E-Safety Meeting on Tuesday 30th March

A reminder that our E-Safety Meeting organised by Mrs Easto, will be held in school next Tuesday 30th March. The Kent E-Safety Officer, Rebecca Avery, will be running a workshop for parents which aims to help them understand how to keep children safe when using the internet.

If you have not returned your form, there is still time to send it in on Monday. Please contact the School Office if you would like more details.

Newsletter 25/School Disco

Newsletter 25, published on 24 March 2010, is now available to view.

Features this week include more sporting news, information for all year groups about the Year 6 Residential Trip, Class 4RW's Assembly and more.

Also a reminder that it is the School Disco tonight. The Years 3/4 Disco starts at 6 p.m. and for Years 5/6 it starts at 7.45 p.m.

What an end to the season!!

Both of our football teams competed in the CSLA Football tournament held at Weald this Monday. The boys were all fired up and hoping for a win. Our ‘B’ team played some exceptional matches, particular thanks to Ruben and his great defending. Sadly, despite their great results (shown below), the ‘B’ team did not get thorough but the boys are to be congratulated on their fantastic football and excellent teamwork.

Our ‘A’ team were just as enthusiastic and we witnessed some more fabulous football! We had a nail biting semi-final against Hildenborough which went to penalties but our boys held their nerve to score 4 – 2. The final was a well fought out match played in the rain and the dark but despite the boys best efforts we were beaten by St. Margarets!
Thank you again to all the boys for their hard work and enthusiasm and to their ever committed parents and carers!


Woodlands ‘A’ Vs
Four Elms 2 -0
Stocks Green (bye)
St. Stephens 3 – 0
Hildenborough 1 - 1
Ouarters: -
Long Mead 3 – 0
Semi-Final:-
Hildrenborough 4 – 2 (Penalties)
Final: -
St. Margarets 0 -2


Woodlands ‘B’ Vs
Long Mead 1 - 1
Sussex Road 0 -1
Stocks Green 2 - 2
Slade 3 - 1

Sports Relief

On Friday 19th March most of the children of Woodlands came into school dressed up as their Olympic hero. To do this pupils bought in £1 for sport relief. There were many bright colours that filled the school hall in assembly in the afternoon. In class children took it in turns to stand up and introduce their Olympic hero in front of everyone else. Throughout the day class by class did the mile run (five times around the field) before being worn out and in need of a rest! The whole day was great fun with the overall total raised for sport relief raised came to a brilliant total of £291.51 (a great amount of money.) All the money is going towards a great cause to help people around the world. The money helps people who are homeless or who have malaria or in need in another way. It was great fun!

by Bradley

Book Fair

On 15th March children had the opportunity to browse our school book fair in the lower hub. There were picture books, joke books, chapter books and many other interesting styles. The children then wrote down the names of any books they were interested in. Then on 16th March anyone that had brought in money purchased their books while others helped their teachers to choose books for the class. It was great to see everyone so excited to start reading their new books!

Tara

Newsletter 24

Newsletter 24, published on 19 March 2010, is now available to view.

Features this week include the Year 5 Trip to Knole, information on Charity Stalls including the Haiti Earthquake Appeal. There are also netball and football reports as well as Sports Relief. Guess how much we raised at our Book Fair? Thanks to all who came to support us.

Also there is still time to join ParentMail to get the newsletter via email and a final reminder of the deadline for the Headteacher's Question of the Term.

More Football Success

Woodlands ‘B’ Team played St. Stephens last night and they have done it again! This time our winning score was 5 – 1. The first half saw both teams playing a steady game; they were each determined to stop goals as well as score. In the second half with the starting score on 1 – 0 the game really got underway with both teams playing some fantastic football. Woodlands got the edge though taking some incredible shots at goal – well done Edward – and their fantastic teamwork has led to another great win. Congratulations boys!!

Year 5 Trip to Knole House

This week we visited Knole House, to learn more about the Tudors. The class was split into two groups in the morning, the first activity was to dress up as different Tudor people and go around the house learning about their roles, we were the wife of a craftsman and the house keeper.

Next we looked at different artefacts from Tudor times and sorted them in to who would use them and why. Our favorite artefact was a pottery carpet cleaner that they filled to the top with water and then sprinkled it over the carpet to keep the dust down.

After lunch we had a walk around Knole Park and learnt about the different wildlife. Did you know that they have two sorts of deer at Knole? The dark ones are Sika deer, what other species do they have?

We enjoyed dressing up as the Tudor characters most and learnt that Tudor ladies wore up to eleven petticoats.

Anna and Zoe

The best optimised education site on the web?

I was very pleased to read this week that, according to Hitwise, the Woodlands website is again the biggest recipient of traffic from the search term ‘mothers day’. Our website received a third of all clicks on the term – more than three times as much as Wikipedia (the second biggest).

