Dear Parents and Carers,

It's been another busy and engaging week here at Woodside with trips, special visitors, and important events!

On Tuesday, we held our latest 'Parents in to Read' session with our Year 5 parents. Thank you to everyone who was able to attend; we appreciate your involvement in promoting a love of reading. We look forward to welcoming our Year 6 parents next Tuesday for their final session of the term.

Our Year 4 children had a wonderful and educational trip to Kew Gardens on Thursday. It was a trip enjoyed by all and provided a fantastic, hands-on link to their learning. We were also delighted to welcome Father Sam to school on Tuesday, where he led lovely Harvest Festival assemblies for all our children.

Today, we are proudly celebrating World Mental Health Day with our 'Hello Yellow' initiative. It's been great to see splashes of yellow across the school, worn by children, staff, and even some of our parents, to help raise awareness for this important cause.

Looking ahead, a reminder that Parents' Evening is next week, on Monday and Wednesday. If you have not yet signed up for a slot, please do so as soon as possible. We sent a reminder home regarding this.

Finally, a very important date reminder: this year, we have a two-week October half term. School will finish at the normal time on Friday, 20th October and children will return on Monday, 3rd November. The break runs from October 23rd to October 31st.

We hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Iman Atwal

Headteacher

A reminder that we have started the year with a focus on the value of Excellence. This week, in our assembly, we focused on 2 important events: Harvest and Mental Health. Harvest is how we support others and showcase excellence in our behaviours and approach to others. With World Mental Health Day, we focused on how we understand ourselves and despite any challenges we face, how we can still showcase excellence.

So ask your child:

• How can you support others including those not as fortunate as you?

• How do you manage your emotions?

• How do you show excellence even when you find things difficult?

The Eight Sensory Systems

1. Visual System - The sense of sight 

2. Auditory System - The sense of hearing

3. Tactile System - The sense of touch

4. Olfactory System - The sense of smell

5. Gustatory System - The sense of taste 

6. Vestibular System - The sense of balance and coordination of movements 

7. Proprioceptive System - Feeling the movement of muscles and joints. Understanding the position of their body in space such as knowing how high to lift their arm to reach an object.  

8. Interoceptive System - This system helps children feel what’s happening inside their bodies such as feeling hungry, tired or needing to use the bathroom. Understanding these systems can provide you with valuable insights into your child’s interaction with the world and their unique sensory experiences. At school we can help by carrying out sensory profiles to help understand your child’s sensory needs.

Safeguarding Your Children: Learn the PANTS Rule

At Woodside, safeguarding your children is our top priority. One simple but powerful way to help keep children safe from abuse is by teaching them the PANTS Rule from the NSPCC.

The PANTS rule helps children understand that:

• P – Privates are private

• A – Always remember your body belongs to you

• N – No means no

• T – Talk about secrets that upset you

• S – Speak up, someone can help

It’s an age-appropriate way to start important conversations with your child about staying safe.

Learn more and download the free resources here: 

NSPCC PANTS – Talk PANTS & Stay Safe (https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/support-for-parents/pants-underwear-rule/)

Together, we can help keep children safe and empower them with knowledge.

Transfer to Secondary School September 2026

If your child’s date of birth is between 1st September 2014 - 31st August 2015, they will be due to start

Secondary School in September 2026.

Reminder!!! The deadline for applications is 31st October 2025.

It is recommended that you submit your application no later than 17th October 2025 (Friday before half-term) 

Late applications will be processed after those received on time, which could severely reduce your child’s chances of being offered a place at your preferred school.

Applications are made online through eAdmissions which can be accessed through Croydon Councils website

- click on the link below; 

Apply for a secondary school place: step by step | Croydon Council. 

You will also find information on local Secondary Schools and step-by-step guidance to help you through

the application process.

If you are familiar with the application process, you can apply straight away here; www.eadmissions.org.uk 

Click here for the  Link to Croydon Secondary Schools Prospectus;

Secondary-admissions-prospectus-2026-2027 

Follow this link for the Transfer to Secondary Schools open days / evenings; Open-Days-Evenings-Timetable-for-Secondary-Schools-2025-2026   

If you missed an open day/evening for a particular school, please contact the individual school

- most will be happy to accommodate you at another time.

