Dear Parents and Carers,

We are delighted to share that the children have made an excellent start back to their first full week of school this term. Classrooms are already full of energy, enthusiasm, and plenty of hard work! It has been a joy to see how quickly pupils have settled into their routines, meeting the expectations of their adults and the interest they are showing in their learning.

One of the highlights of this first week has been seeing the children reconnect with their friends and classmates, and begin forming new ones. Playtimes have been full of energy, games, and lots of dodging rain showers! We know how crucial friendships are in helping children feel happy and secure at school, and we are proud of the kindness and respect our pupils show one another – keep it up children.

A very special welcome goes to the new children and families who have joined our school community this September. We are so pleased to have you with us and look forward to getting to know you better over the coming weeks. It can be a nervous time joining a new school, especially for some of our children that have come from other countries and we are again very proud of the welcoming community of children and adults at Christ Church.

Our staff team have been introducing children to their termly topics, setting high expectations for the year ahead, and most importantly, sparking curiosity and excitement for learning. We will soon be sharing this with you in our class newsletters and in our welcome meetings. Please look at the calendar and the dates in the newsletter to see when your year group meeting is.

Our Collective Worship focus this week has been to continue to talk to the children about the values that they believe in and what they think is most important in our school. We have been working in classes to find a consensus on our shared core values. As a C of E school, we know that we all share a common purpose, no matter what our faith and that is to ensure that every child will flourish now and into the future. Our soon to be chosen shared values will help to further underpin the many ways in which we encourage all children to continue to ‘live out’ the values in their daily lives.

Pray for our School Community : A few parents pray together for school every Wednesday morning, meeting by the "Woodland Gates", Royal Park, after drop-off. This finishes by about 09.10am - please do join us if you woud like to. 

As always at the beginning of a new school year, there is a great deal of information to both request of parents and to share with you. Please look out for our various communications today and in the coming weeks and of course please contact the school office should you have any questions or concerns. Please ensure you are only contacting the school using the school email address. Thank you.

We are unendingly grateful to you for the many ways in which you support us throughout the year and without this, we would not be able to provide the rich offer of experiences, trips, visits and resources that do so much to make the education that the children receive, fun, inspirational and broad. We are therefore asking respectfully for a voluntary contribution from our families to fund these additional activities this year and will write to you with the details. Teachers are ready to start booking visits and trips to add that extra magic to our learning.

I wish you all a wonderful weekend ahead and look forward to another successful week to come.

Warmest wishes

Mark Oldfield

Headteacher

Term dates 2025-26:

• Term 1 Tuesday 2nd September 2025 to Friday 24th October 2025 (Inset days Tues 2nd and Weds 3rd Sept, children not in school)
• Term 2 Monday 3rd November 2025 to Friday 19th December 2025
• Term 3 Monday 5th January 2026 to Friday 13th February 2026 (Inset day Mon 5th Jan children not in school) 
• Term 4 Monday 23rd February 2026 to Thursday 2nd April 2026
• Term 5 Monday 20th April 2026 to Friday 22nd May 2026 (Academy day Fri 22nd May children not in school) 
• Term 6 Monday 1st June 2026 to Wednesday 22nd July 2026 (Inset days Mon 20th, Tues 21st and Academy day Weds 22nd July, children not in school) 

What a wonderful first week it's been in Reception! We started the week in our smaller groups and loved exploring our new classrooms. We played in the outside space where we enjoyed using the different toys and resources, like space hoppers and sand.

We have been working on stopping and listening to our adults to understand that this is to keep us safe. We are beginning to recognise that the ‘jingle’ (tambourine) means it’s time to stop, cross our arms and wait for an instruction.

We have really enjoyed listening to what is in people’s treasure boxes and have been learning to takes turns when speaking.

Well done everyone on completing your first week in Reception – you should all be very proud of yourselves!

We look forward to sharing some photographs with you in our upcoming newsletters.

What a week!

Year 1 have loved their first full week back exploring all the new areas of the classrooms as well as getting stuck into their learning. We have loved reading our new book ‘Only One You’ and have created some amazing fish pictures based on the illustrations. Maths has seen us thinking about sorting and counting objects.

Well done, Year 1. We are so excited to see what the rest of the year has in store.

