Dear Families,

This week has absolutely flown by, and ended with a surprise visitor on the playground this morning! “Prickles” the hedgehog has been well-looked after and we’ll make sure they get what they need.

We must start with congratulating our Year 6s for the perseverance, effort and resilience they have demonstrated in their SATs this week. Love them or loathe them, everyone has to sit them and we are always more interested in the way they are approached by children rather than their end results. If they do their best, that is enough – and they have done their very best. They can be very proud of themselves, whatever the outcomes!

Thank you to everyone who made it to the Plant & Craft Fair last weekend: it was wonderful to see so many family-run stalls selling a whole range of different things. It was a true community event and it left me feeling very honoured to be part of it!

Next week is the final week of the half-term and then we’re into the final half-term of 2025-26! After half-term we will be able to share dates of transition activities and other plans for next year.

Thank you for all your support, and have a lovely weekend!

Tom Larkham

Headteacher

Dear families,

It has been another fantastic week here at Coleham, and I wanted to start by thanking everyone for helping to make today’s celebration of Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday such a special occasion. Across the school, Sir David has been an inspiration to many (including this Headteacher!) and the passion for the natural world from many of our children is wonderful to see.  He has shown us that one person can make a big difference, and he has also taught us all to notice the natural world on our doorsteps, as well as in exotic lands.

Explore the Read to the Beat book collection!

This year’s official Read to the Beat book collection includes books about musicians, characters discovering music, sound science, cultural traditions, rhythm, storytelling through sound, breaking down barriers to music, creative expression and following your dreams.

Support your child in being inspired with their very own musical adventure with this year’s official Summer Reading Challenge book collection – take a look below!

Lots of these titles will be available for you to enjoy for free through your local library. Check out our handy page on how to find books.

Summer Reading Challenge

The whole of May is National Share a Story Month, run by the Federation of Children’s Book Groups. The idea is simply to share stories — through reading aloud, telling, acting out, or talking about books together. Heads up, there are usually events at libraries, bookshops  throughout the month.

Its good to remember that “sharing a story” doesn’t always mean sitting down with a book. Telling a child about a book you loved when you were their age counts. So does listening to an audiobook together on a long car journey.

The National Share a Story Month guide from the Reading Chest has simple ideas for bringing stories into your home throughout May.

Reading aloud to children isn’t something you outgrow. Even confident readers benefit from hearing stories read with expression, rhythm, and someone there beside them.

Language blooms: When children hear stories read aloud, they absorb vocabulary, sentence patterns, and the music of language. It happens naturally, without any flashcards or worksheets.

Connection deepens: Sharing a story creates a moment of focused attention. No screens, no rush. Just you, your child, and a book. That’s powerful.

Imagination explodes: Listening to someone read fires up a child’s imagination more than watching images on a screen. They’re building the pictures in their mind.

It signals that stories matter: When you sit down to read together, you’re telling your child: “This is important. You’re important. This time together is important.”

In honour of David Attenborough’s 100th Birthday coming up, this months Recommended Reads are all inspired by nature.

EYFS

This series of board books will inspire a love of nature in even the littlest of animal lovers. With vibrant artwork printed on white board, robust easy-to-use mechanisms for tiny hands and a rhyming text with friendly animal facts, these are the perfect books to captivate curious little explorers time and time again.

In this first birds book, there are ostriches running across the plains, penguins diving in the sea, toucans perched on jungle branches and many more birds to discover and bring to life with the moving parts.

KS1

Hop, leap or bounce into Boing! for bug and mini-beast poetry fun and fascinating facts.

Find beautiful butterflies, ladybirds and dragonflies. Marvel at worker bugs, from tiny ants and busy bees to leaping grasshoppers and fleas. Discover mini-beast heroes – dung beetles, millipedes, spiders – and those amazing ‘pigs in space’, the tardigrades!

