

The Buzz
Spring Term - 18th January 2024

Message From the Head of School
What a week we have had at HISN! Thank you to Naya in 1D for inviting Uncle Mo in to lead an assembly and do a team building activity with 1D. This week we have been focussing on the principle of ‘Aspiration’. This links closely to our Lifting Limits initiative which encourages children to dream big and work hard to achieve what they want to achieve.
Sir Mo Farah really inspired our children and encouraged them to listen to their teachers and work hard so they can achieve their dreams. He spoke about how it felt to be Knighted by the queen, told us the breakfast he eats to prepare for a big race and was endearingly honest about his biggest failure which inspired him to achieve his biggest success which was winning gold medals at the London Olympics. Each of his children are now the proud owner of a Gold Olympic Medal.
As always, the children at HISN made us feel incredibly proud; they engaged really well, spoke with confidence and behaved impeccably. I feel this is another example of why our school is truly outstanding due to the opportunities we are able to provide for our children with the support of such an amazing school community.
The weather has now turned seasonally cold so please ensure the children have appropriate coats, hats and gloves in school as the playground can be very cold. Please ensure it's all named as it makes it easier to reunite items.
Claire Cook
Head of School
Sir Mo Farah visit
⏰Attendance
w/c 08.01.2024
1Y and 2MC had the best attendance last week with 100%
1Y and 2J each class had 1 late last week
🌟Certificate of Excellence
Last week certificates were given out for Independence
AM Nursery Frank
PM Nursery Lydia
RC Lyra
RF Ayan
RK Theo
RP Eva
1B Reuben
1C Adam
1D James
1Y Kamran
2C Sebi
2H Lucas
2J Taylan
2MC Musa
👋 Makaton Sign of the Week
🟨 Nursery
This week we have enjoyed listening to and retelling the story 'We're going to find a monster'. It is a lovely story about Eddie and Charlie who go on an adventure across the world to find a monster. At the end of the story we discover the monster is actually their big brother asleep! We have been enjoying creating our own monsters using a variety of media. Some of us have painted a monster, some of us have used playdough and some of us have drawn a monster or used collage materials to create one. We have also been busy drawing pictures of our family and having a good try at writing our names. We have been enjoying practising our pencil grip and learning to control the pencil whilst making marks.
Time to talk- Nursery
We all know how important talking at home is for exposing children to a wide range of vocabulary and ideas. This helps them with their reading and to become future writers. Each week we will share an idea with you for 'talk homework' with your child.
We have been thinking about going on adventures this week as we have been reading the story 'We're going to find a monster'. At home talk about an adventure you have been on together. This could be a walk to the park, an adventure in the woods or a walk to the shops. What did you see on your adventure? Try to include some positional language in your conversation.
🟥 Reception
Reception have had another brilliant week of learning! Our story of the week has been 'We're Going to Find a Monster.' We have been discussing what we can see on the front cover and predicting what we think the story will be about. We enjoyed creating story maps to order and retell the story to our teachers and friends.
In Phonics, we have continued to recap all of the sounds we have learnt so far, learning 3 new sounds 'j,w and z.' We have used all of these sounds to read and build words and write them down. We have also started handwriting in Reception this week, our sounds for this week are c, a and o and we have been practising writing these letters and sitting them on the line.
In Maths we have been looking at ordering numbers from 1-5. We have also been looking at recognising that as the numbers go up from 1-5, we are adding one more each time.
Hampton Infant School has been really lucky this week and we had a very exciting visitor, Mo Farah. The children enjoyed listening to his stories and we all did the mo-bot!
Time to talk - Reception
We all know how important talking at home is for exposing children to a wide range of vocabulary and ideas. This helps them with their reading and to become future writers. Each week we will share an idea with you for 'talk homework' with your child.
We have been thinking about going on adventures this week as we have been reading the story 'We're going to find a monster'. At home talk about an adventure you have been on together. This could be a walk to the park, an adventure in the woods or a walk to the shops. What did you see on your adventure? Try to include some positional language in your conversation.
🟦 Year 1
Year 1 continue to base their writing on the book ‘Katie in London’, focusing on the landmarks visited by the characters and using this to write our own recount and plan and write our own postcards from the perspective of one of the characters.
In Maths, we have been looking at numbers to 20, working particularly on our understanding of teen numbers and how many tens and ones are in each. We have also been counting and finding one more and one less than a given number, using diennes and number lines to help us.
In Science, we have been continuing with our investigation of materials and their many properties, with this week’s investigation involving a very egg-citing experiment with eggs. We have been finding out which material is the most protective when an egg is dropped from a given height, ensuring the test was fair by keeping all other variables constant. The children had great fun and nobody cracked under the pressure!
This term’s PE topics are dance and target games. During dance lessons, we have been using weather as our theme to explore pathways in dance. We have been using changes in our speed and direction to make our dances more interesting, and have been counting in beats of eight to keep in time to the music. In target games, we have been practising our throwing stance and keeping our eyes on the target, and using our opposite hand to point at the target before timing carefully the release of our throw.
Computing, we have been looking at how we can control a robot using the beebots and programming simple algorithms to manoeuvre them around the classroom.
Art, we have been looking at colour, focusing on warm and cold colours and identifying primary and secondary colours. We have also been learning about the artist, Alma Thomas, and how she used colour in her own artwork before trying our hand at recreating our own versions.
History this week, we have been continuing with our travel and transport topic. We have been focusing on trains, looking at how trains developed over time whilst comparing trains of the past to those of today.
