Dear Parents and Carers,

Today is our Culture Day, and it has been absolutely wonderful to see so many children dressed up in stunning outfits representing their heritages, bringing an incredible array of colour and pride to the school.

On Wednesday, we held our 'Meet the New Teacher' session, where the children spent time in their upcoming classrooms with their new teachers. It was a fantastic, reassuring session that has helped everyone feel settled and excited about their next steps. Also on Wednesday, we were delighted to welcome our next cohort of new Reception children and their parents and carers for a Stay and Play session. It was lovely to meet our newest pupils, and we cannot wait to officially welcome them into the Woodside family this September.

Earlier in the week on Monday, our Year 6 pupils went to Frylands for their adventurous day out. The children threw themselves into a range of outdoor learning and team-building activities, making wonderful memories together as they wrapped up their final weeks of primary school. Next week, they will be performing their production to our children and parents. We cannot wait to see it!

In this week’s letter directory, there are key letters including a trip for the new Year 3s (current Year 2s) and new Year 4s (current Year 3s) in the new academic year (please note that Arbor consent and payment does not open until September), Reception Graduation and a Year 1 picnic. The FSM letter sent earlier this week is also there - a reminder for ALL parents and carers to complete this form - if you are eligible for FSM, you will be entitled to supermarket and/or Holiday club vouchers as well as increased school funding.

As we approach the very end of the school year, a reminder our last day of term is Tuesday, 21st July, and school will finish early at 1:30 PM. Please ensure you have made the necessary arrangements for your child to be collected at this earlier time.

We hope you all have a wonderful and restful weekend.

Iman Atwal

Headteacher

This week, linking to Aspiration, we explored how important it is to be organised. We discussed that organisation is the map that helps you get to where you want to be. So if you want to become a better reader, read a little every day. If you want to improve in maths, practise regularly and ask for help when you need it. If you want to become a great footballer, keep practising and remember your kit! Big dreams are reached by taking lots of small, organised steps.

So ask your child:

• What are your aspirations?

• What small steps can you take?

• What can you plan to do to achieve it?

Family Fun Day

Join the team at Portland House with your family to enjoy a free hair trim from Barber Krish, eat some Domino’s pizza and play some games with your friends and neighbours. Limited spaces for trims: first come, first served!

• When: Thursday, 30th July, 1 - 4pm

• Location: Portland House, 678 London Road, CR7 7HU

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AI is being used to turn ordinary photos of children into sexual abuse material.

The National Crime Agency and Internet Watch Foundation have issued new guidance to help parents make informed choices about sharing images of their children online. It covers reviewing privacy settings, revisiting consent with your child as they grow, and what to do if you're worried.

We strongly encourage all parents and carers to read the official guidance: https://www.iwf.org.uk/resources/ai-child-abuse-imagery-parent-guide/

Nest

We have had an absolutely magical week of learning, exploring, and building in the Nest! The children have been full of energy and imagination, and we are so excited to share what they’ve been up to.

This week, our literary adventures took us right into the heart of the classic story, 'We’re Going on a Bear Hunt'. To prepare for our big adventure, our little learners got busy indoors crafting their very own "binoculars" to help them spot the bear. Armed with their handmade binoculars, we took our learning outside to the fields! The children marched through the grass, enthusiastically singing the Bear Hunt song as they searched high and low. We were so proud to hear them naturally using positional language during the hunt, calling out things like, "It’s not up there!" and "It’s not down here!" Finally, the children spotted the bear hiding in a small tree. The field was filled with delighted screams and laughter as they ran, shouting, "Oh, it’s a big bear!" It was an absolute joy to watch their imaginations come alive.

Back inside the cozy Nest, our focus turned to teamwork and math skills using our small wooden blocks. We are seeing beautiful friendships blossoming. The children have been playing wonderfully together, sharing the blocks and cooperating with their peers to build small structures. As they stacked the blocks higher and higher, the children practiced their counting skills, carefully tallying up how many blocks they used for each tower before they came tumbling down!

Saplings

It has been a momentous week of big steps and bright futures for our wonderful Saplings! The children took a giant leap forward as they visited the Reception classroom for a special "stay and play" session. It was an absolute joy to watch them meet their new teacher with such enthusiasm and curiosity. They explored the new environment with confidence, settled in quickly, and showed everyone just how ready they are for the exciting journey ahead.

