Beech Grove Primary School
Spring 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
The children will be working hard in their new Read, Write, Inc. groups every morning to improve their reading and writing. The children will bring home a reading book at their level to read to a grown up. Please encourage your child to read and return their books 3 times a week, so they have the chance of winning a home reader prize in assembly. I am sure you will be really impressed with your child’s reading ability and progress.
The children will enjoy listening to and reading a range of different stories this half term based around the theme of Moon Zoom, with our first story being ‘Beegu’ by Alexis Deacon and then ‘The Smeds and the Smoos’ by Julia Donaldson. We will be re-telling the stories and beginning to independently write a sequence of short sentences that flow and make sense using our non-negotiables of capital letters, full stops and finger spaces.
After half term, in our topic Paws, Claws and Whiskers, we will be reading the popular story ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ by Judith Kerr and will continue to focus and build upon writing a sequence of short sentences that flow and make sense, to re-tell the story using learnt key vocabulary. We will also be researching a variety of animals to create an animal fact file.
Maths
In maths this term we will be revisiting and consolidating numbers to 10 and begin to move onto learning numbers to 20. This number work will include solving addition and subtraction using part whole models and bar modelling methods and have lots of practise counting forwards and backwards to 20 using a number line. In Spring 2, we will be increasing your child’s knowledge of number by counting to 50. We will also be focussing on measure using mass and volume. Your child will continue to complete ‘Rapid Recall’ three times a week, to help them become more fluent with these key number skills. Please encourage your child to finish these off at home, to help them reach the next stage.
Topic
Our topics this term will be ‘Moon Zoom’ and ‘Paws, Claws and Whiskers’. In the first half term we will be learning about the Moon Landing in 1969. We will also be learning about a famous important individual called ‘Neil Armstrong’ and what his job as an astronaut involved.
After half term we will be learning about the difference between a wild and domestic animals. We will also be learning about the five distinctive groups of animals; mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds and fish, while making links to an animals diet; omnivore, herbivore or carnivore.
Safeguarding (This section will tell you what we are teaching children about lifestyle choices)
During this term we will be highlighting the importance of feeling safe and happy in a school environment and also why being unique is special. We will also be reminding children of the importance of being safe in our local area and people who help us. We will be talking about dressing appropriately for the weather (please provide warm coats, gloves, hats as the weather begins to cool, as we will be going outdoors to look at seasonal change).
Dates for your Diary
Spring Term: Monday 6th January 2025 – Friday 11th April 2025
Half Term: Monday 24th February 2025 – Friday 28th February 2025