Headteacher Message! -
Good afternoon,
This week, we’ve been focusing on the importance of staying safe online, a topic that continues to be vital in today’s digital world. We were delighted to welcome many of you to the Breck Foundation’s informative workshop for parents at the start of the week. Thank you to everyone who joined us — your engagement and support are greatly appreciated. For those who couldn’t attend, a recording of the session has been shared so you can catch up at your convenience.
Our Year 3, 4, 5 and 6 pupils also took part in their own workshops, which were both engaging and educational. The children learned a great deal and came away with top tips for staying safe online — many of which we encourage you to discuss together at home. These conversations are a powerful way to reinforce safe habits and build awareness.
To support these discussions, the slides from the children’s workshops will be shared with you today. We hope you find them useful and informative.
A huge thank you to those of you who have offered your time to help listen to our children read. Your support is truly appreciated. Mrs Lewis is currently organising the reading volunteers and will let you know soon which year group and day you’ll be helping.
I’m looking forward to our visits to church next week for our Harvest Festival. Thank you in advance for your generous donations which will be shared with local charities.
Finally, a big thank you to our wonderful Friends of Ashley (FOA), who continue to work tirelessly behind the scenes to enrich our children’s experiences. The trim trail is currently being installed so the children will be able to use it by the end of next week.
Planning is already underway for the much-loved Ashley Fireworks, and we would love for more parents to get involved. If you are interested, please come along to the FOA AGM on 1st October at 7pm in the school hall.
We hope you have a relaxing and enjoyable weekend ahead!
Mrs Ratcliff
General Reminders -
To ensure the safety and wellbeing of all pupils at Ashley CofE Primary School:
- Please keep your children with you at all times during drop-off.
- Each child must be accompanied by their parent/carer all the way to their classroom or drop-off point.
- Do not allow children to walk through the school grounds unsupervised.
Thank you for your cooperation in helping us keep all our children safe.
SICKNESS ABSENCE - Not every illness will require a child to stay away from school. During term time, your child should attend school regularly unless he or she is ill or the school has authorised their absence. If your child is too ill to come to school, you must let the school know before 8.30am on each day of absence. If you are unsure if you should keep your child home from school due to illness, please look at this useful website "Is my child too ill for school? Click here. If you child will be absent due to illness please report via the study bugs app ONLY.
Study Bugs App -Get the app or register now (https://studybugs.com/about/parents)
Please ensure that you state the nature of your child's illness (e.g. headache, vomiting, etc.) If you state that that they are under the weather or unwell, we will call you to clarify.
If your child will be absent for a prolonged period of time, the check-in and absence reporting frequency will be agreed by a member of Ashley's Senior Leadership Team and communicated via the School Administration Team.
All absence is recorded and monitored by the attendance team and a strict procedure is followed.
PUNCTUALITY- Frequent lateness can negatively affect your child’s mental health, learning ability, concentration and friendships. Children who frequently arrive late are at a significant disadvantage compared to those who arrive on time, every day. Children who arrive on time are able to settle quickly into class and apply themselves more successfully to their learning.
PERSONAL APPEARANCE - Hair should be neat and tidy and tied away from the face. Shoulder-length hair must, for safety and hygiene reasons, be tied back daily. Hair accessories should be plain in style and in school colours. Dyed, gelled, highlighted hair or braiding with coloured cotton and beads is not allowed. Patterns should not be shaved into hair.
Nail varnish, make up and temporary tattoos etc. should not be worn in school.
No jewellery should be worn to school. We prefer no earrings at all, but if necessary small flat, plain, metal stud earrings should be worn. There should only be one earring in each ear. On PE days, children should leave their earrings at home and not wear them to school.
If a child has just had their ears pierced, they should wear their earrings to school but must remove them by themselves for PE and should replace them immediately afterwards. Staff members at Ashley will not attempt to remove earrings.
Watches may be worn (not smart watches) although Ashley accepts no liability for any items that are lost or damaged.
NO SMOKING/VAPING - Please can we remind all parents that there is NO SMOKING or VAPING on the school premises, this includes playground and school car park.
SCHOOL LUNCHES - The school lunch menu will continue up to October half term. If your child/ren normally has a school meal, please can we remind you to order a school meal in advance. Ordering closes on the Friday before and meals cannot be ordered after this time.
New club protocol - pick up
To help ensure the safety and smooth collection of children attending extra-curriculum clubs, please note that from Monday, 29th September, all children who attend extra curriculum clubs should be picked up from the car park gate. Please arrive at the car park gate at the time that your child's club finishes.
The After School Club collection will still be at the main door entrance to the school as it presently being done.
This change will help us manage pick-up more efficiently and keep all our pupils safe. Thank you for your cooperation and support.
Dates for your Diary -
SUBSCRIBE - To our School calendar to keep in the loop with all your child/ren's events.
Friday 3rd of October - we have our whole school VIP event where you will be welcomed into your child's class to view their learning and celebrate the progress they have made this year 3.25pm until 3.45pm. See the calendar for more information.
SEND Snippet -
Developmental Language Delay (DLD)
Friday 17th October is an awareness day for this rarely heard of communication difficulty.
While we are having an INSET day, we'd still like to share awareness and understanding of this condition.
Here are two useful videos that explain the condition and how it can be supported:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF-4CKmeeFQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vPtq4PBrag
At Ashley, we are proficient users of Widgit (https://widgitonline.com/en/home) for dual coding of words. We support our learners with early writing using Colourful Semantics to support syntax and vocabulary. Our new use of The Grammarsaurus across the whole school to support our English lessons will support pupils that may be presenting with DLD.
www.dldandme.org/ is an excellent website with resources for families and schools.
