Newsletters

Dorchester News - 20th March 2026

Newsletter

20th March 2026

 

Dear Dorchester Families,

It was lovely to see so many families at our Parent Consultation evenings this week. It is always wonderful to share your child(ren)’s successes with you and to see them sharing their work with such pride and enthusiasm. We hope you found the meetings useful.

Thank you to those parents who have already completed our parent and carer survey, which was sent out on Wednesday and was also available during consultations. Your ideas and opinions are incredibly valuable to us, and it is important that we gather a wide range of views. Whether you are delighted with all that we do, or feel there are areas where we could improve, we want to hear from you.

The link to the survey is below. It only takes a few minutes to complete, and we really appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback:

https://forms.gle/vGC2B6jJX9HAvEtA6

Next week, we will be hosting our Spring Festival, including our Spring Bonnet Parade. Children in Nursery, Reception, and Years 1–5 will make their bonnets in school from Monday, using sugar paper as a base, which will be provided. Please send your child in with any materials you have at home to help decorate their bonnet—there are some ideas in the news article below.

Year 6 will create their bonnets at home—undoubtedly their final opportunity to take part in a Spring Bonnet Parade—so please support them in making it extra special. FODS will once again provide chocolate eggs for the winning bonnet from each class.

We will hold our Easter Assembly on Friday morning, where the children will reflect on Easter from a Christian perspective, exploring the significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We wish all of our families celebrating Eid-ul-Fitr today a joyful and peaceful time.

Have a great weekend.

Cathy Bell
Headteacher

 

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Latest News

20 Mar 2026
Parking complaints.
  We are still receiving regular reports of inconsiderate and unsafe parking of vehicles by a small number of people over dropped kerbs, over driveways, on single/double yellow lines and on corners with poor visibility when dropping off and collecting children from the school. In som...
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20 Mar 2026
Spring Bonnets 2026
  For Nursery, Reception, and Years 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5. Please bring in spring decorations for your bonnet from Monday 25th March. Bonnets will be made at school that week using your decorative items. The base of the bonnets will be made using sugar paper provided by School...
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20 Mar 2026
New News EWS Early Years and Primary Webinars April and Summer Schedule 2026
https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/primary-parents-nhs-wellbeing-workshops-682309?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=creatorshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=odclsxcollection&utm-source=cp&aff=escb    
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20 Mar 2026
Pageticker's Spring Reading List
                                                 
Read more
20 Mar 2026
New BBC series for kids who struggle with friendship
Does your child shine at home, but struggle socially around other kids? The team behind The Dog House is making a brand new BBC series about childhood friendship and are looking for kids aged 5 to 8 who are finding it hard to make friends. If this sounds like your child – or someone you kn...
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20 Mar 2026
EASTER HOLIDAYS BIKEABILITY 2026
  FREE Bikeability training for young cyclists  in Year 5 and above who live or attend a school in Kingston or Sutton Bikeability Level 1 & 2 Courses:   Times: 09:30 – 12.00 or 12:30 - 15:00   Sessions starting...
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Sport

20 Mar 2026
Basketball team success!
Our basketball team delivered an outstanding performance, finishing in first place after playing six matches—winning five and drawing one. Throughout the competition, the team demonstrated excellent skill, strong teamwork, and exemplary behaviour both on and off the court. We are incredibly pr...
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20 Mar 2026
Girls Football V Cheam Park Farm
Our girls’ football team faced a tough and challenging match this week, showing just how much they have grown and developed over the season. The last time we played this opposition, we suffered a difficult 6–0 defeat. However, this time, the team approached the game with a completely...
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20 Mar 2026
Netball vs St. Cecilia’s
  A team   Lost 6-1  There were a few lovely passages of play today where the team brought the ball down court effortlessly - good timing, accurate passing and solid footwork all on show. Overall though we just couldn’t repeat that enough times to be able to compete with a v...
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Friends of Dorchester School

 

 

 

We hope World Book Day has provided opportunities to celebrate reading and your children’s favourite stories.  To continue the love of reading, we are today launching a sponsored reading challenge to encourage reading and help the school provide more books. 

The project is being organised in conjunction with our local Usborne Partner, Mandy West, and all the money raised will go towards brand new books for our school. 

In addition to the sponsorship money, Usborne will also donate up to 60% of the total raised in EXTRA FREE BOOKS to the school. So for every £600 raised, the school will get an extra £360 in FREE Usborne books!

Please help us to enhance the school’s reading resources for pupils by encouraging your child to spend a small amount of time each day either reading to themselves, to others, or being read to. They can read books, comics, magazines, newspapers, menus, websites, recipes, poems, leaflets, instructions – anything with words! 

