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Woodside took over the Thameside Theatre on Monday 27th March for the Woodside Shakespeare Festival. The children rose to the very really challenge of learning actual Shakespearian language and performing in front of an audience in a real theatre and they were most impressive. We started doing this several years ago as part of the national Shakespeare Schools Festival but we were only allowed to perform one play as a school. This is fine for a drama club but we wanted to make sure every child in our school had this amazing opportunity. Booking the theatre for our own festival means each class in year 5 can perform their own play with every child taking part. This year all the classes have chosen tragedies: Romeo and Juliet (5L), Macbeth (5R) and Hamlet (5W). Well done to children and staff for all their work preparing for this event and special thanks to Miss Leyland for organizing it.

We have won the coveted International School Award for the third time running. Mrs Rejman was presented with the award at the Houses of Parliament from a representative of the British Council in the presence of a number of MPs including Thurrock's Jackie Doyle-Price and representatives from other award winning schools from all over the country. Mrs Rejman has led a number of activities to get the award, including twinning with schools in other countries and especially the collaboration with those schools in writing, illustrating, translating and publishing our own international story book. Our curriculum includes the history and ecology of our own locality but also takes a global perspective; learning to speak Spanish and Mandarin, learning to play Indonesian Gamelan and Trinidadian Steel Pan and our International Award is a celebration of this.

Woodside is a standalone academy in its own trust but we work in mutual cooperation in a group of Thurrock primary schools: Abbotts Hall, Belmont, Giffards, Graham James, Kenningtons, Tudor Court, West Thurrock and Woodside known as "iPAG" for independent Primary Academy Group. We are all schools who were able to become single academy trusts because we were recognized as being successful rather than needing support and being taken into the trust of a neighbouring secondary school. Staff and leaders from iPAG schools have been working together for some time on staff training and sharing successful practice. We recently decided to involve our children with some IPAG inter-school competitions and other events. The first of these was a Times Tables "Battle" for year 4 children, using  the TT Rock Stars platform, starting on Monday 27th February and finishing on 10th March. This was good practice for year 4 before taking national times tables tests in the summer term. Woodside came 2nd in the competition overall and 4M was the highest scoring class.

Has your child got talent? There are currently spaces in FREE choirs and instrumental groups for Thurrock children. Many of these are held at Woodside so not far to go, but they are for any children so friends and brothers and sisters could come too.  Click on this link to find out more or book a place https://https://thurrockmusic.co.uk/ensembles.php

or call 01375 413680 (Mon-Fri 09:00-17:00) alternatively email      music.services@thurrock.gov.uk
 

 Children can wear any red clothes, red noses, face paint, or hair etc and join in a fun run and ride around the heath on Friday 17th March in exchange for a £1 donation to Comic Relief. We are not selling noses or any other Comic Relief merchandize this year.

Thank you to everyone who supported our Book Week this year. We had record sales at our book fair which means we will have more books for children to read in school and also for our weekly reading prizes. This year we had a visit from Natalie Newman who co-authored Lark the Shark with her son Henry and children were able to buy signed copies. M&M Productions brought us their poignant Dicken's classic, Oliver Twist and we had quite a few Dickensian characters when we dressed up for World Book Day. Our "Reading in an Unusual Place" photo competition proved that you can read absolutely anywhere.  Through the week staff shared their love of reading and of books with children who we hope will take this inspiration and keep reading and improving their skills.