Caring Curious Courageous

Enabling all children to learn and grow

Dear families,

• PANTS lessons – We’ll be using NSPCC resources to teach children how to stay safe from sexual abuse in an age-appropriate way
• Harvest Day – We're collecting donations for Richmond Food Bank. Thank you in advance for your generosity
• Reception Phonics Workshop – An important session for Reception families to learn how we teach phonics and how you can support at home
• Young Writers Competition – Open to all budding authors! Let’s showcase our talent—The Vineyard style!

Today is mental health day and as this newsletter lands in your inboxes, the children will be going outside for a whole school extra play.  Being outside has been proven to boost our mental health and well being.

Best wishes,

Frances Bracegirdle

Headteacher - headteacher@vineyard.richmond.sch.uk

NSPCC- PANTS

We will be introducing the NSPCC PANTS resources to the children during the week beginning 13/10/2025. These resources are part of the NSPCC’s child protection campaign called “Talk PANTS”. They’re designed to help schools, parents, and carers teach children especially in early years and primary school – simple but important messages about staying safe from sexual abuse in an age-appropriate way.

Song to support "Talk PANTS": 

“PANTS” is an easy-to-remember acronym:

• P – Privates are private
• A – Always remember your body belongs to you
• N – No means no
• T – Talk about secrets that upset you
• S – Speak up, someone can help

The children will be having conversations in school, and it would be greatly appreciated if this could be supported at home. 

Domestic Violence Support

October is Domestic Abuse Awareness Month. If you need any advice or support, please do visit Women's Aid or Refuge. 

Spy book series by Andrew Cope

A reminder to families to check the books you have at home for a link to a website that has been hacked. This website now has harmful content. More information can be found in this article. 

We have a new email address which we would like to direct you to if you want to contact us regarding safeguarding: dsl@vineyard.richmond.sch.uk

Alice McArdle

Assistant Headteacher

Our Approach to Handwriting at The Vineyard

At The Vineyard, we follow a clear and child-friendly approach to handwriting that focuses on developing fluency, legibility, and confidence. Children learn how to join their letters in a way that supports neat and comfortable writing, using what we call the Vineyard Script. We teach families of letters that follow similar patterns, starting with lower-case letters and building up to joins. Some letters never join – such as s, x, and z – and capital letters are always written separately. We also teach about magic letters (c, o, a, d, q, g), which are trickier to join from, so we help children learn not to connect the letter before them to make writing easier and more fluid. While there’s no expectation to practise at home, some children enjoy sharing their handwriting and letter joins with their families. If you'd like to explore the script we use, you can click the link below to download it.

The Vineyard script

Ms Reilly and Mrs Dempster 

Assistant Headteachers for Teaching & Learning

URGENT: Library Returns 

We are already missing over 120 books from the school library so far this term!

If you have received a reminder letter from our librarian, please make sure that you return any borrowed books to the school library as soon as possible. If you are unable to find the book, please can you contact the school to organise a replacement for the lost book.  

Thank you for your support with keeping our library open and fully stocked. 

Phonics Workshop for Reception Families 

Monday 20^th October at 9.30am

Online link

Meeting ID: 818 6373 8057

Passcode: 3yg1D8

This workshop will offer guidance to Reception families on how we teach phonics (reading and writing) in Reception and what families can do to help their child at home.

Kara Lucey

Reading/Phonics Lead 

Richmond Young Writers' Competition 2026

Following on from last year’s successful entries, which featured two competition winners, we are proud to announce our support for Arts Richmond’s Young Writers’ Competition 2026. 

Open to all people who live or attend school in Richmond, the competition is looking for writing, either prose (maximum of 500 words) or poetry (up to 25 lines). The judging panel are very happy to receive shorter submissions.

This year, there are two themes for entrants to write about. These are, My World and Something Extraordinary. 

The competition will be judged across several age ranges, the youngest of which is Year 4 and under, as well as up to Years 5 and 6. 

Competition rules: 

• All work must be an original composition and all entries must be typed.
• No entrants’ names to appear on the piece of work.
• Entries should be sent to: ETNA Community Centre Room 21, 13 Rosslyn Road, Twickenham, TW1 2AR or emailed to YWentries@artsrichmond.or
• Closing date is Friday 5th December. 

Why not make a start? If you would like to work on your entry in school, Amethyst classroom will be open on Monday lunchtimes from 12.30–1.00 for children to develop their ideas with teacher supervision. Please call in and give it a try, whether you are already a confident writer or just starting out.  

Emma Norman 

Amethyst Class Teacher 

World Mental Health Day at The Vineyard
Today is World Mental Health Day - a reminder that looking after our minds is just as important as looking after our bodies. At The Vineyard, we’ve taken some meaningful time to help our children understand how they can be kind to their minds. In classrooms, children practised simple breathwork to help calm and focus their thoughts. This afternoon, the whole school came together for our BIG PLAY. This was 15 minutes where every member of staff was outside playing and connecting with children, all at the same time. Our focus was the outdoors and the positive impact nature and movement can have on our wellbeing. We hope that, as families, you can find a little time this weekend to step outside, take a breath, and simply be together.

To support mental wellbeing beyond school, we also encourage families to explore our Wellbeing Hub. This is a private provider offering FREE mental health resources and support to families of member schools, of which we are one of them.

Please follow this link to sign up if you haven’t already:
👉 The Wellbeing Hub – Sign Up Here

 A huge thank you to everyone that donated to SPEAR last year. Please see the message below from their fundraising team.