Forest Academy Newsletter

10th May 2024

Message from Headteacher

Dear Parents/Carers,

I hope this newsletter finds you well as we approach the end of another week at Forest Academy.

Firstly, I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all the parents who attended our Maths Learning Together Morning earlier today. It was wonderful to see so many of you engaging with your child's learning and experiencing maths teaching in action in their classrooms. Your involvement and support are invaluable to us, and we greatly appreciate your active participation in your child's education.

Additionally, I would like to express our gratitude to the Year 1 parents who joined us for the Phonics Screening Parent Information session today, led by Mr. Narh. Your commitment to understanding and supporting your child's learning journey is commendable, and we are grateful for your attendance and engagement.

As we enjoy the appearance of warm weather, I would like to remind all parents to ensure that school uniform items are named. It's also essential for children to bring a water bottle and hat to stay hydrated and protected from the sun during outdoor activities. Please put a long-lasting sunscreen on your children in the morning before school.

Looking ahead to next week, it's particularly important to emphasize punctuality as Year 6 pupils will be undertaking their SATs. Please ensure that your child arrives on time to keep the school environment calm and quiet, allowing them to concentrate and achieve their academic best during this important period. We also want to take this opportunity to wish our Year 6 pupils the best of luck.

Wishing you a lovely sunny weekend.

Mrs. Lloyd

Our core value this half term is responsibility, which is the state or fact of being accountable for something.

When our pupils embrace responsibility, they develop essential life skills that will serve them well in the future. They learn to make informed choices, take initiative, and contribute positively to their communities. By fostering a sense of responsibility early on, we empower our children to become confident, capable individuals ready to tackle the challenges of the world.

Reception - Ash Class

The reception children have had a productive week!

The children have continued to develop their writing skills by focusing on sentence construction and using adjectives to make the writing fun. They have also made connections between reading and writing by applying their phonics knowledge to ensure their sentences are readable. In provision, the children confidently blended phonemes to read words.

In addition, the children discussed things they like and things they dislike. They used their previous experience of healthy food workshop to identify their favourite fruits and vegetables. They spoke about food choices and what makes the meals healthy.

The children have been introduced to the concept of even and odd numbers. Now, they understand that even numbers can be divided equally into two groups, while odd numbers have one leftover when divided into two. They also used 2 d shapes to make different arrangements.

Year 1 - Cherry Class

This week in English, the children were introduced to a new core text, 'The secret sky garden'. They were enthused by the vibrate colours and events in the story and are eager to find out more about the characters, Funni and Zoo. They sequenced the main events in the story using time adverbials and past tense form verbs to write about what Funni, the main character in the story.

In maths, the children started learning fractions. They learnt that a half is an equal part of a whole and to get a half, a whole must be split into two equal parts. They recognised and found a half of shapes and objects.

In ICT, the children continued to add to their story board of a familiar story. They wrote sentences to describe the what is happening in the images of their story boards.

Year 2 - Elm Class

In Year 2 on Wednesday this week as part of our science learning we went on an educational visit to the Wilderness Trust in Shirley. We went on the bus and took packed lunches with us which the children really enjoyed eating while looking at the plants and birds in the beautiful garden. We took part in a scavenger hunt, writing down and drawing pictures of the many interesting plants and animals that we found including a bog garden and a selection of mini-beasts. We all had a turn to plant sunflower seeds and we are looking forward to watching them grow.

In English this week we have been working hard to produce diary entries in the first person, writing in the past tense and using time vocabulary. We have edited our work to make sure that we are using full stops and capital letters accurately.

In maths we have been busy using measuring cylinders to find out the volume of liquid and the capacity of containers in millilitres and litres. We have also learned how to measure temperature using celsius and looked at a range of different thermometers.

Year 3 - Lime Class

This week in English Lime class explored what makes a good play script. They talked about when people might use play scripts and identified different features and its impact. They then started to write their very own play script based on our core text 'Oliver Twist'. Measuring mass in kilograms and grams was the focus of our maths lessons this week. The children read a variety of scales and worked out missing intervals between numbers.

Understand the life cycle of a seedling was the focus of our science lesson this week. The children discussed what germination is and what a seed will need in order for it to grow and flourish into a plant. They agreed that seeds need water, oxygen and optimal temperature in order to germinate. Understanding significant events from the past was the focus of our history lesson this week. The children discussed the importance of Stonehenge, how it was built and what it was used for.

Year 4 - Oak Class

Oak class have been enjoying our core text 'The boy at the back of the class' further this week. We have finished our amazing prequels and began to look into speech within a text. We focused on the importance of a new character speaking, means that we start a new line, making sure we put our punctuation inside of the speech marks. Oak class produced some great dialogues between Ahmet and Mrs Khan from our text.

Money was the focus of our maths lessons this week. We continued with decimals, and how to use them when we are looking at money. Converting pounds into pence was an element too.

In history, we continued with our topic of the Romans, looking the daily life under the Roman rule and the similarities and differences between the rich Romans and the poor Romans.

Year 5 - Pine Class

Year 5 have continued constructing their biographies using a variety of structural and literary features. They have continued reflecting on the sequence of the features of the biography on Sir David Attenborough to incorporate the significant parts of a biography. In whole class reading this week, pupils have been reading the non-fiction book 'Extreme Earth' learning about natural disasters, linked with our geography topic and our global theme of sustainability. The children discussed and clarified key vocabulary in relation to the context of the text and genre. They also made connections from the text to self and text to the world. Pupils looked at asking questions as this promotes a deeper understanding of the text.

In maths, pupils have begun the topic of statistics. They have been reading, drawing and interpreting line graphs and tables. They have been creating line graphs and bar charts in science and geography also to practise their skills across the curriculum. In arithmetic, they have continued to calculate increasingly varied equations using formal written methods.

In science pupils were looking at the growth of babies in the first year of their life. They created line graphs and a bar chart to show the height development for babies each month. They discussed which chart was clearer for recording and interpreting data and why this is of significance for scientific enquiry. In geography, pupils have been looking at the geographical distribution of natural resources and the geopolitical and economic implications of trade. They explored the consumption and usage of resources, reflecting on their comparisons of the pros and cons of renewable and non-renewable sources of energy.

Year 6 - Rowan Class

This week, year 6 wrote an explanation report answering the question 'How did WWII affect those living in Britain between 1939 and 1945?' The children began by choosing different aspects of the war to write about and then discussing technical vocabulary they would need to help explain it. They used their recall and retention skills to write expertly about what they had learnt in history and they were all able to write a clear and concise explanation.

In maths, the children have continued to revise for their SATs tests which will begin next week. This week they revised negative numbers, calculations involving money and comparing fractions and decimals. In whole class reading sessions, the children have been using a range of strategies to clarify unknown vocabulary without a dictionary. They enjoyed the sessions and were able to identify word classes, prefixes and suffixes and worked well in groups to work out the meaning of words in context.

In PE, the children continued to refine skills needed to play cricket including bowling, batting and fielding. In chess, the children learnt about the role of the knight and played games of chess against a number of opponents.

Attendance

We expect pupils to maintain a high standard of attendance. We want all of our pupils to be able to achieve at their very best and in order to do this, they need to be at school as much as possible so that they don’t miss out on any learning.