With 24 poems, including shape poems, riddles, rhyming poems and free verse, plus amazing and informative facts about each bug or minibeast on every page, the world of insects is brought buzzing to life, matched by Neal Layton’s witty colour illustrations.

LKS2

Antarctica is a place most of us will never visit – and it’s disappearing. Learn all about it before it’s too late.

Put on your parka and snowshoes and get ready to embark on a journey to the far, far south. You could hitch a ride on a Sno-Cat, explore the majestic icefalls, hunt for meteorites and marvel at migrating whales – or just stay in for a movie and pizza.

From colossal squids and active volcanoes to research vessels and cricket matches, there’s a lot more to the South Pole than just penguins and icebergs (though there are also a lot of penguins and icebergs). Learn how humans survive in the coldest place on Earth and discover what surprises await in this fragile and fascinating world.

Packed with hundreds of brilliant snippets of information, All About Antarctica is perfect for curious kids who love to ask lots of questions about the wonders of our world.

UKS2

Packed full of illustrations, exciting experiments – and even comic strips – That’s Life! encourages young scientists to start looking for the living things around them.Life is everywhere on planet Earth. Jungles, deserts, seas, plains, fields and forests – all of them teem with life but, amazingly, you can also find lots of living things hidden in your home, and even hidden inside you! Join Sherlock Ohms and his companions on a brilliant biological adventure, seeking out all kinds of life, including the life forms hiding in your own home!

As part of Coleham School’s ongoing commitment to nurturing a love of reading across our school community, we want to make it as easy and enjoyable as possible for families to share stories, build reading habits, and help children grow as confident, enthusiastic readers. The Raise a Reader guidance attached below offers simple, inspiring ideas to help you do just that.

Raise-A-Reader-Parent-Pack-Digital.pdf – CLICK HERE

How This Guidance Can Help You Support Reading at Home

The Raise a Reader pack offers simple, practical ideas to make reading an enjoyable and meaningful part of family life. It highlights how powerful it is for children to see adults reading, encourages families to create cosy, distraction‑free reading spaces, and provides prompts for talking together about books to build understanding and confidence. The pack also includes helpful tools such as reading reward charts, review sheets, and suggestions for swapping books or visiting the library, all designed to spark excitement and motivation. Above all, it emphasises having fun and enjoying stories together—because these small, regular moments of shared reading can make a big difference to your child’s confidence, imagination, and long‑term love of reading.

Phonics is an essential building block in helping children learn to read with confidence. It teaches the relationship between letters and the sounds they make, enabling children to decode words by sounding them out. This gives young readers a clear strategy for tackling new or unfamiliar words and helps develop accuracy, fluency and early spelling skills. When children learn phonics systematically and practise regularly, they build a strong foundation that supports all future reading and writing.

In order to supplement what we are doing in school, we wanted to share with parents some of the online resources we use in school to make learning phonics fun and engaging. Please click on the links below to access some great online games.

www.phonicsplay.co.uk

www.spellingplay.co.uk

www.phonicsplaycomics.co.uk

Our KS2 pupils met comedian and author Catherine Wilkins, who joined us to chat about her children’s book series Café Chaos. The story follows Hope Crumble and her dysfunctional family as they run the delightfully chaotic Café Crumble together.

Catherine shared fantastic insights into her writing process — from writing what you know (she worked in cafés and hospitality) to using character conflict to spark a great story, and weaving in plenty of humour.

Her books have an anti‑bullying message and she reminded pupils that bullying can always be solved by speaking to trusted adults and never facing problems alone.

Our children asked some great questions and we were added some signed copies to our book shelves.

EYFS

Discover the ROARSOME world of dinosaurs with this beautifully illustrated lift-the-flap book for dino-mad kids!

Take a hands-on tour through the amazing world of dinosaurs and learn about where they lived, what they ate and how they spent their days. From the terrifying T-rex to the long-necked diplodocus, you’ll find some of the biggest, mightiest and deadliest dinos inside the pages of this book – with exciting lift-the-flaps that reveal extra secrets and surprises!

