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18th September 2026

TRY TRY TRY

This second full week of term has seen the children settle into the routines of school life after the long summer break. 
We began the week with the launch of The Lion Inside, our Book of the Year at Anson.
The story tells the tale of a mouse who finds that confidence comes from within and so we talked about how you build confidence while you are at school. 
It all stems from giving things a go. 
We asked the children to share their experiences of learning to ride a bike. Many of them shared that when they first tried to ride the bike they fell off, lost balance or rode into a bush! 
We reminded the children that when you learn to ride a bike your don’t just get on it and pedal away. It takes several tries, several fails and lots of resilience to build your confidence on that bike. 
However, as long as we don’t give up we do eventually succeed. This is an increase in skill and confidence.  Of course, it’s the same with reading, mathematics, art, drama, PE and every other subject at school: if we try and we fail that’s ok. 
At home, we encourage you to share the same message: we learn from our mistakes. It’s ok to make those mistakes as long as we learn something, make a change and try, try and try again.

FRIENDS OF ANSON MOVIE MOVERS

The first Friends of Anson event for the school year will be the Movie Movers Disco.  
On Friday 9th October children are invited to come to school dressed as their favourite film character as we come together to celebrate the movies. 
Tickets will be available soon on the School Gateway app and cost £3.50 per child. This will include entry as well as refreshments during the disco. On the day, children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 will head straight from their classrooms to the disco at 3:30pm and parents can collect them from the hall at 4:30pm. Due to safeguarding procedures parents are unable to stay.
At 5:00pm the children in Key Stage Two (Y3-6) return to school for their disco. Again, parents are unable to stay at the event unless they are part of the Friends of Anson team of volunteers.
There will be lots of games, dancing and fun to be had by all so book your tickets as soon as you can. 

PARENT MEETING INFORMATION

The Parent Meeting information is all live on the parent page of the website. 
Information regarding PE Days and other information has been shared by teachers on SeeSaw for pupils in Year 1 to Year 6. However, here is a handy table with the information for each of those year groups. When changes are made the teachers will inform you on Seesaw. 

	Y1	Y2	Y3	Y4	Y5	Y6
PE Days	Indoor: Wed Outdoor: Fri	Indoor:  2R: Mon 2H: Wed Outdoor: Thurs	Indoor: Tues Outdoor: Mon	Indoor: Mon Outdoor: Tues Swim: Thurs	Indoor: Thurs Outdoor 5K on Wed 5H on Fri	Indoor: 6P: Mon 6H: Wed Outdoor: Fri
Homework	Set on Friday and due in on Friday	Set on Friday and due in on Friday	Set on a Monday	Maths set and due on Thursday	Optional Google Class Work	Set throughout the week and increasing through the year
Other	Daily Reading Phonics Mathematics	Daily Reading Phonics	Daily Reading  TT Rockstars for at least 10 minutes each	Daily Reading 50 mins TT Rockstars	Daily Reading 20 mins TT Rockstars	Daily Reading (30 mins) 20 mins TT Rockstars
Book Swaps	Changed on a Monday and Thursday	Changed on a Monday	Monday (3A) and Thurs (3M)	Everyday as pupils require	Banded Books: Tuesday and everyday for other readers	Banded Books: Thursday and everyday for other readers
Spelling Tests	n/a	Friday	Monday	4B: Thursday 4V: Friday	Wednesday	6P: Wed 6H: Friday

SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Secondary schools across the UK are opening their doors to parents of pupils in Year 6. Dates are above for Hampstead while you can scan the QR code for St. Claudine’s. There are also activities for all primary pupils on offer at Hampstead. Contact them for more information. See below for more Open Events. See the newsletter for links and details. 

BOTTLE TOPS

Please keep the tops trickling in. We are doing really well. We’ll  update numbers next week but top of the bottle tops chart this week is Alfie in Year 6! 

CLUBS

Clubs will begin on Monday! 
For those of you who are new to Anson Clubs please note that all clubs run from, 3:30pm to 4:30pm and take place on the school site. 
At the end of the club time please collect your child promptly from the main entrance of the school as staff need to begin their own journeys home. 
If children are not collected on time they will be placed into KidzClub at your own expense.

ATTENDANCE

Someone (Mr Pile) pushed the button too quickly last week. 
So here is a more accurate update on the attendance for the week beginning Monday 7th September. Well done to Highbury who topped attendance by 0.3% from Mapesbury. See the newsletter for the graph. 

