✨ This Week at Morningside ✨

It was amazing to see so many children and parents at last night’s school discos! Thank you to our brilliant PTA for organising such a fun evening, and to everyone in our community who came along to support. If you’d like to get involved or help out at future events, the PTA would love to hear from you – it’s a great way to make new connections and support the school.

This week, we’re also celebrating two fantastic achievements:
🎤 Rachel and Ellen were invited to speak at the Nurturing Schools Conference to share Morningside’s journey as the first school in Hackney to achieve the Nurturing Schools Award.
🚶‍♀️ Morningside has been awarded Gold for the TfL Travel for Life programme – a huge well done to Sting and the JRSO team for leading the way in promoting active, safe and sustainable travel!

We are excited to let you know that we’ll be adding two special events to our calendar this term:

 Wear Red Day – Friday 17th October 2025
Morningside will be taking part in Wear Red Day, a national event led by the Show Racism the Red Card campaign. It’s a day to show our support for equality, respect, and inclusion.
Children are invited to wear something red to school—this could be a red hair accessory, red socks, or a red T-shirt—alongside their usual school uniform (for example, school trousers or skirt).

 Cultural Celebration Week – Wednesday 22nd & Thursday 23rd October 2025
As part of our Black History Week learning, we have two exciting events planned to celebrate our school’s wonderful diversity:

 Wednesday 22nd October 2025
There will be a special lunch for all staff and children, lovingly prepared by our amazing chef, Awa, featuring a range of delicious dishes inspired by different cultures from around the world.

 Thursday 23rd October 2025 – Cultural Celebration Day
Children are encouraged to come to school wearing traditional clothing or colours that represent their culture, heritage, or identity. This will be a fantastic opportunity for our school community to celebrate, share, and learn from one another.

After school, between 4pm and 5pm families are invited to come into school to see an exhibition of the children’s work about their learning from our Black History curriculum. We will also be hosting a special food sale, where families can enjoy and purchase a variety of cultural dishes prepared for the occasion. It will be a wonderful way to come together as a community, celebrate our diversity, and raise funds to support future school events and projects.

Thank you for your continued support in helping us make these events meaningful and enjoyable for all our children.

Have a lovely weekend.

Jo and Rachel

What’s on next week:

Here are the events happening next week:

Tuesday 14th October Workshop: Books, Biscuits and Brilliant Readers 8:45am – all welcome

Friday 17th October Wear Red Day – Show Racism the Red Card

Friday 17th October Phonics Cinema 3:25pm – Year 1 families only

Important Safeguarding Notice: Children’s “Spy” Books

We want to make you aware of a recent issue affecting some popular children’s books by Andrew Cope, including the Spy Dogs, Spy Cats, and Spy Pups series.

Some editions of these books include a printed web address at the back. This link used to go to the author’s website, but the domain is no longer under his control. It has since been taken over by another party and now leads to inappropriate adult content.

The publisher, Puffin, has paused sales and distribution of the books and is working with schools, libraries, and retailers to remove copies from circulation. They have stressed that the website has no connection to the author or publisher.

What this means for you:

• If your child has any Spy Dog, Spy Cat or Spy Pups books at home, please check the back for website links and make sure they do not try to visit the site.
• It is safe for children to continue reading the stories themselves — the concern is only with the outdated link.
• We recommend talking with your child about the importance of not following web addresses in books without checking with an adult first.

Upcoming with The Family Coach Service

Hackney’s Family coach service have the following courses on offer – see below for details and how to sign up.

Building a Wellbeing Toolbox

“This group is specifically designed to support your wellbeing as parents. To sign up, we ask that parents commit to attending all four weeks of the group sessions (details attached). This will be held across 4 weeks at Daubeney Children’s Centre starting Monday 10th November 1pm – 3pm (details attached).”

Creating a Sleep Routine for you and your family

“This will be run across 5 weeks on Tuesday mornings between 9am and 10.30am and will be starting Tuesday 11th November (details attached). Again, we ask that parents can commit to all 5 weeks when signing up. This takes place at Holy Trinity Primary School.”

To sign up to either or both of these groups, email the Family Coach service confirming your commitment, and the name of your child’s school, on familycoach@hackney.gov.uk

Attendance Classes of The Week 

This week, we want to celebrate 4S who have 98.5% attendance. A HUGE congratulations and keep up the excellent work, it has a great impact on learning and progress. You can help your child’s class win the weekly fruit platter by making sure they are at school everyday.

Whole School attendance this week: 94.5%

Our school target is 97% attendance this year.

Class attendance this week

At Morningside this week…

This week we have been looking at Maths across the school, you can see all their hard work in the gallery below.