Over 50 interactive flaps to lift, all hiding amazing extra facts and dinotastic-details

Fascinating introduction to the world of dinosaurs that explores these incredible creatures across the continents.

Beautiful visuals on every page with illustrations by Teresa Bellon, best known for illustrating Lonely Planet Kids’ My First Lift-the-Flap World Atlas, as well as several Usborne and Pan Macmillan children’s books

Explore the world of dinosaurs through the eyes of an early reader with this fun and entertaining follow-up to My First Lift-the-Flap World Atlas. This is the perfect reading gift for dino-mad children everywhere!

KS1

Discover the remarkable family tree of one chicken in this strange but true tale!

Hello! I don’t think that I’ve met you before.

Now, you may not have heard, I’m a real DINOSAUR.

Now, before you start thinking I look like a meal…

Check my family tree – and then see how you feel.

Meet one plucky chicken and discover her roarsome secret: she is descended from dinosaurs . . . and no fox is going to make a meal out of her!

Travel through time and uncover the unlikely truth of how of the humble hen is related to the terrifying T-Rex in this fantastic read-aloud picture book.

Written by the bestselling dinosaur duo Steve and Anne Brusatte, it packs 250 million years of history into a single sitting and contains a fascinating fact packed section at the back.

LKS2

This engagingly illustrated book tells in thrilling detail the story of the Carpathia, the small vessel which saved hundreds of people from drowing during the sinking of the Titanic.

In the middle of the night, the Carpathia received a distress call from the sinking Titanic. The intrepid little ship heroically changed course and headed straight into the frozen sea to help save as many people as it could. Follow the Carpathia as it risks everything to navigate remote, treacherous ice fields in the dark and come to the rescue of passengers on the world-famous ocean liner.

Along the journey, you will learn all about Morse code, navigation tools, the different roles of the crew, how the ships found each other, and by-the-minute details of exactly what happened on this cold and fateful night.

The illustrations set the scene and take the reader into the frozen eerie night in the North Atlantic. Beautiful full-bleed illustration and vignettes give great detail about how everyone on the ship made their own contribution and showed true bravery.

Rescuing Titanic shows that a glimmer of hope can be found even in great tragedy and that heroes are not always big and mighty, but can also be small and unassuming.

This is the debut book in the Hidden Histories series, which explores with beautiful illustrations and vivid details the untold parts of stories we thought we knew.

UKS2

A hidden garden. An ancient tale. A missing child. This is an addictive mystery with crossing narratives that’s impossible to put down.

“Deliciously creepy modern adventure. Beautifully plotted and a real page-turner.” – The Irish Independent

Fran doesn’t want to stay with her aunt and uncle and her annoying cousin, Imogen. Imogen is rude and unfriendly and, it turns out, missing… But her parents don’t seem to know who Fran means – don’t be silly, we don’t have a daughter, you know that. So it’s up to Fran, and Imogen’s best friend, Bex, to find out what’s happened to her.

Except Bex doesn’t know who Imogen is either. All Fran knows is that it’s got something to do with the hidden garden at Stillness Hall and the twelve statues that belong there. Could a mysterious old tale, a story of enchantment and death, hold the answers?

Welcome to this month’s edition of our Reading Newsletter! We’ve had a wonderful term bursting with activities to raise the profile of reading for pleasure across our school – from the excitement of World Book Week to inspiring author visits and many more joyful book‑themed moments. In this issue, you’ll find a new selection of recommended reads for pupils of all ages, an update from our staff book club, and some simple, fun reading initiatives for parents to try at home. We hope this newsletter helps keep the love of stories alive and thriving in every corner of our school community.

Year 3 & 4 children will be making cakes to sell after school.

Find us at the Kitchen back door after school.

Dear Families,

Today has been a feel good Friday with smiley face stickers if you smiled!

I have enjoyed being Headteacher for the Day! My favourite part was awarding the Headteacher stickers to classes and watching Badgers Dance in PE.

