Newsletters

16 December 2022

Dear Parents and Carers,

At the end of this Autumn term I would like to wish you all the very best over the holiday period. I hope you enjoy spending time as a family celebrating together.

The end of this first term gives me the opportunity to reflect on a new beginning for myself and for the school. It has been pleasure to become such an integral part of the Wooden Hill community and as I have said before I thank you for the warm welcome I have received. This term has been one of knowledge and information gathering getting to know the school’s strengths and the areas to continue moving forward. Some improvements have already taken place with the systematic embedding of our Read Write Inc phonics programme through out Early Years and KS1 and the reintroduction of clubs and activities after school. It has been a delight to see children competing in football, Cross Country, Cricket and Rugby this term and it was wonderful to hear the choir sing to their families whilst some of our Pen Pal club met their Pen Pals from Bickerton House care home at our Christmas afternoon tea. I also can’t wait for you to see the treehouse properly – if you have booked a visit to Santa you don’t have long to wait now!

So much has been happening, and the children have thoroughly enjoyed a range of trips this term - with residential to Grittleton House, trips to Reading Museum, Oxford Science Centre, The South Hill Park Panto to name a few.

For me the highlight of the run up to Christmas is always the EYFS Nativity show and in the penultimate week we were given an absolute treat as the children confidently sang their hearts out and delivered great one liners to an enthralled audience over two fantastic shows.

Over the course of this year I plan to introduce more drop in sessions for parents to come in to school and engage in some learning opportunities together, it is likely the first of these will be in the second half of the Spring term. There are going to more trips and visitors and many fun and fundraising events to enable us to provide exciting opportunities for the children.

Earlier this term I surveyed you about school lunches and approximately 67% of you voted in favour of keeping lunches as they are for now. I will offer the survey again at the end of the summer term ahead of the new academic year to ensure that we are keeping up with parental preference in this area.

As a school we are currently recruiting for a couple of members of support staff. If you are interested in working as a teaching assistant or have friends or relatives who can add value to our children’s educational experience please take a look on the Bracknell Forest jobs website or the greensheets education advertising website for more details.

Finally, I wanted to say a few goodbyes as both Mrs Turner and Mrs Spacey will be leaving us at the end of this term. I would like to thank them both for their support to many children at Wooden Hill over the years they have both worked here. Miss Rennie is also leaving us for pastures new, we wish her all the best.

I wish you all a restful holiday and look forward to seeing you in the new year.

Kind regards

Mr Garner 

Poppy Appeal 2022

We are very pleased to share that we collected £720.34 for the Poppy Appeal this year. Thank you to everyone who contributed!

Parking 

We have received several complaints already from our neighbours. Please park considerately, do not block driveways, park on yellow lines or park on the grass verges. To maintain the air quality, it is recommended that engines are switched off while waiting. Please do not stop on the yellow lines outside the school or turnaround at the school gates.

Creative Club

This half term, some of the children in Years 3 and 4 have been taking part in Creative Club, after school on Fridays. They enjoyed many different activities, including creating and painting clay models, decorating small boxes, creating Christmas decorations and painting window suncatchers.

Nursery Roundup

In Nursery, our theme has been The Jolly Postman. 

We read the story The Jolly Postman, by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. The Postman visits lots of characters on his journey and we have been enjoying sharing all the traditional stories that feature the characters.

We have read Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and many more. The children have enjoyed playing in our Post Office and writing and delivering their own post.

This year, our Christmas performance was Wriggly Nativity. For many of the Nursery children, being in the school hall has been a new experience. We have been extremely proud of how quickly they learned the songs and how wonderfully they performed. 

In the run up to Christmas, the children have been busy doing lots of arts and crafts in preparation for our fundraiser. They also thought about their special people and hung decorations for them on our Christmas tree.

Year 1 Roundup

This term the children have been working very hard with their final transition into Year 1. All children are now taking part in an hour long English and Maths lesson every day and they have been brilliant! We have witnessed some amazing writing and maths skills.  

In English we have been enjoying the story ‘The Train Ride’. We have been on our own imaginary trains and even tasted strawberries and chocolate to help with our writing. We are beginning to write sentences using capital letters, finger spaces, full stops and adjectives. All the children have worked so well and we are very proud. 

In maths we have completed an addition and subtraction topic as well as looking at shape. In our addition and subtraction topic we have continued to look at numbers to 10 and securing our numbers and ability to subitize. We have looked at our fact families within numbers to 10 using a range of practical resources. We have been learning lots of new words to describe adding such as altogether, plus and addition and subtract such as minus, difference between, subtraction. In our mental maths sessions, we have explored odd and even numbers to 10 and fact families.  