Back in our classroom, creativity was in full bloom as we prepared for our upcoming 'Culture Day'. The children put their design skills to the test, crafting beautiful, vibrant flags that celebrate identity and community. The creative energy reached an all-time high with the introduction of our brand-new paint pens! These new tools were a massive hit, allowing the children to experiment with bold lines and bright colors while practicing their fine motor control.

Alongside these creative projects, our Saplings have been working incredibly hard on their foundational skills. We are so proud to report that many children have been independently writing their names, showing fantastic focus and determination. We also sneaked in some brilliant math exploration on the carpet, where the children challenged themselves by making intricate patterns with blocks. It has been a week packed with growth, laughter, and learning!

Reception

We have had another incredibly busy and exciting week in Reception! The children have been working hard, exploring big ideas, and getting creative.

This week, we have been exploring the wonderful world of work and discussing different occupations. We talked about all the amazing jobs people do to help our community. To help us express our big dreams, we practiced using special sentence starters in our writing and talking: "When I grow up..." "I want to be a..." We have everything from future Prime ministers, doctors to firefighters and artists in our class!

During the week, the children have been busy making beautiful, vibrant flags in preparation for 'Cultural Day'. We have also been filling the classroom with music by learning the song "One Love." The children are doing a fantastic job learning the words and rhythm, and we can’t wait to celebrate together. We have continued to focus heavily on our fine motor skills and letter formation this week. The children have been practicing writing upper-case (capital) and lower-case letters side-by-side (for example: Aa, Bb, Cc).They are trying so hard to keep their letters sitting beautifully on the lines—keep up the great work!

In Maths this week, we focused on strengthening our understanding by revising areas where some of us needed a little extra confidence. Specifically, we revisited odd and even numbers. We used lots of hands-on resources to practice pairing objects up to see which numbers have a partner (even) and which numbers have an "odd one out." The children showed great determination and are really getting the hang of it!

Year 1

We’ve had another week of fun. It’s hard to believe we only have 7 days of year 1 left!

In preparation for Year 2, the children enjoyed meeting their new teacher on Wednesday and seeing their new classroom. Children were excited to hear about some of things they will be learning about next year.

Meanwhile back in year 1, we’ve been continuing to tell the time moving on to recognise and draw half past. Please help reinforce this at home, making sure children know that the hour and minute hands are different lengths and where they point to at o’clock and half past. We thought about activities we might do at different times and created a simple timetable putting times and events in order.

In Writing, we retold the story of 'Tidy'. Children were encouraged to use their phonics to spell words, add adjectives to make their writing more descriptive, and to check what they had written to check sentences made sense.

In Geography, our learning focused on the different types of pollution. Children did various activities to find out about land, water, noise and water pollution and thought about the effects of each type has on the environment.

The children were excited to make their sculpture of a jellyfish using recycled materials. After covering a plastic pot with coloured tissue paper, they used the paper folding techniques they’d learnt to make the arm and then plastic carrier bags and used bubble wrap to make the tentacles. They look great, hanging across the room waving gently in the breeze created by the very necessary fan!

The week ended with Cultural Day. The children had been busy during the week learning part of Bob Marley’s song “One Love”. Photos of the day’ s events will follow next week!

Year 2

This week in Maths, we have been consolidating our understanding of shape. The children have been revisiting 2D and 3D shapes, exploring their properties and using key mathematical vocabulary to describe them. We have been looking carefully at sides, vertices, edges and faces, and comparing how shapes are similar and different.

In English, we have been planning and writing our recounts about our trip to the Paddington Experience. The children have created detailed plans and have begun writing their narratives ready to publish as beautiful pieces of writing. We are very proud of how they are using the Year 2 writing skills they have developed this year, including the Power of 3, expanded noun phrases, conjunctions and time adverbials to make their writing sound more interesting and engaging.

In Art, we have been creating collages inspired by Eric Carle. The children first created their own textured papers using different mark-making techniques with watercolours and oil pastels. They also explored the ombré effect to create colourful backgrounds. This week, they have been bringing these elements together to create rainforest-inspired collages linked to our learning around Paddington.