The title of this post comes from one of the many blog posts that are written about our website and its high ranking in Google. Companies pay alot of money to have their websites appear high in search engines and so there is much interest on how we manage it. I think one of the latest posts about our website hits the nail on the head when it says:

"If ever you wanted proof that optimising your site for human beings is the best way to optimise it for search engines, this is it." Blonde

Woodlands website has indeed been written for human beings - learners of all ages.  The prime aim of  our site is to extend learning beyond the classroom wall. Our aim is not to get the most number of visitors, but instead to give our pupils the best education they can have by making learning available to them 24/7.

I originally created the site for the pupils in my class and now continue to write it for learners all around the world. To have a high ranking in search engines is a bonus, but what is more important to me, and to the school,  is the impact my work has on learning.

Gold Medal Winners

We are thrilled to announce that our Year 4 Team who took part in the National Schools Quiz against 380 other schools across the nation came away with a Gold Medal.

Newsletter 23

Newsletter 23, published on 12 March 2010, is now available to view.

Features this week include news on Eco Green Flag and French Language Awards, our football and cross country news.

Also, ParentMail is "live" so you can now get the newsletter via email. If you have not signed up already, please contact the School Office.

Finally, don't forget our Book Fair on Monday and Tuesday of next week.

Kent Silver Language Accreditation and Eco Green Flag Awarded to Woodlands Junior School

Woodlands Junior School has been awarded the Kent Silver Language Accreditation for French. Mrs Anacleto has worked extremely hard teaching a new language to all the children throughout the school in fun and exciting ways.



Woodlands Junior School has also had their Eco Green Flag status renewed once again.
Mrs Brown has ensured the school continues to be involved in running activities to improve the school’s environment. Pupils and staff have also demonstrated that they’ve integrated ‘eco’ behaviour across the whole of the school, and that they’ve covered three or four of the nine environmental topic areas thoroughly in the process. Topics include litter, waste minimisation, energy use, water use, transport, health and wellbeing, school grounds and biodiversity.

We are the Champions!

In the words of that well known song – we are!

The final results are listed below; suffice to say that Woodlands ‘A’ Team won their league as did Woodlands ‘B’ Team! What a fantastic finish to weeks of dedicated hard work by the boys. They have regularly turned up for their matches’; no team member has ever missed a game. Their teamwork and commitment to their sport has been phenomenal!
Mrs Kennedy would like to thank the boys and their parents, Grandparents, aunties and uncles; in fact to anyone who supported the boys each week and stood with her for a few hours in the freezing cold and sometimes rain too! Congratulations again boys – we are all very proud!!
Woodlands ‘A’ Team Vs Hadlow ‘A’ 7 – 2
Woodlands ‘B’ Team Vs Sussex Rd ‘B’ 7 - 1
Woodlands ‘B’ Team Vs Slade ‘B’ 4 - 1

Newsletter 22

Newsletter 22, published on 5 March 2010, is now available to view.

Features this week include World Book Day, Football news, a reminder of the Headteacher's Question of the Term and a reminder to sign up to ParentMail if you have not already done so.

Also, we would like to have some helpers for our Book Fair. Please contact the School Office if you can help us with this. Thank you.

Football News

Woodlands ‘A’ Team have done it again, three matches and three wins! Our first match was a friendly against Long Mead and the score was 4 -1. We then played a very tight game against Hildenborough, the final score being 3 -1. Our final game last night was against Capel and the score was 7 -2. Parent supporters were impressed by the boys continued demonstration of teamwork and their commitment to playing football in a sportsmanlike way. Particular praise went to Tim for his excellent work in defence! Congratulations again boys, only one match to go – no pressure!

ADAD Theatre Group visits Year 6

This afternoon the Year 6 children were visited by the ADAD Theatre group who performed their play 'Wasted'. It was a hugely engaging way for the children to learn about the issues surrounding drugs and ways of dealing with peer pressure.

The children were thoroughly engrossed in the action, answering questions about their understanding of the issue and challenging the characters about the decisions that they had taken. Some of our children even got directly involved in the action, taking on the role of characters in a few scenes!

Recorder Festival

Year 4 were treated to a recorder extravaganza at Hillview Last Friday. We all hopped on the coach, amongst much excitement, and arrived at Hillview ready to put our recorder playing into practice.

We warmed up with a fun song all about bananas and then worked our way through all the songs we have learned to play since September. Some of our children were even selected to stand at the front and play the accompaniment they learnt themselves at home.

We took a break from our tooting during the morning, and sang some great songs together, adding in the actions when we felt brave enough to have a go.

A great time was had by all, and we are now inspired to persevere and learn lots more new songs on our recorders!