For any parents and carers who need help understanding the school admissions process or need support making an application, please make an appointment to see Mrs Georgiades (Family Support Officer) who will be happy to help you complete the application. You will need your council tax reference number to make an application.

Nest

We had a fantastic week of imagination and creative expression!

This week, children loved sharing a story with an adult. They showed great interest in the illustrations, pointing to pictures and confidently talking about what they could see. We were especially proud to see some children use longer sentences to share their ideas! They were brilliant at predicting what they thought was going to happen next and summarising what the whole story was about. This is a huge step for their communication and language development!

We have been very creative this week too, children have been making marks on a mirror template to represent themselves. Most children were able to give meaning to the marks they made. We have been continuing to support the children's early phonics development. They enjoyed joining in with singing, rhymes, and action songs. This helps them hear and recognise different sounds, which is a key pre-reading skill.

Saplings

This week in Saplings, we are exploring how we use our senses to explore in everyday life, such as how our taste buds on our tongues explore different flavours of foods, and how vibrations of sounds create the noise we hear in our eardrums. This gives the children an opportunity to hear and tase with more awareness of how their bodies are exploring this. We are pairing this along with songs that are played throughout carpet time that explain how and why we have and use our senses. 

In Numeracy, we are exploring 2D shapes. The children are going on shape hunts throughout the classroom to find anything in the room that resembles a circle, square, rectangle or triangle. In our outdoor area we have a sorting and matching activity where the children place the cut out shapes into the correct area. We are also encouraging them to describe what they can see, for example 4 straight sides on a square.

In literacy we are encouraging the children to speak in full sentences at circle time, such as ‘My name is __ and I can use my eyes to see the home corner’. Along with emphasising our key vocabulary which is placed on a board in the classroom.

Year 1

This week in Year 1, the children have been busy exploring their new core text 'The Lonely Beast' by making sensible predictions and sequencing events in order. They enjoyed placing pictures to represent each part of the story and creating a story mountain to help retell it.

In Maths, the children have been introduced to fact families and have been writing number sentences to support their answers. They have also continued learning about number bonds to 10 and are beginning to make links between numbers.

In Art, the children have been learning about Black History Month. They can now explain in more detail who Alma Thomas is and what she is famous for.

Year 4

This week in Maths, the children started to explore addition and subtraction using the column method. They worked with 4-digit numbers and honing in on the skill of exchanging numbers too.

In English, we continued looking for persuasive techniques but this time to support planning our speeches about climate change. The children picked two climate change concerns they wanted to focus on and planned a speech that will be shared with the rest of the class next week.

To support our learning in Science, the children were very excited to travel through London to Kew Gardens on our first academic trip. We explored the Palm House, the Hive amongst other areas. The trip would not have been complete without a quick visit to the children’s area which they all enjoyed thoroughly. 

Have a restful weekend!

Year 5

This week, the children deepened their understanding of subtraction with 4-digit numbers, focusing on the crucial skill of exchanging. They then learned how to use rounding as an effective tool to quickly check if their calculated answers were reasonable. Finally, the class explored inverse operations - using addition to check subtraction, and vice versa -to confirm the accuracy of their calculations.

In English, the children have been immersed in their class text by adopting the persona of the main character named Toby. They focused on the features of a letter before writing their own, responding to a fictional letter from Toby's long-lost cousin, Jack. Their letters were a creative task, recounting Toby's adventures from the "Gutter to the Globe."

Sycamore class enjoyed a wonderful visit to Ashburton Library! The children were keen to see how the library works and impressed the librarian by confidently answering her questions. They demonstrated excellent behaviour - showing the 'Woodside way' - both during the journey and while sharing books in the library. They also had a great time reading and exploring the wide range of books available to borrow. Rowan class will be making their trip to the library next week and are sure to have a fantastic time!

In Art this week, the children continued to develop their drawing expertise. They focused intensely on sketching, detailing, and mastering a variety of drawing techniques. The core of our activity involved drawing a live still life—a pot of flowers. This required the children to focus on observational accuracy and employ techniques like shading (to create depth and form) and hatching (to add texture). This project challenged them to pay close attention to light, shadow, and line quality to create truly detailed and realistic pieces.

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.