Beech Grove Primary School
Summer Term 2026
Head Teacher Message
Happy sun shine days everyone and welcome to summer term 2026. Let’s hope the wet weather is behind us and that we can start to enjoy the Great British Summer. (He says with his fingers crossed!)
On behalf of the staff, I would like to wish everyone a happy return after the Easter break and hope that summer term 2026 is a good one for our whole school community.
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 in September 2025. Their resilience, adaptability and hardworking attitudes to learning remain outstanding. It is such a pleasure to see the children care so much and take pride in all of their work and the school environment.
They are certainly living up to the schools “NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR QUALITIES” that we have of:
- Respect
- Tolerance
- Kindness
Along with our 5 Golden Rules. The “Next Door Neighbour Qualities” is something that is really important to our school and encourages everyone to be a good citizen within our school and wider community. To see the children demonstrating all of those essential ‘Next Door Neighbour Qualities’ on a daily basis is brilliant to see and brightens up my day.
The children’s corridor manners and the way they conduct themselves around school is wonderful.
I also love it that so many children are eager and keen to show me their work in their books. This sense of family and belonging warms my heart. I couldn’t be any prouder of our Beech Grove Family.
This term we hope to pick up where we left off before Easter with our children achieving good progress within their core subject areas of Reading, Writing and Maths, due to the tremendous hard-working attitude of themselves and the dedicated staff team here at school.
This term we will also be hoping for some lovely summer sunshine so that children can make full use of our Secret Garden in lesson time and maybe plant some wonderful summer flowers for us all to enjoy. Especially when it comes to our summer attendance reward ice-cream and ice lolly parties!!
Our teachers have lots of interesting activities and trips 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.
AS ALWAYS Please, please, please x10000 keep encouraging your child to read at home. Reading is the key to unlocking the world!
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 stress this enough. A massive WELL DONE to all the children who achieved 95% and above attendance for the Spring Term. The children absolutely love it when they know they are coming to “Mr Dixon’s attendance party” for goodies, prizes and dancing etc because of their good attendance levels. Please do all that you can to ensure your child is part of the Summer Term attendance party’s celebrations. 95% and above attendance for the full term will get you that golden ticket to the party.
This term its ice cream treats and ice lollies in the secret garden. Please help your child achieve this reward. Not forgetting also, the BIG attendance prize where we have scooters (all with helmets to go with them), seasonal family hampers, amazon vouchers and lots more to give away in our attendance prize draw.
Here’s to a really positive Summer term!
John Dixon
Our work for this term
English
In English this term, Year 5 will be writing a persuasive letter to Middlesbrough council to convince them to save our iconic Transporter Bridge. After that, 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 how to read maps using examples from theme parks. We will also be loking at the history of Middlesbough, focusing on the impact our steel industry had on the rest of the world. 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. 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, which links nicely to our same experiment in the winter and how it compares to the summer. 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 a Mexican cuisine.
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
Summer Term: Monday 20th April 2026 to Tuesday 21st July 2026
Half Term: Monday 25th May 2026 to Friday 29th May 2026
May Day: Monday 4th May 2026
Keep your eyes peeled for our Young Readers’ Project events, where the children will be receiving a free book!