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/ English groups every morning to improve both their reading and writing. In these sessions, we will teach the necessary reading skills, so that they can accurately read books matched to their individual reading level. We will explore voice choice and re-read the texts 3 times to help build fluency and comprehension. Your child will bring home reading books to read to you. Please encourage your child to read and return these books at least 3 times a week. They will also bring home a book of their choice for you to read/ share with them.
In writing, we will be looking at the different sentence types: statements, questions and commands. We will also focus on using capital letters, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks. In the first half term, the children will write stories based on the traditional tale – The Three Billy Goats Gruff. After half – term, the children will be reading, following and then writing recipes linked to our Healthy Living topic. During both half – terms we will be looking at extending our sentences using the conjunctions and, but , because, when, if, or
Maths
In the first half term, the children will be revisiting and consolidating work on place value, working with numbers up to and beyond 100. They will represent numbers in various ways including part whole models and place value charts. The children will also be revisiting addition and subtraction to secure their understanding of adding/subtracting 1 digit and 2 digit numbers and learning how to make and count amounts of money, using coins and notes. It would be useful for your child to have some experience using coins in a real-life situation e.g. counting money in a piggy bank, counting money when out shopping.
After half term, the children will have a big focus on multiplication and division. In year 2 the children are expected to learn their 2, 3, 5 and 10 times tables. Throughout the term the children will be practising their times tables regularly. Please help your child to practise saying their tables and to answer quick fire questions about these tables. To help them practise their times tables, they can access Seesaw and join in with BBC super movers.
Topic
Our 2 topics this term are ‘Messy Mixtures’ and ‘Healthy living’. In the first half term, we will be learning all about drawing, colour mixing and applique. We will study the art work of Carl Warner. During the second half of the term the children will be learning what an animal needs to survive and how adults keep healthy. We will be learning about the need for a balanced diet, the importance of exercise and the different ways in which we should keep our bodies clean. We will be following healthy recipes and creating our own healthy smoothie. We will be finding out what happens to our bodies if we eat too much sugar.
Keeping Safe and Healthy (This section will tell you what we are teaching children about lifestyle choices)
We will be looking at ways to stay healthy, including healthy meals and exercise. The children will also be learning about the role of medicines in everyday life and staying safe around dangerous liquids.
Dates for your Diary
Spring Term: Monday 6th January 2025 – Friday 11th April 2025
Half Term: Monday 24th February 2025 – Friday 28th February 2025
