We are looking forward to a brilliant after-school session today! There will be painting, sticking, rocket-making, chocolate-dipping and hot-dog eating a-plenty! Thank you to all our adult helpers who help these events run so smoothly.

Apologies if you were not able to book a place for your child. It did sell out pretty quickly following my sales pitch in Tuesday’s assembly! This was a trial run to gauge interest, but now we know the kind of uptake we will have, we can plan for additional adults and space.

There will be two more of these events before Christmas. Look out for the dates in forthcoming newsletters.

Next week is National Anti-Bullying Week with the theme of ‘Change Starts with Us’. By making small, simple changes we create a safe environment for everyone. Change can start with a simple conversation, by checking in or just by working together.

We have a zero tolerance approach to bullying at Greenfield, and our children are encouraged to tell an adult if they feel someone has done something to them ‘several times on purpose’. This creates the acronym STOP, which is a simple way for children to remember the difference between bullying or a one-off incident. Please reiterate the STOP message at home, and check with your child that there is an adult in school that they would feel happy to talk to should they feel like they are being bullied.

On Tuesday, the children are invited to come to school wearing odd socks to celebrate and raise awareness of Anti-Bullying Week. The range of socks we will no doubt see, will also provide us with a chance to celebrate all of our children’s individuality. Our teachers will be doing some short, focused Anti-Bullying activities throughout next week. Please ask your children what they have learnt. Thank you.

There were some wonderful creations in our Year 1 and 2 Design and Technology workshops yesterday! The children designed and made ‘Firework Vehicles’, thinking about the importance of the wheels turning freely and quickly around the axle. All of the models were tested on the hall floor, a small ramp and an extra large ramp to see how well they would travel, so that improvements could be made where necessary.

Thank you to all the adults who came in to help the children during the afternoon. It really does make a difference having all those extra pairs of hands, and the children really love having their ‘grown-ups’ in school.

Year 3 and 4 are designing and making Victorian shoe box theatres on Monday afternoon next week, and Year 5 and 6 will be wowing us with their Viking longship creations! We hope lots of you will be able to join us.

On 4 and 5 November, Hill Street will be closed due to road works.

Please plan an alternative route, allowing extra time for your journey, or consider walking to school on 5 November as we anticipate there will be a higher volume of traffic and minimal parking.

If your child is in Year 1 to 6, please be sure to put the dates of our Maths open sessions in your diaries and on your calendars. These are fantastic sessions where you get to find out so much about how Maths is taught at Greenfield.

For Reception parents, you are invited to some Phonics open sessions next half term. These sessions are a great insight into your children’s first steps towards becoming a reader.

The dates of our forthcoming open sessions are:

Reception Phonics Open Session

You will have received a letter informing you which session to attend. All these sessions start at 9.15 am.

Tuesday 12 November—Trigraphs

Wednesday 13 November—Digraphs

Thursday 14 November—Phonemes

Design & Technology Open Sessions

All D&T open sessions start at 1.30 –3 pm.

Thursday 7 November—Year 1 & Year 2

Monday 11 November—Year 3 & Year 4 (children need a shoebox—please send in week before)

Wednesday 13 November—Year 5 & Year 6

Maths Open Session

Our Maths open sessions all start at 9.15 am.

Tuesday 19 November—Year 1

Wednesday 20 November—Year 2

Tuesday 26 November—Year 3

Wednesday 27 November—Year 4

Tuesday 3 December—Year 5

Wednesday 4 December—Year 6

Wow! That eight weeks has flown by! And what a lot we have squeezed in! To round off a really successful half term, our football team played their first match against The Ridge Primary School. They drew 1-1, showed some great team spirit and worked hard on a pretty big pitch. Mr Sutton and Miss Batham spoke highly of them all, so we’d like to say well done to our squad of Raees, Charlie, Millie, Zephan, Owen, Henry, Frank, Oscar, James, Joel, Hugo and Arty. Roll on the next game on 12th November against St James’ Primary School.

All of the staff at Greenfield would like to thank you for your on-going support, it really does mean a lot. And we wish all our children and families a happy and relaxing half term.

We look forward to seeing you all when we return on Tuesday 5th November.

Thank you for your support with our book fair this week. I’m really pleased to tell you that we took £652.81 and that means we get £391.69 commission to spend on books.

If you have any books in good condition that you no longer want, we would be very grateful to receive them. In addition, recommendations of great books for children are always welcome. Please email our library lead, Mrs Kelly (skelly@greenfield.dudley.sch.uk) with any suggestions.

We still need to recruit some adult reading buddies for our Year 3 and 4 children. If anyone can help, even for just an hour a week, then please get in touch. Our reading buddies make a real difference, and are highly valued by our staff team. Thank you.

The back page of today’s newsletter is all about a special Good Afternoon Club session that is happening on Friday 8th November. Club numbers on Fridays tend to be lower than other days, so we are trying to boost these numbers by organising some exciting, themed events.

There will be some really lovely activities on offer, organised by our great GMGAC team. There are 45 places available via ParentMail (regular Friday children will automatically get a place) with a flat charge of £5 and it is hoped that the children will all be able to stay until 6pm. Please look out for the email about this.

When I ask children what their favourite subject at school is they often say Science! And why wouldn’t they? Our world is amazing, and there is so much to learn about it.

This week has been Science Week at Greenfield, on the theme of ‘Journeys’. Mrs Hawker, our Science Leader, kicked the week off with a brilliant assembly where the children were asked to think about scientific journeys.

There were some great suggestions: journeys in space, journeys around the body, journeys through nature, journeys of gases and liquids. In Monday’s assembly the children saw an experiment which involved coloured water ‘travelling’ from one glass to another “as if by magic”. And then, later in the week, the children witnessed a chemical reaction. In the words of Bethan in Year 2 “There’s going to be a big explosion!” Mrs Hawker combined vinegar and baking soda to show the hydrogen ions in the vinegar reacting with the sodium and bicarbonate ions in the baking soda. The chemistry of this was explained brilliantly by William in Year 5. Impressive stuff! This is an easy one to recreate at home and even better if you add some food colouring!

Today we have had a special Science Celebration Assembly where some of the excellent work done this week was recognised. Each teacher chose a ‘Scientist of the Week’.

They are Marshall and Maxi (Reception), James, Edie, Allie and Charles (Key Stage 1), Ella, Will and Sam (Year 3 and 4) and Evan, Hannah and Jimi (Year 5 and 6). Well done!

Mrs Hawker has also sung the praises of our Science Ambassadors who have helped her and all of our children during their Science work this week. Eleanor in Year 1 was so exited about taking part in the special assemblies – she is a definite Scientist in the making!

We are looking forward to our first Parents’ Evenings of the year next week. The teachers will be in the hall and your children’s work will be out in their classrooms for you to look at. Appointments are 5 minutes only – please let your child’s teacher know if you feel you need a longer appointment to discuss something in more depth. This can then be arranged for the week after half term.

While you are in school, please take the time to have a good look at the corridor and hall display boards which have been changed this week. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our staff and pupils for all of the hard work that goes into producing such high-quality display work – a brilliant team effort!

And don’t forget we will have our Book Fair open during both Parent’s Evenings too. If we sell over £500 of books, we get a whopping 60% commission to spend on books for school. Please do what you can to support the Book Fair. Our library is brilliantly maintained by Mrs Kelly and her team of librarians, but could always do with an injection of new and popular titles. Thank you.