Garden Village
Primary Academy
Newsletter

Issue No. 4

27th September 2024

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Headteacher's Message

What a wonderful couple of weeks we have had at Garden Village Primary Academy! Every child is settled, growing in confidence with the daily routines, enjoying learning and making new friends. It is a pure delight to hear the children call their friends by their names, initiating imaginative games and showing the key character virtues of ‘caring’ and being ‘helpful’. The simple act of holding the doors open for their peers to walk, saying thank-you to each other as they do is lovely to hear. Furthermore, we have been incredibly sensible practising for our first fire-alarm test next week. Our attendance to date is 99.1%! Many thanks once again to our parents for your ongoing support.

The Book Bus

On Monday 16^th September, the Books Bus visited Garden Village packed full of exciting books written by our favourite authors. The bus parked in the Reception playground and every child enjoyed browsing, listening and, for many, purchasing a book of their own choice. It really was an exciting opportunity for our children to ignite their love and enjoyment of reading, but it was also their first external visitor to the school for whom our children showed impeccable manners and appreciation. With our Nursery children, an incredible £451 was spent on books, which allowed the school to choose £75 worth of new books for the school library. For further orders, the website is: The Bus Book | Discover your next story adventure – The Book Bus.

Drawing Club

Enthusiasm for drawing and writing, applying the phonemes that we have learnt during phonics is flourishing! Last week, the focus text was ‘The Three Little Pigs’. The challenge was to draw the Big Bad Wolf, the Pig's brick house, and we designed and built a new home for the wolf!

This week, linked to our Harvest Festival, the book of the week was ‘The Little Red Hen’.

Using the vocabulary 'unhelpful and collaborate', we drew the hen, invented a new 'odd' animal for the farm and even invented disgusting ingredients the hen could use to trick the unhelpful animals.

Little Wandle - Phonics and Reading

Phonics and reading have become part of our daily routine. We are progressing well learning our sounds and our blending skills are developing nicely. To find out more about how we teach your child and how you can support your child at home, please remember our first 'Phonic and Early Reading' workshop is next Wednesday 2nd October, 6:00pm-6:45pm.

Thank you parents for reading and writing in your child's diary. Please remember, our goal is for your child to read their school book at least three times per week!

Maths

In Maths, we have been busy matching, sorting and comparing sets of objects using the words 'more' and 'less'. We have used the vocabulary: find, match, same, different; sorting, set, same way, different way, rule, odd one out; more, fewer, same.

We have also been busy accessing numbers in the provision, counting sets of objects to match numbers.

The Reception Baseline

Miss Matthews has completed the Reception Baseline Assessment with your child. The Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) is a statutory assessment that is completed within your child's first six weeks of school. The RBA assesses early maths and literacy, communication and language.

For more information about the assessment click on this link: Reception baseline assessment: information for parents - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Computing

This week, Mrs Burke taught us our first 'computing' lesson. The children are really fortunate to have a class set of iPads which will be used to support learning across the curriculum. Mrs Burke taught us how to enter the passcode and then open the app. We had so much fun counting along with the Number Blocks characters: Numberblocks - BBC.

Harvest Assembly and Foodbank Donations

Today we made bread like the Little Red Hen. We kneaded the dough and watched it rise. Then, Miss Matthews put it into the oven to cook. Everyone was super excited about taking the bread roll home!

On Thursday, we had a wonderful Harvest assembly that was led by Bev, from Elim Church. Bev kindly took the nursery and Reception donations to the Tamworth Foodbank. Your generosity and kindness was so appreciated.

Macmillan Coffee Morning

Thank you again for your support for this charity event. We hope that you not only enjoyed the coffee and cake, but also the opportunity meet other parents in the school.