Beech Grove Primary School
Summer 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 this term, Year 5 will be writing a persuasive letter to The Head Teacher to convince him that a school visit to Lightwater Valley would be educational. Finally, we will be looking at a range of poetry styles such as limericks, haikus and Kennings. After half term, we will be learning about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and writing a biography about her life. We will then be designing a travel leaflet around visiting Mexico.
Maths
The first half of Summer term will have a large focus on geometry. For the first few weeks will spend time looking at angles so that the children become confident in identifying and measuring angles and working out missing in angles. We will also learn the features of regular and irregular polygons and also how to calculate angles in those shapes. After angles, we will move onto position and directions where the children will learn about translation, symmetry and reflection of shapes. In Summer 2, we will move onto decimals where children will become confident in multiplying/dividing decimals by 10/100/1000. After, the children will be converting between different units of measure and comparing imperial and metric units. Finally, the children will learn all about volume and how to estimate capacity.
Science/Topic
In our first half term, our topic is ‘Scream Machine’ where we will look at key events from roller-coaster history, read theme park maps and design our own rollercoaster. In science, we will focus on forces and how they make amusement rides work. Also, we will be completing a DT project in the first half term. We will be designing a moving toy with cam mechanism for a 5-7-year-old to play with. We will also be learning about how steel has played an important part in our local history.
After half term, our topic is ‘Hola Mexico’. We will develop the children’s knowledge of what life is like in Mexico and take a look at the Maya Civilisation. Children will focus on learning the vast geography of Mexico and the differences of this to England. We will also conduct a Science investigation to investigate how the light at different times of day affect shadows. This half term, we will be completing an art project inspired by Mexican Artist Frida Kahlo’s self portraits and a D&T project where we will be designing and cooking the Mexican dish Fajitas.
Keeping Safe and Healthy (This section will tell you what we are teaching children about lifestyle choices)
During the term, we will continue to do Jigsaw as part of our PSHE teaching. In the first half term, we will be looking into the children’s relationships with themselves, family and friends. After half term, we will move onto a topic called ‘Changing Me’ where we will learn about body image and puberty in boys and girls.
Dates for your Diary
Keep your eyes peeled for our Young Readers’ Project events, where the children will be receiving a free book!
Summer Term: Monday 28th April 2025 – Monday 21st July 2025
Half Term: Monday 26th May 2025 – Friday 30th May 2025
May Day: Monday 5th May 2025
Young Readers’ Project: Friday 9th May 2025. Children will be visiting the Town Hall to meet some authors and receive their second free book! (within school hours – no action needed)
Y5 Fun Fayre: Wednesday 21st May 2025. We will be putting on a fun fayre event to raise money for our visit to Lightwater Valley. Please come along after school on the UKS2 playground after school with some spare change. There will be stalls, games, hot dogs and of course, Splat the Teacher!
Lightwater Valley: Friday 4th July 2025 (if money is raised).