Latest News

We are hosting a pop up pool for swimming lessons for Year 3, 4 and 5 next term (the water is too deep for younger children and Y6 have already had lessons this year). It will also be available for sessions after school and in the holidays. This will enable us to give children an intensive course of lessons every day over three weeks and help us reach our target for every child to be able to swim before they leave Woodside. Along with Monster Phonics, this is another effective learning strategy we have adopted after being successfully trialed in one of our partner schools in Thurrock's Independent Primary Academy Group (iPAG). If you are interested in using the pool over Easter, at weekends or after school you can contact the company providing it to us at the details below.

Katie & Richard Partridge
Business Development Manager
Prosports Solutions Ltd

Email: k.partridge@prosports-solutions.co.uk

Website: www.prosports-solutions.co.uk

Mobile: 07982008449

On Wednesday 27th March Woodside year 5 took over the Thameside Theatre to present their own versions of three Shakespeare plays: Hamlet by 5R, Macbeth by 5M and Romeo and Juliet by 5L.

This was our 10th Shakespeare Festival at Thameside Theatre. We started as part of the national Shakespeare Schools Festival, when our plays were part of an evening including Gable Hall and Palmers College drama groups. When we expanded to three class in a year we decided to hire the theatre and have our own festival just for Woodside so that every year 5 class, and every child in those classes, had the experience of performing Shakespeare on the stage in a real theatre. It is a huge challenge, as although we only perform shortened versions of the plays, children still have to grapple with real Shakespearean language as spoken 400 years ago. We know they get a huge amount from this; growing in confidence and even put some of the bard’s language into their written work.

Well done to all our runners in the Essex Cross Country Competition. We had one our best showings ever, taking 2nd and 3rd places.

Thank you for your tremendous support for The Big Walk & Wheel. This was the 15th year of the event and we have been doing it from the beginning when it was The Big Pedal; winning the Sustrans Bronze, Silver and Gold and all the Modeshift Stars awards for our work encouraging sustainable travel to school. The Big Walk & Wheel in more inclusive, encouraging use of wheel chairs and scooters and of course walking as well as cycling to school. These kinds of active travel are not only good for children and adults but they do not add to air pollution, traffic congestion and most importantly - Climate Change. The Big Walk and Wheel is also a competition and we came first in Thurrock, first in Essex and 81st in the United Kingdom. We very much appreciate your support and this and ask you to carry on Walking & Wheeling next term and make use of our walking bus.

Well done to all the our competitors in the Thurrock Performance Poetry Competition. You all did amazingly well and gave the judges a very difficult task. Congratulations to the winning year 5/6 team and to our Y2 finalist. The standard was extremely high and the confidence and clarity of speech of all the competitors was outstanding. Many thanks to the staff who gave up their time to prepare our entries and to support the children in the competition.

Thank you for your generous support for our Comic Relief appeal we raised a total of £904.81 including £438.81 in donations and £466 from the school council's sales of Red Noses. The children also enjoyed dressing in red for the the day and running and cycling their miles around the heath as part of the challenge.

In keeping with the latest government advice,  we are continuing our policy of not allowing children to bring mobile phones to school and parents are advised not to give their children phones until they are older, and then to monitor their use of them use of them very closely. This is because mobile phones do not keep children safe but put them in danger, they are also a major disruption to learning. The is also the view of UNESCO the United Nations organization for education, and this approach is being adopted in other countries. Government guidance allows schools to confiscate mobile phones for a period time and to search children's bags for them if thought necessary. As many smart watches have phone capabilities and they are extremely expensive items we do not want children to wear these to school either.

We like to give you as parents plenty of notice of days of when children can dress up to come to school. Given that you have already bought uniform for your children and we are an ECO school, we also like to keep these simple and reusable to avoid needing to buy something special.

Our next dressing up day is planned for Thursday 24th May, in our International Week. Each class will be taking a country as a theme and we are inviting children to dress up  to  represent that country or wear the traditional costume of any country they have or can borrow.

Here are the previous dressing up days this year:

Friday 15th March: Comic Relief

Comic Relief has again been chosen by our School Council as one of their charities this year. Children can wear red noses, funny hair and other red items, but not football shirts, and we will be collecting for Comic Relief.

All dressing up days are optional and just for those who enjoy them. W

we are equally happy for children to wear their normal uniform but they are not "non-uniform days".  We are not asking for any donations for any of these days except Comic Relief.

Thursday 18th January:  AA Milne's Birthday and Winnie-the-Pooh Day

Children can dress up as a character from the Winnie-the-Pooh stories and enjoy a fun lunch include Winnie-the-Pooh's Honey Cake.  We will be showing some Winnie-the-Pooh films in the Dining Hall.

Tuesday 13th February:  Chinese New Year - Year of the Dragon

Children can wear just one thing red, the Chinese lucky colour or even all red or red hair - not football shirts though. We will be serving a Chinese lunch complete with Fortune Cookies, and chopsticks for those who can handle them but we will still have knives and forks and good old British baked potatoes.  We will have some   exciting Chinese videos in the Dining Hall.

Thursday 7th March: World Book Day 

As we are having a live in-school performance of Jungle Book by M&M Productions this year, the dressing-up theme is any character from Rudolph Kipling's Jungle Book or any animal from a book, or just any book character.  Themed lunch and showing the film of The Jungle Book in the Dining Hall.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and very important to many members of our school community. The exact dates of Ramadan change every year. This is because Islam uses a calendar based on the cycles of the Moon. We have Ramadan in our calendar as starting Monday 11th March but this needs to be confirmed by an actual sighting of the moon. 

During the month of Ramadan, Muslims fast; not eating or drinking during the hours of daylight. Children are not expected to fast until they reach puberty. 

Ramadan remembers the month the Qur'an (the Muslim holy book) was first revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. The actual night that the Qur'an was revealed is a night known as Lailut ul-Qadr ('The Night of Power').

The end of Ramadan is marked by a big celebration called 'Eid ul-Fitr' (the Festival of the Breaking of the Fast). Muslims are not only celebrating the end of fasting, but thanking Allah for the strength he gave them throughout the previous month. We wish our Muslin families strength if they are fasting and a very happy Eid celebration at the finish.

You can find more information here:  Ramadan (BBC Bite Size)

We apologize for the lack of hot lunches today. This is because our kitchen extractor fan is not working, and without this we cannot use any of our ovens or hobs (the gas is automatically disabled if the fan fails and operating our steam oven without it working would set off the fire alarm). We are working at getting this repaired as soon as possible, but in the meantime children will have a choice of sandwiches with the usual fruit and salad selection and a range of cold desserts or crackers with cheese or butter. We hope the fault will be repaired  before Thursday but, in any case, we already have Shere Khan's Chocolate Cake in the freezer waiting for its tiger striped icing for World Book Day!