Forest Academy Newsletter

3rd May 2024

Message from Headteacher

Dear Parents/Carers,

I am excited to share some important news regarding the ongoing progress and development of Forest Academy.

This week, from Wednesday to Friday, we had the privilege of undergoing a Challenge Partners Quality Assurance Review. Led by a trained Ofsted inspector and two external senior school leaders, this peer review is a significant step in our commitment to continuous improvement. Over the course of three days, the review team thoroughly assessed our school, examining key documents, observing teaching and learning in every classroom, and engaging with leaders across the school, including our Junior Leadership Team.

As the Headteacher, I am exceptionally proud of Forest Academy and its dedicated staff and pupils who make it such a special place. The insights gathered during the Challenge Partners Review will further support our ongoing efforts to enhance the educational experience we provide. We appreciate your ongoing support and look forward to sharing the outcomes of the Challenge Partners Review with you in the coming weeks, once the report is received.

In addition to this exciting development, I would like to remind you about the upcoming Parents and Pupils Punctuality Challenge, taking place on Tuesday 7th May. We invite all parents and pupils to participate by ensuring children arrive to school before 8:45am, aiming to beat the school bell. For every class that achieves this goal, a special treat awaits! Let's come together as a community to promote the importance of punctuality and celebrate our collective efforts.

Wishing you all a lovely bank holiday weekend ahead. We look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday 7th May.

Mrs. Lloyd

Our core value this half term is responsibility, which is the state or fact of being accountable for something. Being responsible means recognising our interconnectedness and actively contributing to the well-being of our community.

At Forest we instil in our pupils the importance of being responsible citizens, both inside and outside the classroom. Whether it's tidying up after ourselves, completing homework on time, or showing kindness to others, each action contributes to a culture of responsibility.

Reception - Ash Class

This week the children have continued learning about what makes us unique and special. The children have enjoyed sharing photos of their families at special celebrations including birthdays and religious events with their class. The children have been able to practise their sketching skills this week, drawing their self-portraits and creating collages with different materials.

In phonics, the children have been recapping suffixes ‘s’ and ‘es’ in words such as fizzes and wishes, as well as revisiting phase 2 digraphs, ck, sh, ch and nk; they have been applying their digraphs and trigraphs into their sentence writing.

In maths this week, the children have been learning to share even numbers into equal groups. The children first chose a numeral, counted out the correct number of objects, and demonstrated their knowledge of sharing by placing an equal number of counters. They also used the outside provision to apply their skill by dividing larger construction pieces into two hoops.

The children have enjoyed watching our 4 caterpillars grow bigger and stronger. They are now about 1.5 cm long and they have been very active and move around a lot. We can't wait for them to start spinning a cocoon!

Year 1 - Cherry Class

This week in English, the children collated the knowledge and skills they have learnt about writing an informal letter and wrote a letter to Mrs Lloyd about a terrifying gorilla they saw in the school. In the letter, they described the physical features and the behaviour of the gorilla. They included some facts they researched about gorillas. They wrote about what gorillas eat, their natural habitat (the rainforest in Africa), and their social life, they groom each other to keep themselves clean.

In maths, the children were introduced to arrays. They were taught and shown what rows and columns are, and practised how to draw a given number of columns and rows. Once they understood columns and rows, they made arrays using counters and described their arrays using a stem sentence, and proceeded to find the total number of objects in the array. The lesson on array was to consolidate their nowledge about timetable.

In geography, the children built on their previous knowledge about countries and their capital cities in the UK and the cardinal directions of the four countries in the UK. They identified geographical features of an urban area and sorted pictures of the features into human and physical features. They noticed a feature like 'parks' could be a physical or human feature and discussed the reasons why that could be possible - an urban area could have a park by nature or designed and built by humans.

Year 2 - Elm Class

In English this week we have been exploring how to write a diary. We started by looking at the features that make a good diary. After that we planned what we would put in our diary and went into role as Floella Benjamin, the author of Coming to England. When we wrote our diary entries we had to remember to write in the first person and the past tense as well as including our emotions related to different events in the story.

