Spring Term Issue 15: 9th January 2026
Flourishing in the love of God, love of life, love of learning
Dear Families,
Happy New Year! We hope you had a wonderful festive break and are feeling refreshed as we begin the Spring term.
Today, you will receive the usual term dates letter. At the bottom of the letter, you will also find the term dates for the next academic year (2026–2027), so please keep this handy for future planning.
There is also an important reminder about uniform, punctuality, and attendance. These are areas where we ask everyone to work together to ensure the very best for our children.
We enjoyed the tiny sprinkle of snow earlier this week—I even spotted one child attempting a snow angel! Fingers crossed for a little more winter magic soon. As always, we value the time children spend playing outside in the fresh air, even during the colder months. Please make sure your child comes to school with appropriate clothing for the season.
This half term, our school value focus is ASPIRATION. We’ll be exploring how people with big dreams achieved amazing things, how to set and work towards goals, and how to overcome challenges along the way.
Thank you for your continued support. Have a fantastic weekend!
Alli
Reception
We have started the New Year with A Huff and a Puf! The Children have been delighted to join in retellings of the Three Little Pigs, in Drawing Club, and they’ve been building houses out of anything they can find, using puppets and masks to help with their tale telling. In maths we have been subitising and comparing special arrangements of dots, counting and finding ways to make 1 to 5.
In Science we have been investigation the properties of materials and finding out which material would make a good roof for a pig’s house. We really enjoyed making predictions and careful observations… “Will it drip? Will the Pig get wet?”
In phonics we are now learning lots more digraphs and trigraphs (three letters one sound) - this week featured ai ee igh oa
There’s loads coming up this half term for Reception so we have sent out a separate letter along with our curriculum newsletter, with all the important dates and information.
Year 1
Year One have settled back into school so beautifully, and we are so proud of how well they have adjusted to being back in the classroom! In English, we have been enjoying the story The Naughty Bus, which the children absolutely loved. They had great fun predicting what the Naughty Bus might do next, using the conjunction ‘and’ to join two ideas together. The learning really came to life as they acted out scenes from the story using toy London buses, sparking lots of excitement and imagination. In maths, the children have been exploring 2D shapes. Using simple shapes, we looked at block pattern images where smaller shapes are combined to make one larger shape. The children also loved creating and building repeating patterns using different shapes, showing fantastic focus and creativity.
Year 2
We’ve had a brilliant first week back! The children have settled in wonderfully and are already diving into exciting new learning. This week, we began exploring Judaism in our RE lessons. The class loved discovering the different objects found in a Synagogue and learning about their meanings.
The highlight was definitely being able to hold and pass around some of these special items—the children were fascinated and asked lots of thoughtful questions. It was a great hands-on experience that really brought the topic to life!
We’re looking forward to continuing our journey of learning about Judaism and finding out more about its traditions and celebrations in the coming weeks.
This week, Year 3 have been learning about modal verbs and exploring what life might have been like if children lived in the Stone Age. The children wrote imaginative sentences such as “If I were born in prehistory, I would have made a magnificent roundhouse made of stone.” They observed and shared each other’s work, focusing carefully on the success criteria, presentation, and spelling. The children showed great enthusiasm and creativity, with many fantastic ideas shared. Well done, Year 3!
Year 3
Year 4
The year 4s have been focusing their learning on multiplication and its key vocabulary over the last few weeks. We have been making links between the times tables and learning different rules to identify if a number is a multiple or finding pairs of factors that make a product.
This week, to help us know if our products are correct, we investigated some rules to see if we can predict our answers before we complete the calculation.
If 2 factors are odd, will the product be odd or even?
If 1 factor is odd and the other even, will the product be odd or even?
If 2 factors are both even, will the product be odd and even?
We had to proved this many times before we could count these as rules!
Year 5
This term, we have already begun exploring our exciting new topic of Ancient Greece. The children have been studying replicas of primary sources (including clay pots and plates, masks, money and a wax tablet), carefully observing them, asking questions, and making predictions based on their observations. They have also started reading The Odyssey and learning about the fascinating world of Ancient Greek gods. We are looking forward to building on this curiosity as the term continues and sharing their learning with you along the way.
Year 6
This week, Year 6 were introduced to our new topic on the suffragettes through an engaging drama-based activity. The boys were temporarily given the role of representing the school council and asked to create ten new rules for the class. At the same time, the girls observed what was happening and responded by designing protest posters to express their views and feelings.
As the rules were announced, the girls shared how it felt to have no say in decisions that affected them, which led to a powerful and thoughtful exchange of ideas. Pupils then presented their posters and took part in a reflective discussion about fairness, power and what it is like to have a voice – or to be denied one.
This activity helped pupils to better understand the experiences of women in the suffragette movement and provided a strong starting point for our English work this term.
Stars of the Week
See you next week!