Breck Foundation -
On Thursday, KS2 had a talk from Breck Foundation. It was a thought-provoking talk focusing on online safety and encouraging the children to "screenshot, shutdown and report" when something makes you feel uncomfortable online.
Maggie, Etion and Zac (year 4)- We enjoyed the workshop and learnt about three rules to keep us safe online. The first is finger power (swipe, block, report and leave the site), Number two is don’t share personal information and the third is if anyone is mean online tell a trusted adult. If a person is building a friendship with you online and you are a bit suspicious, tell a trusted adult. It’s important to talk as others can help to fix a problem.
“It was sad but it has a strong meaning that we can learn from.” Year 6 Pupil
“We know to not talk to people online that we don’t know and we can talk to an adult about any problems we have online.”
- Y6
Smartphone Free Childhood - Parent Talk
Please find a recording of the talk from Papaya about online safety here:
The Past Fortnight -
School Ambassadors
Dylan S & Grace T
House Captains
Fletcher – Archie B and Sophia B
Berkeley – Jacob D and Myla M
Portland – Flora S and Ava R
Shannon – Jonny M and Griff K
Congratulations to our newly appointed Ambassadors and House Captains. These children have already shown great leadership potential, and we are excited to see how they will help shape the year ahead. All of the pupil leadership roles are a fantastic opportunity for our children to grow in confidence and take pride in contributing to school life.
- Mrs Ratcliff
Y6 -
Last week, Year 6 were very busy training as ARP Wardens Home Guards at Henley Fort. They learned to march, obey commands such as "About turn!", set up roadblocks and practise throwing grenades - all before lunch! ARP Wardens had to ensure blackouts were effective, put out fires and help everyone into the nearest air-raid shelter - very hard work! Such an immersive experience really helped to deepen their understanding of life on the Home Front during World War 2. Thank you to all the adults who accompanied Year 6.
-Miss Bardel
Y5 -
This week in Year 5 the children have been exploring the use of tone in art. They have explored tone using different sketching pencils and techniques to create realistic bubbles. We were impressed by their patience and perseverance required to create a realistic bubble sketch. Well done, Year 5!
-Miss May
Y4-
Year 4 have been exploring electricity by using components to make electrical circuits. We started off by having all the equipment and then explored how to make the bulb light up. It took some trial and error and we learnt that if the bulb didn't light up, it was either the battery or the bulb that was the issue. We also learnt that a circuit needs to be complete in order for the electricity to flow. Following on from this, we then explored which materials were conductors and insulators. This was a brilliant investigation and really made us think about why some materials are conductors and others aren't. There were lots of smiling and excited faces in these practical science lessons and we will be using this knowledge later in the term for our D&T project.
- Mrs Ready
Y3 - 
In science the children have been learning about plants. Last week we focused on the role of the root. We planted a bean seed and watched it grow. This is what has happened so far.
-Mrs Whitby
Y2 -
This week have been conducting an experiment to understand how germs are transferred by using three slices of bread.
The first slice was the control, the second was touched by all children with unwashed hands and the third slice was touched by all the children after washing their hands.
-Mrs Van Der Schaff
Y1 -
Year one have been delving deeper into their learning theme this week, exploring the grounds of our school. They have created simple maps of key features, and we will be using these in English to write information about our school. Once we have created our recounts of information about Ashley, we will be sending them to Beegu the alien, who got lost and landed at Ashley a few weeks ago!
-Mrs Luxford
Reception -
We have had a brilliant week in the reception classes! We are very impressed and proud of how well the children are settling in. This week the children have been very excited to start our phonics sound work, learning the sounds /s/ /a/ /t/ /p/ and we have been focusing on the numbers /1/ /2/ /3/ and /4/ in our maths work.
In RE, we have been talking about 'What makes me special' by sharing photos and talking about our families. The children have really enjoyed working and learning together in our outdoor areas, developing gross motor skills, communication skills and sharing skills. It has been lovely to see the children getting stuck into our digging area and mud kitchen.
- Mrs Lulham
Reading Champions needed -
Harvest Festival-
This year we are delighted that the children will be attending the church as part of our Harvest celebrations. The Harvest Festival service will be at St Mary's church on Tuesday 30th September. The year groups attending will be Years 3 and Year 5 at 9.30am service, and 10.30 service for Years 2, 4, and Year 6.
Reverend Cathy is visiting us to hold a festival service in the school, in the Hive on Tuesday afternoon for Year 1 and Reception.
The theme for our Harvest Festival this year is linked to our learning themes. Each class will be performing a poem or song linked to their learning theme for this half term.
As we cannot invite our community into school to share our harvest festival this year, we would like to involve you another way. Did you know that blackberries, apples and pears are all in season this month? Buying seasonal food from the UK rather than imported food reduces its carbon footprint, it's fresher because it's taken less time to get to you and it costs less because it's grown locally and hopefully in natural conditions rather than expensive managed conditions. We would like to challenge you to think about the ways we can CARE for our environment and health and think about how you could change the way you shop for the better. It would be lovely to hear about the adaptations families make, please do share these on Seesaw.
As part of our Harvest celebrations, we would like to support Walton & Hersham Foodbank, The Bridge and Rentstart. Please may we request that donations be brought into school on Monday 29th September and/or Tuesday 30th September.
If anyone has a van that they would be able to help transfer the donations please let the school off know.
harvest appeal poster 2025.pdf
Toddlers of Ashley -
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ashleycofeprimaryschool1/1879434
FACE - Family Advice Webinars
Community Notice Board -
halliford school september october open events 2025.pdf
three rivers academy school tours new dates added 002 .pdf
WELL DONE! -
A very BIG well done to Felix (Y6) he has just won the 2025 10 & Under Surrey County Doubles, which was such a proud moment for him and us at Ashley.