Next week we are all looking forward to watching the School Production Tales Untold.

I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Miss Ardill

Headteacher

• Magical Kingdoms
• Lost Kingdoms
• Good vs Evil
• Heroes & Villains
• Prophecy and destiny
• Dragons, demons, gods, plagues, cursed spirits, elves, dwarves, dragons, or beast folk
• Quests or Journeys
• Kingdoms at war
• Hidden worlds
• Time travel
• Cursed lands or people
• Gods among mortals

Dear Families,

Here we are again at the end of another busy week – and ending on World Book Day is a real treat!

Earlier this week in assembly, we talked abut reading and I shared my favourite books.  My absolute favourite is Where The Wild Things Are – there’s so much in there for children and adults about anger, love and managing feelings.  I also asked the children to tell me their favourite books so it’s been lovely hearing all the children’s favourite books throughout the week!

Hello everyone, Miss Harris here! Welcome to February’s edition of The Coleham Reading Newsletter. This month we are busy preparing for our annual World Book Week where there will be a full timetable of events that aim to inspire all pupils in reading for pleasure. As always I will be sharing with you a variety of book recommendations, as well as telling you a little bit about what’s coming up in school.

EYFS

Meet Wilbur, a little boy making a big move in this illustrated storybook that teaches young children about embracing change.

With beautiful illustrations and an engaging storyline, this book teaches young readers aged 3-5 about exploring new environments and building strong friendships.

A perfect bedtime story and addition to every child’s bookshelf, The Night the Garden Glowed teaches children that change doesn’t always need to be scary. This storybook is about finding friendships in new places and teaches them that letting go of fear can lead to exciting new things.

This heart warming picture book for children offers:

An uplifting message that encourages children to overcome difficult situations through an engaging storyline.

Bright and warming illustrations that blend elements of the fantastical with the ordinary world around us.

A beautiful book by Brendan Kearney, author of the much-loved Finn and Skip series.

KS1

The Terrible Trio is a fun illustrated series, best described as The Bad Guys meets Madagascar!

In a world where all animals have superpowers, Zeb the zebra, Margarine the penguin, and Barry the lemur have the WORST powers of all.

Zeb, Margarine, and Barry end up at the back of the line to have the Superpower Supermarket Manager grant them their superpowers and end up getting the short end of the stick. Margarine is granted the special ability to make macaroni and cheese. Barry the Lemur is gifted with the power to write neatly. And Zeb the Zebra can now blend in with a crosswalk…

Working at a café and watching everybody else save the world day in and day out, Zeb, Margarine, and Barry wonder if they will ever get to be superheroes for a day themselves.

“A funny story, with lots of melodrama from Zeb and silliness around the various superpowers … The black and white illustrations are full of expression and bring the characters to life brilliantly.” – Booktrust

LKS2

An orange cat blessed with opposable thumbs, Alan is convinced he was born to rule and spends his days scheming up brilliant plans to fulfil his destiny – from creating a brand-new country, Alanland, to cloning himself in an attempt to raise an entire army of Alans. And his hapless dog sidekick Fido is just happy to be along for the ride!

Join these two loveable characters on their hilarious adventures as they try to take over the universe – as long as they’re home in time for tea, of course.

This two-colour graphic novel series for 7+ readers will have kids and their grown-ups rolling around on the floor with laughter.

UKS2

Bonkers dilemmas that can be solved with science and a bunch of brilliant physics experiments.

**No grannies were harmed in the making of this book!**

Trick a shark! Lift a jumbo jet! Escape a deserted island! Stop a runaway train!

Explore a bunch of ridiculous (and not-so-ridiculous) dilemmas – with solutions from the astonishing world of physics.

Sounds unbelievable? Test the science for yourself, with easy-to-follow experiments throughout!

What are you waiting for? Let’s save Granny!