In science this week we have had a practical lesson planting bulbs and seeds. We have predicted what will happen to the bulbs and seeds if they do not have water, sunlight or soil.

In maths this week we have continued our work on measures, looking at weighing objects in grams and kilograms and also at measuring capacity using millilitres.

In geography, we have learned about the different physical and human features of Trinidad and Tobago. We have also compared these with what we have already learned about the United Kingdom.

Year 3 - Lime Class

Lime class had a great start to the week. They expressed the thoughts, feelings and intentions of characters from our core text ‘Oliver Twist’. They used roleplay and conscience alley to solve their character's dilemma. They then moved on to create a variety of sentences to create tension. In maths we started our new topic of mass and capacity. The children worked out which objects would need to be weighed and which objects need to be measured.

Understanding and observing how water is transported through plants was the focus our science lesson this week. The children mixed food dye to water and put the plant inside to see how water travelled through the stem to the rest of the plant. To infer uses of Bronze Age tools was the focus of our history lesson this week. The children analysed different types of tools and discussed what they were and how they might have been used during the Bronze Age.

Year 4 - Oak Class

In English, Year 4 have been exploring their core text 'The Boy at the Back of the Class' further this week. In pairs, the children became an interviewer and Ahmet, and had to think up questions that would promote deep, emotional responses to capture how the main character of the book really feels. The children really enjoyed themselves and were able to show a great understanding of the text so far, via the role play.

In science, the digestive system was our main focus this week. We engaged in a fun practical lesson involving tights as intestines, orange juice as stomach acid and plastic sandwich bags representing stomachs. The children learnt how the food is digested and processed through the body.

The Roman army and the impact that it had in Roman Britain was on the agenda this week for Year 4. We discussed the armour that they wore and why they wore certain elements, such as metal helmets to protect their heads, and the strong body armour to protect torsos.

Year 5 - Pine Class

This week Year 5 have continued to generate ideas to construct effective paragraphs using literary devices including similes, onomatopoeia and verbs to illustrate Sir David Attenborough's early journey into his career. They focussed on writing increasingly complex sentences including parenthesis, semi-colons or subordinating conjunctions to add greater detail. In whole class reading, pupils continued reading texts about Sir David Attenborough through which they accessed all the reading strategies to explain their comprehension using evidence specifically within their texts.

In maths, pupils concentrated on revising fractions by solving equations that require converting improper fractions to mixed numbers and back, in their arithmetic session. They continued to develop their mental strategies with short, fast paced activities. In the latter part of the week, pupils returned to decimals, adding and subtracting hundredths and tenths. They utilised decimal place charts, number lines, bar models, whole-part models and dienes to explain their reasoning.

In DT, pupils design their wind turbines, paying attention to key vocabulary, to explain their design by saying what the positive, negative or interesting features of their designs may be. In geography, pupils revised what natural resources are so that they could then explore renewable and non-renewable sources of energy. Pupils shared their ideas through the 'Give One Get One' game and played Rally Robin to share definitions. They sorted the natural resources into whether they were renewable or non-renewable sources of energy and discussed what the pros and cons of renewable and non-renewable sources of energy are.

In RE, pupils continued building on their learning about pilgrimages. They created posters to demonstrate their research into Christian pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral. They created postcards to describe a journey to the scared, Islamic pilgrimage of Hajj and began to take some research into the Hindu festival Kumbh Mela.

Year 6 - Rowan Class

This week in English, the children finished redrafting and editing their El Caminante narratives with a focus on spellings, punctuation and grammar. They then moved onto identifying the features of an explanation text, reading different examples and discussing key vocabulary they will want to use when explaining the impact WWII had on Britain between 1939-1945.

In maths, the children revised various topics in preparation for their SATs reasoning papers. They began by identifying the properties of 3D shapes, identifying nets of 3D shapes, solving problems involving coordinates and solving problems involving time.

In PE, the children continued to practise the skills needed to play cricket including bowling and batting. They also continued to practise throwing and catching a rugby ball in their rugby coaching session. In chess, the children learnt more about the role of a rook in a game of chess before playing a range matches with their peers.

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.