If you are able to support our sponsored read, please could you send donations in via BACS to the Friends of Dorchester School account (A/C No: 11783370, Sort code: 60-24-28) or in an envelope to your child’s class teacher including their name and class. All children will be reading in school and we have emailed a grid with some fun reading ideas to use and a sponsorship form.  All children taking part will receive a certificate of participation after the event.

There will be extra break time for the class with the most participants!

We look forward to lots more books for your child to read, share and enjoy.

Happy reading,

Friends of Dorchester School

 

 

 We have been made aware of an error with Amazon & eBay while using easyfundraising, please ensure that your basket is empty prior to shopping, or it will not register the use of easyfundraising.

Do you know about Your School Lottery? Dorchester Primary School is part of this fantastic lottery. This lottery has been set up specifically to raise money and make a difference for our children! It's a fantastic way to bring parents, carers, teachers, and the wider community together, in partnership with our school, and at the same time give something back. There are lots of amazing prizes to be won, your support is greatly appreciated, and we wish you good luck! To sign up or find out more information, please visit the website via this link: https://www.yourschoollottery.co.uk/lottery/school/dorchester-primary-school?fbclid=IwAR2UqkYQ4Yf79s9ZZul-tgcgLtJp9McVlXXqWutUrjklVom85O1EppaUonM

 

Thank you for your continued support.

 

 

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Local events and clubs

20 Mar 2026
Cheam Easter Holiday Activities
Sparking an interest in history in children - history as a fun exploring game!   Quiz Trails are created by us, a Mum and two daughters. Each self-guided Quiz Trail has clues for adults PLUS clues for juniors so they make memories together...
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20 Mar 2026
Easter Holiday Clubs
           
Read more
20 Mar 2026
External Summer Clubs @ Dorchester
  WWW.BOOTHEATREANDENTERTAINMENT.CO.UK    
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Learning Highlights

& Peek of the Week

20 Mar 2026
Nursery: What will your magic potion do?
This week in Nursery we have been thinking about magic potions. We have been using our imaginations to think of creative ingredients; of course, we had to include some disgusting items like spiders and eyeballs. The children have been using their developing mark-making skills to draw what they...
Read more
19 Mar 2026
Reception: What can you remember about the planets in our Solar System?
In Reception this week, the children have been learning about our Solar System. They have learnt about the properties of the different planets, discussing how many moons each planet has, which planets are gas giants, which are cold and which are hot and which are closest to or furthest from the sun...
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20 Mar 2026
Year 1: Which people help to keep us safe?
In PSHE, we have been looking at people who help to keep us safe, such as police officers, firefighters, teachers, doctors and dentists. The children then drew these people to create a poster for us to include in our PSHE learning book.
Read more
16 Mar 2026
Year 2: What are the features of micro-habitats? (Designing a bug hotel).
This week we used what we have learned in Forest School and Science to design bug hotels. We thought about different minibeasts and their micro-habitats. A big factor in where a minibeast lives is down to their diet. For example: Caterpillars eat leaves so they like to live on top or...
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19 Mar 2026
What is a branching database?
This week in Year 3, we have been learning about branching databases in our computing lessons. The children explored how information can be organised by asking simple yes/no questions to sort and identify different items. We began by looking at groups of animals and foods, and the children worked...
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19 Mar 2026
How do humans use the coast?
This week, Year 4 have been busy practising their lines for their production next week, and they are doing really well! The children have shown great enthusiasm and commitment as they rehearse, and it’s fantastic to see their confidence growing. Please continue to support them in practising...
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17 Mar 2026
Year 5 - How often does the Moon orbit the Earth?
This week we have been using a range of balls to represent the Earth, Moon and Sun to show how they are related. The Moon orbits the Earth approximately every 28 days and the Earth orbits the Sun every 365.25 days. Every four years we gain a day, which is why we have 29th February as a leap year...
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20 Mar 2026
How did your conclusion match your predicting in our Science experiment?
As part of our Science topic about Electricity, children in Year 6 have been carrying out an investigation into how to change the brightness of a bulb or the speed of a motor. We planned this last week and carried it out this week. The children have been learning about Independent Variables, Depende...
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Safeguarding and Pastoral Care

20 Mar 2026
Online Safety March
Virtual Private Network A Virtual Private Network (VPN) helps make your connection between a device and the internet more secure and can help protect personal information and add privacy. However, whilst a VPN has benefits, it is important that you are aware that if your child is using a VPN, the...
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Lunch Menu

Our new Spring menus are available here. 


Upcoming Events

To view the school calendar click here.

Nursery End of Term
All Day
26
March
Last Day of Term Years R-6 - School Closes for children at 1:30pm
All Day
27
March
Good Friday
All Day
03
April
Easter Monday
All Day
06
April
Children return to school
All Day
13
April
Sapphire Class Assembly
9:00am – 9:30am
24
April