What a fantastic first week back we’ve had! It’s been so lovely getting to know our new classes and hearing all about the children’s summer adventures. They’ve settled in brilliantly and we’re really proud of how confidently they’ve returned to school life.

This week, we introduced our new book, The Squirrels Who Squabbled. The children were full of ideas as they made predictions about the story using the front cover and blurb. We even went on a pine cone hunt to get into the spirit of the story! Back in the classroom, we explored key vocabulary from the text.

In maths, we’ve been working with numbers to 100, using a variety of manipulatives such as base ten, bead strings, and Numicon to represent numbers in different ways. The children have also been placing these numbers into place value charts to deepen their understanding of tens and ones. They showed great reasoning and enjoyed the hands-on activities.

We are really excited about the term ahead and all the learning to come. Thank you for your support and have a lovely weekend!

Year 3 have had a fantastic first week back! We are so impressed with how quickly the children have settled back into school routines and embraced their learning with enthusiasm.

In Literacy, we’ve been diving into the world of poetry, with a particular focus on onomatopoeia. The children wrote their own poems to describe a storm, using exciting sound words to bring their writing to life. Their creativity and brilliant ideas really wowed us!

We also launched our new History topic: Ancient Egypt. To kick things off, we explored how the Ancient Egyptians communicated using hieroglyphs. The children had lots of fun writing their own names in hieroglyphs!

Later in the week, we explored the question: "Why was the River Nile so important to the Ancient Egyptians?" To help us understand this, we created our own miniature River Niles and discussed how the river supported farming, provided food and water, and acted as a key route for travel. We will be flooding the rivers weekly to observe whether our ‘crops’ grow.

We’re looking forward to exploring this topic further and to an exciting term ahead!

Year 4 have had a brilliant first week back and have already shown how ready they are for the challenges of their new year group. They’ve impressed us with their independence, adaptability, and the way they’ve thrown themselves into Year 4 life with smiles, positivity, and wonderful manners. It’s been such a joy to see them settling in so well and making such a strong start together.

In Science, the children have turned into animal experts, busy sorting and classifying creatures by their different characteristics. From feathers to fur and scales to shells, their curiosity has been shining through as they compared, questioned, and shared their own knowledge. The excitement in the room has been infectious, and it’s clear we have some budding scientists in our midst!

Literacy has taken us on an adventure to the Amazon rainforest through our class book The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry. After creating story maps, the children jumped into ‘Reader’s Theatre,’ performing different parts of the book with flair and creativity. Over in P.E., things have been just as lively, with Year 4 dribbling up and down the playground, sharpening their skills, and even learning how to outsmart a defender.

What an energetic and exciting start to Year 4—it feels like this is going to be a fantastic year ahead!

In Art this term we are looking at different ways to draw the human figure. We started by using ovals to create the idea of movement and then moved on to gesture drawings. These are sketches whereby the artist uses quick movements, many lines and keeps them loose. The idea behind gesture drawing is not to create a finished piece but more to give the artist a basis on which to work upon. Year 5 worked with their talk partner and posed whilst their partner did a gesture drawing. They then swapped over.

Take a look at what they managed – great work Year 5!

Year 6 have made a fantastic start to Term 1, they have settled quickly back into school routines and are already showing brilliant enthusiasm for their learning.

In maths, we have been exploring place value and working confidently with numbers up to one million. Year 6 have enjoyed the challenge of reading, writing and comparing such large numbers, and we have been especially impressed with the strategies they are developing to tackle tricky problems. Their focus and determination have set a really positive tone for the term ahead.

In literacy, the class has been busy writing their own imaginative chapters, inspired by the title “The Malfunctioning Typewriter.” These are now completed and work to be proud of. Year 6 have loved sharing their chapters aloud, some chapters were so impressive that the class erupted into spontaneous applause.

Wednesday’s PE lesson gave us the chance to get active with as we began our unit in tag rugby. We began by learning how to hold the rugby ball correctly and practised moving with control and confidence. We are all looking forward to building on these skills in future lessons.

Overall, Year 6 should be very proud of the effort and enthusiasm they have shown so far. It has been a fun, productive week, and we can’t wait to see what the rest of the term brings!