COMMUNITY CORNER

Coming up next week in our local community:

22nd - Islam: Gyarvi Sharif commemorates the death anniversary of Abdul Qadir Jilani, a revered Sufi saint.

23rd - Paganism: Autumn Equinox A pagan tradition celebrating day and night balance.
25th - Judaism: Sukkot - Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, celebrating harvest and the wilderness journey.
26th - Hinduism: Mahalaya marks the beginning of Navratri, invoking Goddess Durga.

As always, we come together to wish everyone in the community celebrating their religion and culture much joy and happiness. 

 

11.09.26

FAMILY SUPPORT IS OUT THERE

Brent Best Start Family Hubs support your family from the moment you know you’re expecting, through pregnancy and birth, until your child is 18 years old.
The hubs work with voluntary, community sector providers, health and council teams to bring families a wide range of services and activities. 
For children at Anson families can access stay and play sessions, speech and language support, fun fitness, family cooking, sports, arts, crafts and health and wellbeing support. 
There are dedicated Dad sessions and lots of advice around debt management, legal issues, hosing, employment and much more. 
Our local hub is the 

Three Trees Best Start Family Hub
Tiverton Road
Kensal Rise
NW10 3HL

tel: 020 8937 3892
The activity programme is available online or from the hub and are updated termly. You can find the full Best Start Family Hub timetable in multiple languages by visiting:

www.brent.gov.uk/fasmilyhubs 

Family Hubs are a great way to get the support you need and have fun along the way with the whole family. 

THE ANSON BOTTLE TOP COLLECTION: 10,000 TARGET

We need your help for an ambitious project taking place later in the academic year. 
We are looking for every member of the community to collect, wash and donate plastic bottle tops to Anson Primary School. 
We would love for you to donate as many bottle tops as humanly possible between September and January. 
While we won’t share the reason for this collection yet - rest assured it is for a very exciting initiative beginning in 2027. 
We estimate that we will need more than 10,000 bottle tops to achieve our goal so don’t recycle those bottle tops at home - save them and send them in to Anson. 

We can do this together! 

PARENT MEETINGS FOR THE 2026-27 SCHOOL YEAR

Thank you to those parents in Reception and Year One who came along to our parent meetings this week. 
Don’t worry if you couldn’t make it as we will be sharing the resources online next week. 
On Monday 14th September at 7pm we will host an online meeting for Year 2 to Year 6. This is to try and reach as many parents as possible and to prevent many of you needing to sit through 2 or 3 meetings with the same content. 
The link should have been in the email sent home to parents this afternoon. 
Please note that our Zoom account allows for 100 people to enter the meeting. If you can’t get in don’t worry as we will be recording the meeting. 

ATTENDANCE - WEEK BEGINNING 7th SEPTEMBER

Seven classes managed to hit our target of 97% this week.   
This is a really great start to the term with all but one of the classes exceeding the average attendance from last year. Let’s keep it up! 

LEARNING AT HOME

Learning is a partnership. Schools, families and agencies all have a role to play in helping every child thrive.
At Anson, we developed Help at Home to show how simple activities at home can support the learning behaviours we develop at school. Our 50 activities include playing games, visiting the park, cooking together and much more.
You’re probably doing most of them already, but take a look at see if you can Help at Home.

PHONE FREE

Please remember that we are a mobile phone free site at Anson Primary School. 
The use of mobile phones in the school is also prohibited for parents. Signs are in place reminding parents that they must not use their mobile phone on site and especially during times when they are collecting their children from the school. 
This is to ensure children are escorted safely off site and to model adult behaviours to children which reinforce our online safety messages. 

COMMUNITY CORNER

Coming up next week in our local community:

Ganesh Chaturthi: Ganesh Chaturthi is a Hindu festival celebrating Lord Ganesha, the god of wisdom, new beginnings and good fortune. Families and communities create colourful statues, share prayers, music and food, and enjoy celebrations together. At the end, the statue is traditionally carried in a procession and placed in water.

Samvatsari: This is the final and holiest day of the annual Jain festival Paryushana dedicated entirely to forgiveness, repentance, and spiritual purification is celebrated on the final day of the Paryushan festival to seek and grant universal forgiveness for any harm caused to all living beings.

Yom Kippur: Yom Kippur fast day is the holiest day of the year, when Jewish people are closest to God and to the essence of their souls. Yom Kippur means “Day of Atonement,”.

As always, we come together to wish everyone in the community celebrating their religion and culture much joy and happiness. 