Our afternoons have still consisted of some choosing time however we are now taking part in a range of foundation subjects. We have learnt about Christians and their beliefs and the true meaning of Christmas in our RE lessons. In Geography we have discovered our local area and made our own maps. In ICT with the help of our iPads, we have explored digital art and made our own pictures. Every day we take part in daily handwriting, it has been so impressive to see the huge improvement in their writing in such a short space of time.  

We have been very impressed with how well the children have worked so far this year. We hope they have a wonderful Christmas break and we look forward to seeing them all again in the new year.  

Merry Christmas from Mrs Saraff, Mrs Steel and Miss Summerfield. 

Year 2 Roundup

Year two have loved learning about our topic this term- The Great Fire of London! The children have immersed themselves in this topic from building their own Tudor houses to burning them down (well watching from a distance!). We have been lucky enough to have the local fire service come into school to talk to the children about fire safety and discuss how the fire service has changed since 1666. The children have also baked their own bread and used this experience as a basis to write their own instructions. In English lessons the children have also written a diary based on the story of ‘Toby and The Great Fire of London’ using information they have gathered over the course of this topic. 

We would like to say a big thank you to Mr Nunn for giving the children an amazing experience.

Year 3 Roundup

The children have been very busy getting into the Christmas swing recently, singing Christmas songs, designing cards and making peppermint creams in readiness for the Christmas Fayre!

This comes at the end of a jam-packed half term where, amongst other things, the children have learned about skeletons in Science, examining the differences between vertebrate and invertebrates, as well as identifying and naming the main bones in the human body. Sticking with the theme of bodies, the children have also learned what makes up a healthy balanced diet and used this knowledge to design and make (and eat!) a healthy sandwich.

The Geography focus for Year 3 this term has been the UK. The children have familiarised themselves with the terms ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ and developed their map-reading and atlas skills to understand the UKs varied physical and human geographical features including locating the different counties that make up England. 

In Maths, the children have been working very hard on developing their understanding of multiplication and division, and using a variety of strategies to help build on and strengthen their knowledge of times tables – of course, there’s always room for more practice!

In English, the children have been enjoying reading the Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers and are currently planning their own silly stories based on the book. The children were also thrilled to have a chat recently with former cbeebies presenter and author Cerrie Burnell, who joined them via zoom to discuss being an author and read an extract of her latest book ‘Unicorn Seekers: Map of Lost Unicorns’. It was an amazing experience for the children to be able to hear first-hand from an established author about why she writes, where she gets her inspiration from have the opportunity to get lots of fantastic advice on how to become writers themselves.

All in a all, a very exciting and busy half term. The children have worked extremely hard and have thoroughly earned their holidays!

We wish you all a Very Merry Christmas from Year 3 and look forward to seeing you all in the New Year!

Year 4 Roundup

What an exciting term we’ve had in Year 4. We have learned so much, recapping old learning and finding out new information too!

In Geography, we learned all about climate and weather. We especially enjoyed looking at some of the animals which might live in each climate zone. 

In Science, we expanded our knowledge of electricity, looking at types of energy and how we use switches to switch appliances on and off. We did several experiments such as changing the brightness of a bulb, comparing insulators and conductors and predicting whether a circuit was complete or incomplete. 

During the last couple of weeks of the half term, we were tasked with designing a water and windproof layer of clothing for an explorer (see images of Linnet Class’ results).

Year 5 Roundup

It has been a busy half-term for Year Five. We have had a visit from the fire service and visited Science Oxford  as well as completing a persuasive piece of writing, practising adding, subtracting and comparing fractions and finding out about different properties of materials and reactions.

When the fire service visited, we were shown around the fire engine and told about all the equipment that it contains before listening to a fire safety talk in the classroom. 

Our visit to Science Oxford was a busy, science- filled day. We watched a planetarium show and found out all about the moon’s phases along with other interesting facts, completed an investigation that involved heating materials to predict what they were and had time to explore the variety of exhibits.

Year 6 Roundup 

We have had a very busy and enjoyable end of term in Year 6. The children have been working hard during their lessons and have taken part in a STEM project over the past couple of weeks, solving real world problems. The children learned during this project that we don’t always get things right first time and it is ok to review, adapt and make changes to our initial ideas. We have finished off our Victorian topic with a wonderful Victorian school room experience. The children were able to dress up in traditional clothes, sample a range of typical lessons – including ‘drill’. The children learned how strict schooling was during this time and what would happen to you if you tried to write with your left hand.

Earlier this week, we also took part in a Christingle service at St. Michaels Church, during which the children told the story of Christmas, sang hymns and lit their own Christingles.

We hope that you all have a restful and enjoyable break and look forward to seeing you in the new year.

~ Dates for the Diary ~