Written by bestselling and award-winning author Swapna Haddow, with brilliantly funny colour illustrations from award-winning illustrator Jess Bradley.

Monday – World Book Week Assembly

• At 10am in the school hall World Book Week is launched in style with an introductory assembly led by Mr Larkham.

Tuesday – Book Fair

• Please come along after school to the school hall and pick up a bargain book at our school book fair.

Wednesday – EYFS/KS1 Author Workshop

• Children in EYFS, Years 1 and 2 will have the wonderful opportunity to engage with Author Bryher Mckenzie. During the workshop Bryher will be sharing what it’s like to be an author and telling us more about her new title Great Aunt Margot and Me.

Thursday – KS2 Workshop

• Pupils in Years 5 and 6 will be getting stuck into stories and poetry through performance with Chair of Trustees of Shropshire Bookfest ‘Chris Tay’

Friday – The Grand Finale

• Fancy Dress
• Pop-up book shop
• World Book Day Menu
• Golden Ticket Book Competition

We know every child enjoys reading more when they can pick a book that excites them. Don’t forget this week your child will be coming home with their very own book voucher.

Explore this year’s £1/€1.50 World Book Day books and support your child to pick a title they’ll love.

For a digital copy of the Free Book Token, please click the link below:

DIGITAL FREE BOOK TOKEN

Each digital token is single use per transaction, but schools can share the same token with all parents and carers. The same PDF and barcode can be used for every child within the school.

Digital tokens can be shown on a phone or tablet, or printed and taken into a participating bookseller.

It’s time to GO ALL IN on reading and get creative!

To celebrate World Book Day and the UK’s National Year of Reading 2026, sponsors of World Book Day National Book Tokens are inviting children of all ages to DESIGN A NATIONAL BOOK TOKEN for their annual competition. This year’s winners will be selected by three very special guest judges: bestselling authors and illustrators Paddy Donnelly, Nadia Shireen and Sonia Leong!

The National Year of Reading theme, Go All In, is all about diving deeper into the things you already love through reading. Whether you’re passionate about football, animals, space, fashion, gaming, history, music or making people laugh, books can bring your interests to life in exciting new ways.

Challenge your child to create a bold, eye-catching gift card design that celebrates their interests and shows how books help them explore ideas, spark imagination and go further through reading, and they could win prizes galore.

Six winning entrants will bag HUNDREDS of pounds  for their schools and themselves so they can choose all the books they need during the National Year of Reading and beyond. Plus, one overall winner will see their design turned into a real National Book Token for every child in their class – and enjoy a visit to a bookshop to spend them!

So get the pencils, pens and paints ready… and let’s GO ALL IN this World Book Day.

Click here for link to template – Design a National Book Token template

PRIZES

ONE OVERALL WINNER (chosen from the first prize winners in each category) will receive a £10/€12 National Book Tokens gift card in their design for every child in their class,* and the opportunity for their class to visit a real bookshop to spend their National Book Tokens.

FIRST PRIZE in each age range wins: £350/€400 National Book Tokens for the school and £100/€115 National Book Tokens for the pupil

SECOND PRIZE in each age range wins: £200/€230 National Book Tokens for the school and £50/€60 National Book Tokens for the pupil

HOW TO ENTER

To enter, children should design a National Book Tokens gift card on the theme of Go All In, using their designs to show how reading brings their passions to life.

Here are some ideas to get started:

• What do you love?
• Think about your interests, hobbies or favourite things – from sport, art and music to animals, adventures, facts or fantasy. How does reading help you explore them more deeply?
• How does reading connect to your passion?
• Does reading help you learn new skills, imagine new worlds, discover real-life heroes, or understand something better? Try to show this through pictures, colours or symbols.
• Go bold!
• A gift card should stand out. Use strong images, clear ideas and eye-catching designs that make someone want to pick it up and give it as a gift.
• Look at real gift cards
• Check out gift cards in shops or online. What do they have in common? What makes your favourites work so well – and how can you use those ideas in your own design?