Beech Grove Primary School
Autumn Term 2025
Head Teacher Message
Happy New Year everyone and welcome to spring term 2025. The time has flown since children started their new classes in September! This Spring term will fly even faster no doubt as the evenings become lighter and the daffodils start to poke through putting a smile on everyone’s face.
As Head teacher of your school, I continue to be so proud of all of the children and the way they have started back since returning from the Christmas break. Their resilience and adaptability remain outstanding.
This was picked up on and noticed in abundance during the schools Ofsted Inspection on the 22nd and 23rd of October. The HMI Ofsted Inspector was blown away of what he described to us as ‘school is an oasis of calm’ for all children at Beech Grove.
“Pupils at Beech Grove are proud of their school, welcoming visitors with exemplary manners and conduct. They understand the school’s ‘next-door neighbour’ principles and the school’s five golden rules well. Pupils consistently show high levels of respect to adults and to one another. They are happy and safe. Highly trained staff put pupils’ needs first in all they do. Pupils thrive in the warm and nurturing environment that the school fosters.” Ofsted 2024/25. What a fantastic first paragraph of the Ofsted Report to read. I’m sure you’ll all agree.
This term we hope to pick up where we left off before Christmas with our children achieving good progress within their core subject areas, due to the tremendous hard-working attitude of themselves and the dedicated staff team here at school.
“Leaders have created a culture of high expectations for pupils’ achievement. Pupils meet these expectations… Behaviour across school is of a high standard. Well-trained staff create a purposeful learning atmosphere. Pupils’ learning is not disrupted by others. ”Ofsted 2024/25.
Children’s classroom and corridor manners remain amazing which continues to maintain a lovely, positive and caring atmosphere around school. The schools “Next Door Neighbour Qualities” of Respect, Tolerance and Kindness are certainly being upheld. The children take great pride in this in and around school and it is wonderful to see. Please keep having a bit of fun at home and test the children regularly on what it takes in school (and the community) to be a good “Next Door Neighbour”!
This term we will also be hoping for some lovely spring sunshine so that children can make full use of our Secret Garden in lesson time and maybe plant some wonderful spring flowers for us all to enjoy (even the ducks!!!). I always think that spring flowers with their vibrant colours and freshness cheer everyone up from the gloom of the long, dark and wet winter months. They are a sign that lighter nights and warmer weather is on its way! (fingers crossed)
Our teachers have lots of interesting activities planned for this term and hope that you will enjoy hearing what children have been working on at consultation meetings/phone conversations, and will support them with their homework and reading outside of school.
Please, please, please x10000 keep encouraging your child to read at home. Reading is the key to everything! The children are showing such a passion and love of reading in school, we hope you will continue this with them at home.
We also hope that every effort is made by you for every child to attend school regularly. It is so important for your child’s development. We can’t continue to stress this enough. (95% and above is GOOD attendance). As a school we need to bet better on the first and last day of terms. Far too many children have these particular days off.
In addition to this being ON TIME every day for school is absolutely vital so that your child does not miss any of their learning. It can be really upsetting and frustrating for children if they come into a lesson that is part way through and they’ve missed vital teacher input and modelling. It can cause them great distress and being left with a feeling of not understanding what is expected of them.
Its really pleasing to see that our ‘lates’ are reducing and that you are all working really hard to support school on this issue. Well done everyone. Keep up the great efforts. Let’s have all the children in on time every day!
Here’s to a really positive Spring term!
John Dixon
Our work for this term
English
In English we will be working in our new Read, Write Inc. groups every morning. Back in our classes, we will be learning about common nouns, proper nouns, being verbs and action verbs. We will learn about the subject of a sentence and how to write and punctuate single clause sentences. We will also learn how to use adjectives and question marks. We will be writing poems, stories and Non-Chronological reports based on the theme of pirates. In the second half term we will be writing recounts. We will be using, ‘Talk Through Stories’ to develop our oral language and to deepen our vocabulary.
Maths
In maths will be doing lots of work on place value and number this term. We will start by learning to recognise the place value of each digit in a 2 digit number. We will be using words such as tens, ones, value and represent. We will then move onto solving addition and subtraction calculations +- 2 digit and 1 digit numbers ( e.g. 39 +5) and +- tens to a 2 digit number (46 + 30) . We will be practising number bonds to 10 , 20 and 100. In Autumn 2 we will be learning to name and describe the properties of 2D and 3D shapes and to measure lengths and heights using standard units.
Throughout the term we will be counting on and back in 1s, 2s, 5s ,10s and 3s. We will continue to do Rapid Recall each week. Please try to help us by listening to us count and helping us with our rapid recall.
Topic
Our topics this term will be ‘Land Ahoy’ and ‘Street Detectives’.
In our ‘Land Ahoy’ topic we will be learning about the continents and oceans of the world and will be studying maps and then labelling our own world map. In our History lessons we will be learning about the life of the explorer Captain Cook. During this topic, we will be creating some amazing Aboriginal art.
In Street Detectives we will be learning about our local area, looking at aerial photographs of our streets and discussing the physical and human features of our local area. In History we will be learning about how toys have changed over the last 80 years.
In science this term we will be learning about materials, their properties and uses. We will be looking at the different way materials can be changed e.g. bending , twisting and stretching.
Keeping Safe and Healthy (This section will tell you what we are teaching children about lifestyle choices)
During this term we will be highlighting the importance of keeping safe when using the internet, both at school and at home. We will also be reminding children of the importance of being safe in our local area. As part of our relationship lessons, we will be following the Jigsaw topic ‘Being Me in My World’.
Dates for your Diary
Autumn Term: Monday 1st September 2025 – Friday 19th December 2025
Half Term: Monday 27th October 2025 – Friday 31st October 2025