🟩 Year 2
In year 2 this week we have continued our topic of sky riders by thinking about who the Wright brothers were and what they did to create the first successful flight with an engine. We learnt about Orville and Wilbur's struggles and how resilient they were to keep on going, making improvements to their inventions every day. We role-played being one of the brothers and then wrote a letter to our Dad detailing what we have been working on and what it was like in Kitty Hawk.
Maths - we have continued to have a focus on money, using coins and notes to make different amounts. We are all becoming more confident recognising different coins and notes used in England and are building our confidence in using these coins to make different amounts. Please continue to role play at home using money and allow children to use real money in real life scenarios to deepen their understanding.
In outdoor PE we have demonstrated our resilience by continuing our lessons through the 'cold snap' We are focusing on 'target games' this half term and this week have learnt how to successfully throw over arm to a partner and to a target at a range of distances. In indoor PE we are focusing on dance throughout the term.
We have loved starting our new topic of 'robot algorithms' in computing. We thought about how and when we use instructions and how important it is for a set of instructions to be in the correct order. We reminded ourselves of how to use bee-bots and how to input instructions before creating a sequence of commands to give to the bee bot.
Spotlight - R.E.
At Hampton Infant School and Nursery, we foster a whole-school ethos of tolerance, acceptance and understanding of all cultures and religions. Religious Education plays a crucial role in this. RE at HISN offers children opportunities to engage with religion through exploration, practical experience and thought-provoking questions, so that they may develop their own ideas and insights. RE equips children with a wide range of transferable skills to help nurture an empathetic consideration for all, as well as encouraging them to develop their own ideas and beliefs.
We follow the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames Agreed Syllabus for RE. The syllabus recognises the diversity of beliefs and cultures within the borough as well as those who have no particular faith. In light of this, we ensure good coverage of the major six religions and their traditions, as well as other beliefs such as Humanism.
RE in Early Years
Young children are naturally curious about the world and people around them, and so this is a vital time to begin to introduce important aspects of RE learning. In the Early Years, RE is not taught as a discrete subject, however social, moral, spiritual and cultural teaching and learning is woven through all subjects and topics, and assessed within the Early Learning Goals.
Children in the Early Years are supported to understand and respect the differences between them and their peers - including in terms of communities, families, cultures and beliefs. As with all areas of our Early Years curriculum, this is taught using a cross-curricular approach throughout the year, both through adult-led activities and through continuous provision.
Our youngest children thoroughly enjoy learning about and sharing their experiences with their peers. At HISN we encourage our families to contribute to our RE learning journey via Tapestry. In the last year we have had wonderful accounts of christenings, weddings, Easter, Christmas, Diwali and Eid celebrations.
RE in Key Stage 1
During this Key Stage our children explore Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism as well as the non-religious belief system of Humanism.
Throughout both the RE and wider school curriculum we embed the time and attention for subject specific skills as we recognise their importance of gaining depth within an individual subject and to our pupils in our school curriculum as a whole. In RE, examples of the subject specific skills that we promote include enquiry, discussion, identifying similarities across beliefs and religions, co-operating, listening and responding with respect. All children in Key Stage 1 are encouraged to use the knowledge and skills that they have acquired to formulate their own responses orally and in the form of their own written work at various points.
During Key Stage 1 children consider what makes the world a wonderful place; they explore important texts and how they are used; they find out about places of worship, and investigate festivals, rituals and traditions.
The children at Hampton Infant School enjoy learning about religions and why people choose, or choose not to follow a religion. Through their RE learning, the children are able to make links between their own lives and those of others in their community and in the wider world, developing an understanding of other people’s cultures and ways of life. As such, RE is invaluable in our wonderfully diverse world.
Tangley Park Children and Family Centre Hampton
For families that have children under 5 years
Some of the Highlights across the borough include:
- Parenting
- Way2work information within some Stay and Play sessions on specific dates
- Paediatric First Aid
- Baby Massage
- Family Information advisor in some Stay and Play sessions and an online advice session around the New Child care entitlements and options that are coming into effect April 2024
- Speech and Language assistant in Stay and Plays on certain dates
- Stay and Play
- Messy Play
- Introduction to Solids
- Toilet training
Pupil Premium Grant Funding 2023-24
Dear Parent / Carer
Lots of families are unaware that their child may be entitled to PPG funding, and eligibility for PPG gives your child access to free places in school clubs, free places in holiday camps, supermarket vouchers in holiday periods and lots more.
Pupils receiving, or whose parents are receiving, one or more of the following benefits can apply:
- Universal Credit (provided you have an annual net earned income of no more than £7,400, as assessed by earnings from up to three of your most recent assessment periods)
- Income Support
- Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance
- Income-related Employment and Support Allowance
- Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
- The guaranteed element of State Pension Credit
- Child Tax Credit (provided you are not also entitled to Working Tax Credit and have an annual gross income of no more than £16,190)
- Working Tax Credit run-on - paid for 4 weeks after you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit
If you think you may be eligible please complete the form (link below) to enable the school to run the check.
The well being and safety of our children is everyone's responsibility. If you have concerns about a child please contact SPA on 547 5008 or out of hours on 0208 744 2442.
Messages from the Office
Click on above tab to view HISN's virtual school tour
Contact details
Email: office.hisn@hpp.school
Website: hpp.school
Location: Hampton Infant School and Nursery, Ripley Road, Hampton, UK
Phone: 0208 979 1815