Beech Grove Primary School
Spring Term 2026
Head Teacher’s Message
Happy New Year everyone and welcome to Spring term 2026. 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 be 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
(The EYFS Curriculum is made up of 7 areas of development)
1. English
Our main focus in Nursery is developing good Speaking and Listening Skills and fostering Early Reading and Writing Skills.
SPEAKING AND LISTENING – The children will engage in a wide range of play-based activities – supported by adults to encourage conversation skills and extend the children’s vocabulary. We will develop good listening skills during carpet time with a range of stories, rhymes, songs and listening games. We sing nursery rhymes every day before home time.
READING – The very first step for learning to read is to develop a love of books. So we will share super stories every day. We share a story during whole class carpet time. We also read books in small groups and to individual children in the story corner throughout the day. We often read the same books over and over so that the children become familiar with them. The children will start having favourite stories and ask for them. They may begin to recite the stories by themselves. We will also encourage the children to look at books by themselves so that they become familiar with handling books – holding them the right way up and turning the pages one at a time going left to right – these are all early reading skills that the children need to learn. We will visit our school library once a week to share books together.
WRITING – Early writing begins with MARK MAKING. The children will eventually learn how to hold a pencil properly and to make a variety of pre-writing marks – lines, circles, crosses and zig zags . Before this happens, the children need to build up strength in their hand and finger muscles. Our continuous provision includes lots of activities designed to develop fine motor skills. For example, digging in sand, pouring water from jugs, putting pegs in peg boards, threading beads, scribbling with a variety of writing materials (chalks, crayons, felt pens, paint brushes), peeling satsumas and bananas, etc. As children become ready, we will help them to start writing their first initial and then their name. This will be their first introduction to writing letter shapes.
2. Maths
In the Nursery we practise counting skills as part of our everyday routines. We count how many children have turned 4 every time we have a birthday on our birthday wall. We count how many aprons are in the water area, so we know that 4 children can play there. We have daily Maths group times in small groups, This term we will be focussing on rote counting to five and 1:1 counting (saying one number for each item) We will be singing number rhymes such as “Five little ducks” “Five little speckled frogs” etc.
3. Topic
Our topic for Autumn 1 is ‘Why do leaves go crispy?’ – We will look at the signs of Autumn. The children will be encouraged to observe their environment and notice the changes happening around them. They will handle and explore natural objects such as leaves, conkers, fir cones. We will use these natural treasures for counting, making patterns and for arts and crafts. We will go on an Autumn walk in the local area to look for signs of Autumn. We will be baking autumn crumble and we will learn to make hedgehog bread.
For Autumn 2 our topic is “How many colours in the rainbow?” In our first topic we will be learning about colours and the Hindu festival of Diwali. We will be sorting objects into different colours and reading lots of stories about colours. We will identify different colours in our nursery setting and in the outdoor area. We will learn about how and why people celebrate Christmas. We will learn that Christmas is one of many CELEBRATIONS. We also learn about other CELEBRATIONS across the school year including DIWALI and CHINESE NEW YEAR.
4. Safeguarding (What we are teaching children to help them keep safe)
The children will be learning about rules and routines in the classroom and the playground. We will focus on our FIVE GOLDEN RULES and ensure children understand what each rule means. We will talk about why we have rules to keep everybody safe and happy. We will also show children the correct way to use our climbing equipment in the outdoor area. We will learn about the importance of washing our hands to keep germs away and talk about different ways to stay healthy and safe.
Dates for your Diary
Spring Term: Monday 5th January 2026 to Friday 20th February 2026
Half Term: Monday 23rd February 2026 to Friday 27th February 2026