Autumn Term Learning Journey – Your Mind Matters

Reception: What a fantastic first half term it’s been in Reception! The children have settled beautifully into ‘big school’, made lots of new friends and thrown themselves into every bit of their learning. They’ve shown great perseverance completing the first block of Phase 2 phonics and used their reasoning to explore maths through sorting, patterns and beginning to understand quantity. We’ve loved watching them use their imagining to bring stories to life in literacy and to develop their understanding of the world by learning about special celebrations like Diwali. Phew — what a busy, exciting start to the year! The children have been absolute superstars and truly deserve a lovely half-term break!

Year 1: What a wonderful first term we’ve had in Year One! In our PSHE lessons, we have been exploring our Learning Journey theme, Your Mind Matters. The children have been learning about the importance of being a good friend, maintaining a healthy mind, and recognising trusted adults they can turn to for support. It has been fantastic to see pupils making links between these lessons and their everyday experiences. They have been great at using their empathy tool and showing kindness towards one another, contributing to a positive and nurturing classroom environment throughout the half term.

Year 2 have had a fantastic start to the year exploring their learning journey topic ‘Your Mind Matters’. In Literacy they have used their perseverance and imagining tools to immerse themselves in the texts ‘Here we are’ and ‘Flooded’. They have been making links and asking questions in Science to investigate the properties of different materials, including a trip to Dulwich Woods to find natural materials! Well done for being so amazing Year 2!

Year 3 have rounded off our half term Learning Journey with a brilliant trip to the Centre for Wildlife Gardening, where we learnt how to use the outdoors to look after our minds. We made great use of our asking questions and collaboration tools, as we explored this wonderful urban garden. We have also used our planning and imagining tools to create our own incredible versions of Sparky which we proudly completed, edited and published. We have all settled so well into our new classes and are excited for the rest of the year!

Year 4 have had a wonderful half-term! Some highlights have been: developing our understanding of and attachment to our local area through our Geography work; in-depth study of the human digestive system; writing our own ‘legend’ stories; and mastering column addition and subtraction. We have used our Whole Dulwich Wood Learning Toolkit, especially our asking questions and reasoning tools to make amazing progress in our learning.

Year 5 This half term we have been busy settling into Y5 and using our Whole Dulwich Wood Learning Toolkit . As part of our learning journey ‘Your Mind Matters’ we have thought about our local area and read books with characters living in South London. We have used our empathy tool to understand how different characters and historical figures have felt whilst they’ve navigated different challenges. We have also worn yellow for the Young Minds Mental Health Day and worn red to Show Racism the Red Card!

Year 6 have had a fabulous half term! We have adjusted really well to the pressures and expectations of the final year of primary school. We have been using our Whole Dulwich Wood Learning Toolkit, especially our perseverance, managing distractions and reasoning tools. We have worked so hard to master new learning, such as long division, and to bring together all our writing skills inspired by our beatuiful literacy text, ‘Leila and the Blue Fox’. We ended our half term with a brilliant history topic day exploring the history of black music.

PE Update

Cross Country

37 Dulwich Wood pupils took part in the Southwark Primary Schools Cross Country event in Burgess Park on Friday 17^th October. Across all the events, we were victorious in every race! In the Year 4/5 Boys’ race, Arlo (Year 4) triumphed, before later taking part in the Year 6 Boy’s race and winning that too! In the Year 4/5 Girls’ Race, Alice (Year 5) came out on top. The Year 6 Girls’ field was completely dominated by Iman, who won her three lap race by roughly half a lap! All the children were really supportive of their friends and the children from the other schools as they were running. Mr Greenwood and Mr Sean could not be prouder of the entire Running Club, who will continue to pound the pavements every Wednesday morning through the winter! Many thanks to the parents who continue to support the club and who came to the event.

House Points Total this week!

55

29

42

Coming Up

Reminders:

Home Learning: please check Tapestry for this fortnight’s Home Learning project and the weekly spellings.

Communication: From Y1 – Y6 Tapestry is used only as a home learning platform, it is not checked on a daily basis. If you have any information to communicate with Class Teachers please email the office and the message will be relayed. Please do not email teachers directly.

Year Group WhatsApp Groups: If you are not signed up, please email the office and they will let the Class Reps know. If you have any concerns about your child’s learning, or queries about the curriculum, this is not the forum! Please email the office and your query will be addressed.

Lost Property: Please make sure that you put your child’s name in all their uniform and we can reunite your child with their lost item. Any unclaimed items at the end of this half-term will be given to ‘The Friends’ to sell at their second-hand uniform sale.

Second-hand Uniform: ‘The Friends’ have a large stock of good second-hand uniform. No more donations are needed thank you! They will be holding another second-hand uniform sale during the Autumn term. Date TBC.

Flu Vaccination: You have the opportunity for your child to be vaccinated at school on Thu 13th Nov (you have already received an email to give your consent). If you would prefer to attend one of Southwark’s Flu Clinics please see the dates below.

Southwark Flu Clinics Download

Absence

If your child is unable to attend school for any reason, please inform us on the first day of absence and each subsequent day until they return. You can report your child’s absence in two ways:

By phone: 020 8670 5470

By email: office@dulwichwood.com

When reporting an absence, please tell us: