Autumn Term Newsletter #4
25th September 2026
Autumn Term Newsletter #4
25th September 2026
Dear Parents and Carers,
Thank you to all of you who attended the 'Meet the Teacher' event after school on Wednesday. The connection between home and school is essential to successful learning and it is great when so many of you take time to engage with all that we do. Wednesday also saw the first of our new weekly singing assemblies for all children and the beginning of our school choir club at lunchtime. It is great to put music at the heart of the school. Thank you to the Friends of Lanchester who have funded this excellent enrichment opportunity for everyone. It was great to see parents of our SEN pupils attending the workshop led by Mr Sanderson. There is a wealth of support available to SEN families and hopefully this session has helped parents to understand what we do in school but also where help and advice can be found.
Values: This week, our value has been kindness and the words of Roald Dahl - 'If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.' Our Values Champions were recognised in assembly for the warmth and goodwill their kindness has spread through school. Next week, we focus on creativity: 'You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.' - Maya Angelou.
Votes for Schools: 59% of children answered 'yes' to 'Do school dinners need to change?' However, there was a lack of consensus about what they might look like in the future. With so many different preferences, how can you cater for everyone? Next week we consider the question: 'Should e-scooters be allowed on roads?'
Rock Steady: Are offering free trials for children who want to explore the idea of playing an instrument in a band. If your child would like to take up this opportunity, please email the school office (office@lanchester.herts.sch.uk) for the attention of Mrs O'Kelly.
Saturday promises to be a sunny one with cooler temperatures - a perfect day to be outside in one of the many local parks and woods. As the rain looks set to return next week, it might be a good chance to be out and about. However you choose to spend the weekend, have a great time.
Best wishes,
Mr. Matt Morey - Headteacher
Thu 1st Oct - National Poetry Day
Children will immerse themselves in a range of poetic styles.
Wed 7th Oct - Parent Workshop: Teaching of Writing, 8.45-9.30am
Parents are invited to join sessions in the classrooms before hearing from Mrs Ansell in the hall.
Tue 20th & Thu 22nd Oct - Parents' Evenings
Further details to be released nearer the time.
Mon 26th - Fri 30th Oct - Half Term
School is closed
Mon 2nd Nov - Back to School
Autumn 2 begins - doors open as usual at 8.45am
Attendance this week is an improved 95.8%. Excellent attendance is vital for successful learning. Our curriculum is sequenced and builds knowledge cumulatively, so any absence can hinder their learning journey. Be sure to get your child into school every day. Another strong performance from Mumbai who have taken the top spot yet again this week with an excellent 99.5%.
Class Attendance Summary:
1. Mumbai 99.5%
2. Beijing 97.9%
3. Cusco 96.9%
4. Kingston 96.6%
5. New York 96.6%
6. Rome 94.8%
7. London 94.6%
8. Rio 94.6%
9. Nairobi 93.7%
10. Oslo 92.3%
This week has been full of children making excellent choices and working on our school values. The children listed below have been chosen for their outstanding efforts! They were ready to learn, respectful of the environment and their peers and they were resilient and worked hard throughout. Well done, everyone!
Year R:
London - Timon
Year 1:
Rome - Leah
Year 2:
Beijing - Thea
Year 3/4:
Mumbai - Hugo
Nairobi - Nare
Oslo - Evelyn
Year 5:
Cusco - Amelia
Rio - Olivia
Year 6:
Kingston - Sulaiman
New York - Skye
Children’s attitude to learning has been recognised through the collection of dojo points, which are then totalled as house points across the school. Every child continues to show their commitment to being Ready, Respectful and Resilient, earning points for their house. Each half term the points are reset and a new competition begins. Well done to Carver who retain the top spot this week.
Here’s how the points stand:
1st: Carver with 2282 points (+782 points)
2nd: Curie with 2163 points (+700 points)
3rd: Alhazen with 2127 points (+697 points)
4th: Sharman with 2078 points (+700 points)
Let’s keep up the great work and continue to support each other as we aim for the top!
Class News
We have been very busy in reception this week. In literacy we have been reading the story of The Three Little Pigs. We have discussed the materials used to build the houses and why some were not suitable. The children had a go at building houses of their own to see if they would withstand being blown down. In maths we have been comparing length, height and mass where the children became human scales to demonstrate their understanding of heavy and light.
Barney Bear has been having lots of wonderful adventures with Year 1! Each week, our Values Champion gets to take Barney home to share in their adventures, recording their special moments in his adventure book. On Tuesday, they bring Barney and his book back to school for Show and Tell.
This is a lovely opportunity for the children to develop their communication, confidence, early writing and listening skills, while sharing experiences from home and celebrating our school values. We love hearing all about Barney’s adventures and can’t wait to see where he goes next!
This week, Year 2 traveled back to 1605 to learn all about Guy Fawkes and his secret plot to blow up Parliament and King James I! The children enjoyed learning about the reasons behind Guy Fawkes' decision and were able to write in the role of Guy Fawkes to explain his thoughts at the time.
This week in Geography, Year 3/4 have been discovering how rivers shape the land! The children explored the three key processes of erosion, transportation and deposition, learning how rivers break down, carry and deposit pieces of rock and sediment. To bring their learning to life, the children imagined they were a tiny grain of sand travelling through water and wrote their own “My Journey as a Grain of Sand”. Some children also drew their grain of sand’s journey, showing each stage through colourful illustrations. It was fantastic to see the children using their new geographical vocabulary while letting their creativity and imagination flow!
This week, children in Year 5 wrote their innovated suspense stories in English, using their writing toolkit to build tense descriptions and create atmosphere. In Maths, we mastered place value knowledge up to 1,000,000, while in History, we explored our third enquiry question: "Why did the Vikings settle in England?" We also explored space in Science, where the highlight was observing how the Earth's rotation causes day and night through a hands-on classroom experiment. Using a torch as the Sun and a globe as the Earth, the pupils dimmed the lights to see how one side experiences daytime while the other stays in shadow, turning the globe to watch a marked spot move in and out of the light.
Year 6 showed great readiness this week during their reading comprehension lessons. Both classes closely analysed text to strengthen their understanding, applying key reading skills to tackle a variety of questions. The children impressed their teachers by using vocabulary knowledge, retrieval, inference, summarising and predicting to break down their text effectively.
Harvest Festival
Join us for our first Harvest Festival on Friday 16th October in the playground after school. Come along for a hot chocolate, an autumn themed bake sale, games and fun!
AGM
Keep an eye out for our AGM date coming soon. We'd love to see as many of you there as possible.
Elfridges
We're excited that Eflridges will return again this year! It will be the same as last year with each class being able to take their turn in our pop-up Christmas shop and buy gifts for friends and family.
We're also hoping to keep it open for the Christmas Fair (volunteer dependent) so everyone has a chance to take part.
Dates for your diary
Friday 16th October - Harvest Festival
Friday 13th November - Non-uniform day for Christmas Hamper Raffle
W/C 7th December - Elfridges
Saturday 12th December - Christmas Fair
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/friendsoflanchester or Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/friendsoflanchester/ or contact us by email: friendsoflanchester@gmail.com
Thanks for your support!
Friends of Lanchester committee - Tracey Bravo, Lawrence Brown, Louise Brown, Helen Gibson, Chloé Harper and Laura Robson
On Behalf of 'Friends of Lanchester CFS'
Registered Charity 1161580
Lanchester Primary School, Hempstead Road, Watford, WD17 3HD
Tel: 01923 224160 Email: office@lanchester.herts.sch.uk
Website: www.lanchester.herts.sch.uk
Headteacher: Mr Matt Morey