The Buzz

Dear Parents and Carers,

What a busy week we have had at HISN! The children and staff, as always, have done us proud and we are excited to share with you all what has been happening within our school.

On Monday, your children looked incredibly smart and ready for their individual and sibling photos. We were all very impressed with the slicked back and beautiful hairstyles so a big thank you to you as parents and carers for ensuring that the children were on time and bringing their winning smiles. Photo proofs will be sent home with your child next week with instructions on ordering. Thank you to the office team and Mr Quirk for ensuring that the day ran smoothly and the children were punctual for their photographs.

October is a month of celebrating diversity and inclusion within HISN. Our language of the month, this month, is ‘Albanian’; I had the pleasure of introducing this during Monday’s assembly. It was so lovely to hear from children with Albanian heritage and the facts that they were able to recall about Albania – particularly about the capital city: ‘Tirana’. We also have learnt how to say ‘hello’ during the register which we have practised. Thank you to Mrs James for ensuring that our languages display in our hall celebrates the diverse range of languages that are spoken by our children and families within HISN.

Alongside this, we also have started learning about a range of inspirational figures in light of ‘Black History Month’. Thank you to Mrs Greenway for all the work and time she has spent on this as our ‘History Subject Lead’ at HISN. At the end of this month, we look forward to sharing some pupil voice from EYFS and KS1 in regards to what the children have found interesting and what they have learnt.

As we enter our second week of focusing upon ‘Pride’ as our principle, this has been really evident across our school. This week, myself and our Assistant Headteacher, Liz Davies visited Reception and Nursery to see their phonics, maths and writing. It was evident the children enjoyed discussing numerical numbers such as one more and they took great pride in rehearsing chorally their sounds for phonics, singing and using real life aspects (such as a picnic) to count and rehearse their numbers.

Within Year 1 and 2, myself and our KS1 lead, Mrs Clark, were immensely proud to see such beautiful presentation in your children’s English and Maths books. We are focusing on ‘Letter Joins’ – our handwriting scheme – to ensure that your children continue to develop a neat style of writing which leads to a cursive style.

We are looking forward to next week, whereby we share some more exciting news across HISN! Thank you for your continued support with your children.

Anna Gale

Head of School

Tomorrow - Friday 10th of October is World Mental Health Day. Every year, thousands of schools, companies and communities come together to make World Mental Health Day that little bit brighter by wearing something yellow.

On World Mental Health Day, children will come in wearing school uniform but can add some yellow! This may include smaller items such as socks, tights, hair bands, ties, a hat! etc to show our support for this day. There is no donation request for this awareness day!

If your child is moving up to Year 3 in September 2026 and you would like to book a tour of HJS please book via our website HPP website

Tours are running on the following dates:-

• Thursday 6th November 9am
• Thursday 11th December 9am

The tours will last approximately 1 hour and are for parent/carers of current Year 2 children only.

2M had the best attendance last week with 100%

1T had no late students last week

In year 1, we have begun to look at the concept of addition in maths. We have been identifying parts and wholes, and using part-whole models to partition numbers to help us to add two numbers together. In English, we have been looking at how to structure a sentence. We have been using our knowledge of punctuation to help us sequence words, building a sentence before writing it down. We have been looking at how we use capital letters and full stops to demarcate sentences, use adjectives to describe nouns, and read our work once we’ve completed to check it makes sense. We have also been writing sentences about ourselves, using the personal pronoun ‘I’.

We have begun our D&T topic by thinking about what we would like to put in our own smoothies. We thought about what exactly a smoothie was, and what a smoothie would usually be made up of. We then looked at various fruits and vegetables and discussed what would taste nice and what might not.

In history, we have been thinking about the toys we have at home and telling our friends all about them, and we discussed how these might be different from the toys our parents and grandparents played with. We have been sorting toys in to old and new, identifying the features of modern-day toys and toys from the past, before putting these into a timeline to understand how these have evolved over time.

Our focus in science has been on our senses, and so far we have been learning about our sense of taste, sight and hearing. We have learnt about different parts of our tongue that help us to identify different tastes, and investigated the different parts of our ear, identifying the parts we can see (outer ear) and the parts that we cannot see (the middle and inner ear). We have also been learning about the different parts of the eye, labelling these and understanding how our eyes help us to see.

