Dear Parents and Carers,

I would firstly like to thank you for the positive feedback that I have received following my letter last Friday. It is always difficult to share the unfortunate economic realities of our school when they are so challenging, but we are heartened by the response so far with offers of volunteer support, recognition of the current landscape and a healthy conversation about meeting the future with optimism.  For those who have offered we will be in contact next week to arrange DBS checks and then having you in to support.

Voluntary Contributions - We have politely appealed again this week to our parent and carer community for voluntary contributions and we very much hope that you will all be able to give to this. We realise that the end of September deadline will have been too soon for some, especially with September expenses and certainly, if like my own household, the ‘wait for pay-day’ to clear the bills and see what is left! The money from voluntary contributions is all spent on school trips, workshops and arts & craft materials.

Parent Teacher Association - Following a hugely positive and productive PTA AGM last night, where we discussed future plans for the children, our community and the school premises, it was also clear that we must always communicate the many ways in which the funds that you raise from the many wonderful PTA events are spent. A fantastic example of a larger project is the ever-popular pirate ship. With a little time, patience and a huge amount of hard work and generosity, you supported the PTA to raise £20,000 to bring this to our school – an exceptional achievement. Without this, our school would not be able to fund such expenditure. Thank you. Our sincere thanks to the PTA for their work together and we hope that many others will lend their time and support in any way you can throughout the year.

Sporting Stars - Our Y5/6 rugby team took part in their first round of league matches last night, playing five exciting games. The children showed fantastic determination and teamwork, winning four of their matches and only narrowly losing one. With each game they grew faster, stronger and more confident on the pitch, showing real grit and a great sporting spirit. We are so proud of the way they represented our school and we’re already looking forward to the next round of matches next week.

Our Collective Worship focus this week focused on democracy. We looked at the British values of Democracy, Rule of Law, Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect and Tolerance and talked about how these core values underpin our society. We compared these to our own school values and we fed-back to the children on the work that they have done together to agree on the values that they feel are most important at Christ Church. We will now combine these with the work of the staff team, Governors and the guidance of the Diocese to collectively decide on our renewed vision and core values, and will share these with you in the coming weeks.

Health & Safety – This week the teaching team undertook Party Leader Training to ensure that we are fully aware and up to date with the necessary Risk Management when planning, leading and reviewing school trips and visits. With a focus on the risk assessing, we feel assured that our safeguarding responsibilities to your children are robust and carefully considered. Our H & S team including Mr Ford, Mrs Jordan, Mark Oldfield and our H & S governor Charlotte Withers have completed the accredited IOSH training to ensure that we keep everyone safe and well at school.

Notices - Please do not use the staff only car park to drop off or pick up at any time of day. We are aware that several vehicles are doing so particularly when using the Shine wrap around care.

Large Rucksacks – Unfortunately we need to ask you to replace your children’s large rucksacks with smaller book bags, draw-string PE bags or an inexpensive small alternative please. We have very limited space for coat pegs and cloakrooms and we are constantly aware that bags and coats are falling into walkways and causing trip hazards as they do not fit on the pegs. I would also ask that children do not bring toys into school, these are provided for them.

New Reception Places 2026 - You may have seen our advertising banners and social media posts, encouraging new parents to visit us as they decide on a school for their children, starting in Reception in September 2026. We welcomed several families on Friday to our school talk and tour and it was lovely to be able to tell the story of our children, school and community. Please help us to spread the word in any way you can in the coming weeks – thank you.

I wish you all a great weekend ahead and look forward to another busy week of learning 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) 

We officially welcomed ‘Autumn’ into our learning this week looking at what happens during this colourful and changeable season. This included some fantastic books to enhance our knowledge and extend our vocabulary, communication and listening skills. Autumn by Ailie Busby, The Windy Day by Anna Milbourne and Tattybogle by Sandra Horn.  

We are continuing to work on classroom routines and building relationships with the children and adults in our classes. We are getting used to coming to school in our PE kit and having our lesson in the hall – enjoying the freedom of the space. We also enjoyed exploring the dressing up clothes and taking on the role of doctors, nurses, police officers and being princesses!    

We read the book ‘Leaf Man’ By Lois Ehlert and used all the autumn leaves and conkers we found in our community to make an assortment of leaf characters using our imaginations and help from pages in the story.  To enhance our fine motor skills we loved wrapping wool around the pine cones and stretching the rubber bands onto the ridges on the munchkins! (See photos for details).

In phonics this week we have continued to learn 4 new phonemes g, o, c, k and are working really hard with our oral blending. We have enjoyed sorting everyday objects by their initial phoneme and using large paper and pens to write the grapheme using the rhymes.

In maths we have started to compare size, mass and capacity by ordering objects like pumpkins!

This week we have been using our colour wheel knowledge to explore the work of Mondrian – recreating some of his masterpieces only using the primary colours. The children had a great time using rulers and black pens to create their grids for painting.

In RE, we discussed what the bible teaches about God and thought about the story of the Lost Son. The children did a wonderful job of retelling the story using lego and our small world objects or drawing their favourite parts of the story.

We have also been counting one more and one less in our maths lessons using number cards to help. This week we have been using the vocabulary more, fewer and the same to compare groups of objects.

