Welcome to a new academic year in our school!

Welcome Back! 4.9.26

Welcome to a new academic year in our school!

Dear Parents, Carers and Members of our SAF Family,

A very warm welcome back to a new academic year at Sir Alexander Fleming Primary School and Nursery.

I hope that you and your families have enjoyed a wonderful summer filled with rest, laughter, special moments and perhaps a few exciting adventures along the way. We have loved listening to the children sharing their experiences and the memories they have made. We are incredibly proud of how well they have settled into their new classes and routines The children have returned with enthusiasm, positivity and an eagerness to learn.

We are delighted to welcome all of our new starters to school, including our Reception children who are beginning their exciting learning journey and the pupils joining us in other year groups. Starting a new school can bring a mixture of excitement and nerves, and we are committed to ensuring that every child feels safe, valued, and part of our school family from day one. Our staff will work closely with children and families to help everyone settle in, make new friendships, and quickly become familiar with our routines and expectations. We look forward to seeing each child shine, achieve, and flourish as they become part of our school community.

At Sir Alexander Fleming, we are committed to ensuring that every child feels safe, valued, supported and inspired to be the very best version of themselves. The strong relationships we share with our children, families, staff and wider community are at the heart of our success, and together we create an environment where everyone can flourish.

This year, we are proud to embrace our new motto: “Shine, Achieve, Flourish – The SAF Way!” These three simple but powerful words capture our vision for every member of our school community. We want our children to shine with confidence, achieve their full potential and flourish academically, socially and emotionally. By working together and supporting one another, we can ensure that every child has the opportunity to thrive.

Thank you for your continued support and partnership. It is a privilege to lead such a wonderful school community, and I am excited to see our corridors and classrooms filled once again with smiling faces, enthusiasm and a love of learning.

Here’s to a fantastic year ahead as we all continue to Shine, Achieve, Flourish – The SAF Way!

Very best wishes,

Mrs Tomlinson
Headteacher

Spellings

Spellings

A Parent’s Guide to Practising Spellings at Home

Why spelling practice matters…

In Key Stage 1 and 2, the focus is on developing accuracy as well as a range of strategies for spelling.

Although teachers will highlight spelling errors to children, it is important children recognise for themselves when they have made an error and know a range of strategies for correcting inaccuracies. By this stage, children will have a range of spelling strategies that they will have been taught to draw on. Children will use the strategy which best suits their learning style and works best for them.

Helping at Home

Parents can support children by practising any spelling patterns or spelling investigations which are sent home as part of home learning and also by helping children to read and spell the Y3/4 word lists (included in this document).

Children will practise these spellings throughout the week in spelling lessons and will be tested on a Friday using some of the words from each week or others with similar spelling patterns.

We will track your child’s progress in spelling through the statutory word lists and half-termly reviews.

Remember to make practising the words enjoyable and not a chore.

Click on the link below for your year group!

A parent guide and home spellings for Year 3

A parent guide and home spellings for Year 2

Computing Showcase

Last week, we held our first ever ‘Computing Showcase’ for Years 2, 3 and 4. Ran by a group of Year 5s, the children got to get hands on with a variety of computing equipment, including: VR headsets, Sphero Indi Robots, Intelino Smart Trains, Dashbots, Beebots, Rodocodo and Micro:bits. The aim was to expose the children to the amazing equipment we have in school and to encourage their love of computing! All of the children were extremely positive about the day and we will be sure to hold another one soon!

Comic Relief 2025 at SAF

We celebrated Comic Relief 2025 in school by having a ‘Hop-a-thon’ on the field! Each class had a session to see how many hops they could do.  We also were selling red noses and children wore their own clothes.  Overall we raised £462 for the amazing charity.

For more information about where the money goes, please see here: What Your Money Does | Comic Relief

Safer Internet Day 2025

We marked Safer Internet Day today with a variety of activities. The theme this year is: ‘Too good to be true? Protecting yourself and others from scams online‘. We gathered in the hall for an assembly led by our Digital Leaders. They ‘scammed’ children into thinking they were winning some tempting prizes, but actually there were some bad consequences! The message was that if things are too good to be true…they often are!

Later on, EYFS used songs and small world play to tell the stories about being safe. KS1 took part in a variety of different activities and KS2 took part in the BBC Live Lesson where we had to identify the signs of a scam.

We even got a shout out on the BBC news feed!

European Languages day

On Thursday 26th September, Sir Alexander Fleming celebrated the range of diversity throughout Europe by spending an afternoon learning about different countries in Europe. Each year group was assigned a different country and they did lots of research about the country and the culture which linked with the curriculum. Some year groups learnt about the location of the country, others tried the native food, one year group had a zoom call with a native Swedish speaker and others did art work based a famous artist from that country. All year groups learnt basic greetings in their chosen language. We then had a whole school assembly where each year group shared with the school what they have learnt.

It was a great day!