The children have fully settled into the routines and structure of year 1, and we continue to be impressed with what they are able to do in class. Thank you for all your support with this at home too.

Thank you too to those of you who have put your names forward to be class representatives for Class 1B. Classes 1C, 1D and 1T are still on the hunt for reps, so please email Louise Allen if you are interested in taking up this role: contacthppa@gmail.com. Class teachers and parents alike have found these to be incredibly helpful in disseminating messages and information to parents, and vice versa, in the past, so a huge thank you in advance to those of you willing to help out!

This week, Team Earth, along with some enthusiastic KS1 helpers, have been busy planting bulbs in preparation for springtime! The children showed fantastic teamwork and excitement as they carefully planted each bulb, looking forward to seeing the colourful flowers bloom next year.

As our new plants begin to grow, we kindly ask everyone to help take care of them and respect the flower beds in KS1 playground.

Thank you to Miss Mills for working with Team Earth on this project and we look forward to seeing the results.

We are still looking for children who would like to accompany Mrs Gale on Sunday 9th November to take part in the annual remembrance day parade from the Methodist Church on Percy Road to the Oldfield Road Memorial Garden. If your child is in Year 1 or Year 2, and they would like to accompany Mrs Gale on this day, please do email the school office. The children will need to meet Mrs Gale at 11.50am at the church on the Sunday for a 12pm start. The parade finishes at approximately 1.15pm and children will need to wear full school uniform.

As most of you will be aware, school budgets nationally have been reduced in real terms and many schools are being forced to make difficult funding decisions (for example, reducing school hours, closing school libraries, or cutting support staff). We are pleased to say that due to the careful financial planning of our senior leadership team and business manager, Hampton Primary Partnership are not facing such dire financial circumstances.

However, the budget continues to be tight and is an on-going concern. While we can meet the essentials, we would like to invest for the future. For example, improving the outdoor spaces is a high priority for the schools and such equipment is extremely expensive.

As a federation we are continuously looking at funding sources. At a meeting of the Executive Committee, we agreed to introduce a voluntary contribution of £10 per child per term. This will be applied to a maximum of two children across HPP.

This contribution will cover the costs for food technology, arts week, and various additional incidental activities that enhance your child’s learning. School visits, swimming and other larger ticket items will still be charged per activity, to cover the costs. At HPP we are a cashless school therefore all payments are made via Arbor.

We hope you will understand the need to introduce this fee to cover the costs of these extra activities. This will enable us to continue to provide a broad and creative curriculum that children enjoy.

The NHS Pharmacy First Service is an England-only service, which allows you to access advice and treatment for seven common conditions from your community pharmacy, without the need to see a GP.

It's easy, just walk into a participating Boots Pharmacy and ask for help.

The seven common conditions are :

🤒Sinusitus 🤒Impetigo🤒Sore Throat 🤒Shingles🤒Earache 🤒Uncomplicated urinary tract infections in women🤒Infected insect bites and stings

HPP are looking for an Admin Officer for the junior school, click the link below for more information.

Arts Richmond Young Writers Festival is open to all pupils who live or attend schools in Richmond upon Thames. It would be amazing to see as many writers form Hampton as possible!

Please make sure that your child's water bottle, sweatshirt or cardigan is named; lost property will be put in the box outside the office reception area. Please communicate to other parents via Classlist if you have trouble locating lost cardigans/sweatshirts.

Parents should end their phone calls before they enter the school site so that you can greet your children without any distractions and with a smile.

A reminder to all parents to be considerate to our neighbours when dropping off in the morning and collecting at the end of the day. We do have parking enforcement officers regularly in attendance so please do not park on zigzags, double lines, corners of roads, across neighbours driveways. Ripley Road is a School Street zone and is closed to traffic Monday-Friday 8.30am-9.00am and 2.45pm-3.15pm.

If your child has a medical condition, please make sure that you update their Arbor record. This information is very important and will be used by our Welfare Medical Officer, Miss Bissett.

Click on above tab to view HISN's virtual school tour

Email: office.hisn@hpp.school
Website: hpp.school
Location: Hampton Infant School and Nursery, Ripley Road, Hampton, UK
Phone: 0208 979 1815