This week in Science, our young explorers have been comparing animals, looking closely at the fascinating world of reptiles and amphibians. We discussed their unique features and what they need to survive, and the children wowed us with how much they already knew!

In Literacy, we stepped into the shoes (or paws!) of the characters in our story. The children thought carefully about what the squirrels might be feeling and created imaginative thought bubbles to capture their ideas.

In Maths, we wrapped up our Place Value unit by practising counting in 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s. The children worked hard and showed great confidence in spotting patterns as they counted.

This term in Science, Year 3 have been learning all about skeletons. We began our topic by exploring the human skeleton, identifying and naming key bones such as the skull, spine, ribs and femur.

Once we had a good understanding of the human skeleton, we used our knowledge to explore the skeletons of different animals. We looked at a variety of creatures, including insects, spiders, slugs and snails, and grouped them based on whether they have a backbone (vertebrates) or no backbone (invertebrates).

We also discovered that some animals have an exoskeleton—a hard outer shell that protects their body, like in insects and some sea creatures.

The children have really enjoyed this fascinating topic and have asked some brilliant scientific questions!

This week in Literacy, Year 4 have been hard at work publishing their rainforest poems. The children took great pride in decorating their final versions with beautiful watercolour rainforest designs, which made their writing look as vibrant as the habitats they described. We also explored the skill of debating, thinking carefully about the arguments for and against deforestation. To practise our new debating skills, we tried out a topic very close to home – school uniform! The children impressed us with their ability to listen, respond and share their ideas clearly.

In Maths, we have wrapped up our unit on place value – and you could say the children really added up to success! We are so proud of the progress they have made and the confidence they now show. Our new focus is on addition and subtraction, and the children are already showing strong problem-solving skills as we begin this next step.

Our creative learning has been in full flow too. In Music, we completed our rainforest-inspired unit by composing fantastic pieces using Chrome Music Lab – the rhythms and patterns really hit the right note. In RE, we have been reflecting on inspirational people and what it means to be a hero. We linked this with Christian beliefs about Jesus, learning some important new vocabulary along the way: gospel, salvation and incarnation. It has been a busy, thoughtful and creative week in Year 4!

Year 5 have had an action-packed week of learning and discovery!

In Science, both classes have been thinking about the size and order of the planets in our solar system. We were fascinated to see just how huge some of the planets are compared to Earth, and we enjoyed putting them in the correct order as they orbit the Sun.

In Maths, we’ve been stretching our brains with the column method to subtract 5-digit numbers, carefully working through the challenges of exchanging. It’s been a week filled with big numbers, giant planets, and lots of determination — a real adventure in both space and maths!

Year 6 have had a very busy and exciting week of learning!

In Science, we explored how classification keys work and thought carefully about how to sort living things. We focused particularly on different types of trees, learning to distinguish between deciduous, evergreen, flowering and non-flowering varieties. To put this into practice, we headed outdoors for a walk around the school grounds to see which trees we could identify. Using our new knowledge, we spotted an impressive range, including oak, holly, hawthorn, birch, elder, rowan, ash, horse chestnut, lime, beech, ginkgo, maple and sycamore.

In Art, we recapped our skills in mixing paints and reminded ourselves that primary and secondary colours can be combined to create tertiary colours. We also explored the colour wheel, finding out about complementary and harmonious colours. The challenge was to put our mixing skills into action by recreating Double Tent by the Swiss artist Paul Klee.

Geography lessons saw us presenting our research into the impacts of climate change. We worked in groups to share our knowledge and create posters of information.

Finally, in Literacy we turned our focus to publishing. We carefully edited and refined our writing to produce finished pieces that are now ready for our brand-new display. We are looking forward to celebrating our hard work when the display goes up for everyone to see!

2025-2026 House Captains 

A huge well done to all the Year 6 children who put themselves forward to be house captains this year. After delivering fantastic speeches, all the children from Years 1–6 voted, and we selected eight fantastic captains—two for each of the four houses. They have already begun their roles and shown great dedication and responsibility.

Today, five of the house captains welcomed existing and potential new families for the 2026–2027 intake tours and proudly spoke about what they love about Christ Church Primary.

All of the house captains will be involved in supporting future tours, and we will be working together to plan some exciting house events this year.

We would like to say a huge thank you to all the parents, carers, and grandparents who so kindly purchased items from the Amazon wish list last term. The toys and resources have now been introduced at lunchtime for Reception and Key Stage 1 children, who are thoroughly enjoying playing with them. It has been wonderful to see the children coming together and different year groups mixing in a safe, controlled, and imaginative way.

The next step in developing playtimes will be to add resources for the Key Stage 2 children. Once nominated, the pupil council will take this on as their first mission.

Thank you to everyone who took part in our Fun Run! The weather held on nicely and we witnessed some amazing running and fancy dress, not least from Mr Oldfield himself!

Well done to everyone for their performance and sponsorships.We raised just under £1,500 which will go towards improvements for the school's outdoor area (more on this coming soon!).

The next PTA event is the Christmas Fair on Sunday the 23rd November - please save the date!

2025/2026 PTA events:
Xmas fair - Sunday 23rd November

Disco - Friday 30th January
Curry & quiz - Friday 20th March
Clifton Lego Show - Saturday 16th May
Campfest - 10-12th July
Fun Run 2026 edition - Saturday 26th September