Well done, Year 2, for another creative and hardworking week!

Year 3

What a truly magical week we have had in Year 3! The children were buzzing with excitement and anticipation as they had the incredible privilege to test-trail our brand-new library space ahead of its official opening next term.

Using this stunning, freshly decorated space to collect data on their favourite books, the children have been masterfully learning how to interpret and construct towering bar charts and clever pictograms in maths, focusing carefully on reading scales of 2, 5, or 10. To bring this learning to life, we combined our statistics work with our English focus on The Princess and the Pea. Writing in the first person, the children eagerly adopted the perspectives of the characters; first as the tiny pea feeling a rhythmic squish beneath twenty heavy, towering mattresses and then as the Queen gliding regally and gracefully through the library to inspect the data with a delighted clap, clap! Through these creative viewpoints, the children successfully achieved their key Year 3 writing targets: using fronted adverbials to show how and when things happened (e.g., "Suddenly," or "Early this morning,"), crafting detailed expanded noun phrases (e.g., "stunning, brand-new library space") and embedding lively onomatopoeia to make their royal descriptions pop.

Year 5

In English this week, the children have been working hard on their prequel narrative based on Marcus Sedgwick’s novel, 'Floodland'. They have been making final edits to their narratives, carefully refining and polishing their writing. Following this, the children moved on to take the time to publish their work, focusing on their neatest handwriting to ensure it is beautifully presented and ready to be put on display for everyone to admire.

This week, the children started their exciting new topic by investigating negative numbers for the very first time. They focused on exploring how these numbers exist in the real world, looking at real-life contexts to help bring the concept to life. The children investigated how temperatures can drop below freezing, how distances are measured above and below sea level, and even how a building's lift buttons represent floors that go underground.

This week, the children had a fantastic time celebrating Cultural Day by proudly dressing in their vibrant cultural colours. As part of the festivities, Year 5 focussed their learning on China. They delved into traditional art forms by creating their own intricate shadow puppets, which they then used to bring a traditional Chinese shadow theatre show to life.

Thank you to all those who came to the Meet the LCC session on Tuesday after school.

They held a competition to guess how many paper clips were in the jar. The winning entry was Deniz where he guessed 1,050 and there were actually 1,045 paper clips in the jar! Well done, Deniz! This means Juniper class has earned an extra break next week.

Summer Term Clubs

Bookings will be open from Friday 20th March at 6pm and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

The dates exclude the half term week, 25th May 2026 - 29th May 2026 and Bank holiday, Monday 4th May 2026. Also, Inset day, Friday 19th June 2026.

Please book directly using the links provided or via Arbor where it is indicated to do so.

Kindly ensure your child commits to the duration of the club, as we cannot guarantee refunds.

Sign-up starts at the beginning of the club, not once the club has started.

Please follow this link for futher information and booking links: Summer Term Clubs 

We are using in-app messages to communicate with parents through the app - please could parents ensure they are able to log-in and Arbor is set up to accept these messages - they should be visible in the Communications section of the portal.

Parents who have the app should enable Push Notifications - this will alert you through the app that a message has arrived.

Over 90% of our parents have logged into Arbor - if you are having difficulty, please talk to the office who can help.

Check your Child's Data

Please log in to Arbor and check your child's/children's details are correct - and let us know if not. You can also request changes directly through the app which will take place once we have seen them - if we have questions, we will get in touch. Or you can let the office know directly. It is important we have the correct data for all our families.

Please remember to check Arbor - either the Parent Portal (at https://login.arbor.sc/) or the parent app (available from the App Store or Google Play).

Parents who log in can:

* see their child's attendance

* log consent for local trips and those further afield

* pay for trips and book and pay for clubs

* receive In-App messages - and message the school

* book parent consultations

* see their child's details and request changes to ensure they are completely up to date

If you have more than one child at the school, they should be visible via a drop-down so you only need to login once.

To set up your account, you need the email you use for school communications and the date of birth of one of your children. Follow the Forgotten Password link on either the app or the website.

If you need support with logging in, please talk to the office team who will be glad to help.