well as sub headings too. This was a long write for them and they did a great job, super star writers!

Counting in 2s, 5s and 10s has been our focus this week in maths and we have looked at different ways to work out multiplication and division questions such as number lines, as well as equal groups and using the inverse equation. the children know that the x symbol means the answer will increase and the division symbol will make our answer smaller than the number we started with.

In art, the children began their final outcomes, producing a piece inspired by Sally Morgan, so far they are looking fabulously bold and bright. As well as our own art pieces, some children helped to make a centre piece ready for display in the year 2 corridor. 

In Year 4 this week, the children started to learn about different units of measuring lengths. We looked at millimetres, centimetres, metres and kilometres. The children are learning and finding patterns to connect links between the different types of measurement units. They know that 10 millimetres equals 1 centimetre, 100 centimetres equals 1 metre and 1000 metres equals 1 kilometre. They are using their understanding of measures and conversions to solve some word  problems.  

In art, the children designed a replica of ancient Greek vessels, labelled the parts and wrote about what their vessels are used for. This week, the children learned and used pottery skills namely: pitching, slipping, scoring, coiling and blending to replicate ancient Greek vessels. The final outcome of the pottery work created by the children would be used as a brush holder. The pots will be designed and when properly dried, they will be decorated and painted and proudly displayed for their use.

In English, our classroom has been transported back to 1940s Britain as we explored our core text, "When the Sky Falls" by Phil Earle. The children have been working hard to "innovate" a model text, focusing on the character of Joseph. They have been writing extended third-person narratives, with an emphasis on creating different atmospheres through sophisticated language choices. A key focus was using dialogue purposefully—not just for characters to speak, but as a tool to advance the story and reveal deeper character traits. It has been wonderful to see them applying a wide range of sophisticated punctuation to control the pace and mood of their storytelling.

Mathematics has been equally intensive as we mastered the bridge between fractions, decimals, and percentages. We began by finding equivalents and learning how to order these values accurately. This progressed into calculating percentages of amounts, starting with one-step mental strategies, before moving on to complex multi-step problems. We even tackled the challenge of finding missing wholes from a known percentage. To round off our decimal work, the children practiced formal methods for multiplying and dividing decimals by integers, eventually applying these skills to solve tricky problems in real-world contexts.

Our history lessons have provided the perfect backdrop for our English work as we continue our study of World War II. Our focus has been on understanding the significant people of the past. By researching the key figures who shaped the conflict, the children have gained a better understanding of the leadership and decision-making that defined the era. This historical context has added a layer of depth to their creative writing, allowing them to better understand the world that children like Joseph lived in during the war.

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