CLUBS

Clubs will begin in the week of the 21st September. 
The clubs will be run by the team at DFY as well as members of staff at Anson. 
You can book the DFY Clubs directly with them using the link in the email sent earlier in the week while Clubs run by staff need to be selected using a different link. Places will be allocated next week. 

The clubs are:

Skateboarding (R to Y6)
Football (Y1 to Y3)
Kickboxing (Y2 to Y6)
Basketball (Y1 to Y6)
Gymnastics (Y1 to Y6)

Chess (Y3 to Y6)
Baking (Y1 to Y3)
Film Club (Y1 and Y2)
Crochet Club (Y3 to Y6)
Football (Y4 to Y6)
Spanish (Y1 and Y2)
Forest School (Reception)
Lego (Y3, 4 and 5)

Please make selections by Tuesday.

28.08.26

WELCOME BACK

I hope that this newsletter finds you well after what has been an exceptionally dry summer. 
Hopefully this means you have been able to spend large amounts of time outside enjoying the summer sun.
The holiday has been quiet at Anson with less works than last year. Essential electrical and maintenance jobs have been completed. We have a year of exciting opportunities and experiences for the children and lots of opportunities for you to get involved in as parents too. 
We look forward to connecting with all of you over the next few weeks. 

 

BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE LION INSIDE

As many of you will know we are a school with 6 key Learning Behaviours. 
The Learning Behaviours help the children understand how we learn. They include collaboration, resilience, risk-taking, aspiration, thinking and independence. 
Every year we encourage and develop those behaviours in our lessons, our activities and events. This year we will be using The Lion Inside by Rachel Bright and Jim Field as our Book of the Year. The story will help us share each Learning Behaviour and what we can learn from the events in the story. 

 

PARENT MEETINGS FOR THE 2026-27 SCHOOL YEAR

This September we are inviting all parents to meetings to find out about the coming academic year. 
If you are an established parent you may notice a few differences to our Parent Meetings. 
On Thursday 10th September at 9am we will host our Reception Parent Meeting in the school hall. This is a chance to meet the teachers and find out more about your child’s first year of formal education. 
On Friday 11th September at 9am parents from Year 1 are invited to join the class teachers to find out more about the opportunities for their children and the statutory assessments which take place in June. Then on Monday 14th September at 7pm we will host an online meeting for Year 2 to Year 6. This is to try and reach as many parents as possible and to prevent many of you needing to sit through 2 or 3 meetings with the same content. Details will be published very soon. 

10.09.26: Reception at 9am

11.09.26: Year 1 at 9am

14.09.26: Year 2-6 online

 

WHERE DO I GO AT THE END OF THE DAY?

The new year can be confusing as the children move to different places in the school. 
At the end of the school day you’ll need to know where to go to pick up your child.  So here is your guide:

Reception
All Reception children should be collected from the Dining Room doors in the main playground. 

1Q (Miss Gray)
The children will be dismissed from the small room by the Dining Room. 

Please wait near the bike shelter. 

1R (Miss Figueira)
The children will be dismissed through the playground at the rear of their class. Please wait by the orange gate. 

Year Two & Three & Six
The children will be brought out to the playground where they will line up. 
Please wait near the playground gate or neighbouring flats and the teachers will release your child to you. 

Year Four
The children will be dismissed from their classroom. Please wait under the blue sail. 

Year Five
The children will be dismissed from their classroom. Please wait by the outdoor stage. 

If you have any questions Mr Pile and Miss Callaghan will be on the playground to direct you to the correct location. 

 

THE ANSON BOTTLE TOP COLLECTION

We need your help for an ambitious project taking place later in the academic year. 
We are looking for every member of the community to collect, wash and donate plastic bottle tops to Anson Primary School. 
We would love for you to donate as many white, red, blue and orange bottle tops as humanly possible between September and January. 
While we won’t share the reason for this collection yet - rest assured it is for a very exciting initiative beginning in 2027. 
So, don’t recycle those bottle tops at home, save them and send them in to Anson. 

 

A FEW FINAL THOUGHTS THIS SUMMER

I am currently in my 26th year at Anson and the start of the new school year still gives me the same exciting feeling that it did back in 2001.
It will be a delight to see all the children coming back through the gates and reconnecting with them. It will be equally special to see our families coming together after weeks apart. 
The Anson community is a very special one and together we will all ensure this year is one where the children feel happy, safe, confident and in the best position to thrive.