Welcome to Torfield School

This term in design and technology lessons Africa and Antarctica classes are designing and building bird feeders. To support this part of the curriculum, both classes enjoyed an education visit to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve where they immersed themselves in the natural world to gather inspiration for their designs. During the visit, the students observed bird species in their natural habitats and had an idea of birds their feeders might attract. The visit was also very active, with both classes enjoying the benefits of being outdoors in nature and walking through a spectacular place to see wildlife.

Each week at Torfield, our Celebration Assembly recognises and rewards pupils who have made improvements in their personal development with a Rainbow Star of the Week award. For our first Celebration Assembly of 2025, we acknowledged all of our pupils who achieved 100% attendance in the autumn term. These Rainbow Stars of the Week are: Jareth, Michael, Kian, Anissa, Harley, Adrian, Luca, Noah, Otis, Jesse, Yasin, Ada-Grace, and Samuel. We are especially proud that some of these children only joined us in September, which makes their excellent attendance even more impressive.   

We are pleased to share our autumn newsletter with you, which includes lots of information about activities pupils enjoyed this term and details of our Christmas celebrations.

Pupils from Asia Class embarked on an inspiring trip to the Hastings Contemporary Gallery. The visit was part of our ongoing commitment to providing Torfield’s pupils with rich, immersive learning experiences outside the classroom. This outing enhanced their understanding of art, ignited their imaginations, and encouraged them to share and express their views and responses to the exhibitions.

At Torfield we believe that teaching personal development through our Rainbow Awards is just as important as academic development. Recently, Asia Class had the opportunity to learn about road safety, equipping them with the knowledge and confidence they need to stay safe while crossing roads. The road safety session ensured the class learned the key steps of crossing the road safely.

At Torfield, we are incredibly proud of the compassion and generosity our students have shown in their recent efforts to raise funds for Children in Need. This important day not only highlights the importance of giving back but also reinforces the values of empathy, teamwork, and social responsibility that we value.  We had lots of Pudsey-themed activities happening in all our classrooms and the children really enjoyed the day. Thank you to all who have been able to donate, we have raised over £100!

It is Anti-bullying week and children have enjoyed looking at the theme “Choose respect”. North America performed a thoughtful assembly about bullying for Croft Road pupils. And lots of odd socks fun was had throughout the whole school!

This week's Celebration Assembly was extra special. This was because as well as recognising and rewarding each class's Reader of the Week we also had a special certificate for one pupil who had completed the Marvellous Maker Summer Reading Challenge 2024 by reading six books over the summer holiday. We are very proud of this pupil's achievements and it was wonderful to celebrate their reading success with the whole school!

As part of our commitment to improving pupils’ physical health, and increasing the range of sporting activities on offer at the school, we have recently introduced cycling to Torfield. A group of children visited Hastings Cycles to help pick out new bicycles for the school and, of course, helmets! The children really enjoyed their special visit and were given lots of support and advice by the friendly staff at Hastings Cycles. One pupil was even offered a job fixing bicycles when they are older. We are starting our bicycle lessons with a small group of pupils to begin with, but plan to offer this to all pupils in the future.

At Torfield observing and understanding seasonal change is a topic which runs throughout the year. Each class has chosen an outdoor environment which they will visit four times throughout the school year so that they can compare the differences which come with each season. Last week Oceania class had a wonderful adventure to St Helen’s Wood and carried out their observations of the wood in autumn.

As a special school, we alternate between a Year A and Year B curriculum so that all of our pupils enjoy a breadth of study and avoid repeating topics and core texts. This year we are learning from our Year B curriculum and you can get an overview of every subject your child will be studying at our website here: https://www.torfieldschool.org/curriculum/your-childs-curriculum/class-overviews  

Building on the success of our music curriculum at Torfield we have exciting new opportunities for our pupils this academic year.

We hope you have all enjoyed reading your child’s end-of-year report which came home with them today.  As a school, we think it’s very important to share a report with you that covers all the subjects covered at Torfield as well an overview of your child’s year.  We also really value your comments so if you would like to share them please complete and return the enclosed form. If you would like an extra copy or an electronic version, please contact the school office and we will arrange that for you.  

Please don't worry if you saw a fire engine at Torfield today. It was a specially arranged visit from the fire brigade who came to Torfield to talk to the children about fire safety and how to pursue a career as a firefighter.

We are really excited to launch our new PE homework bags! Each class will have two bags and the children will each have the opportunity to take one home. We would love to see the creative ways you use the homework bags so please share these with us on dojo. There are some important safety points to note before using the bags. So please take the time to read these through. Torfield's PE bags were inspired by Leechpool Primary school in Horsham and we are grateful to them for sharing their wonderful ideas!

Thanks to Miss Inkster making contact with Hastings Adventure Golf, Torfield was able to enter this year’s Hastings Inter-School Golf Tournament. Our team, the Torfield Tornadoes, really did us proud and demonstrated the values of our Rainbow Awards throughout the competition. This was the first time these pupils had competed against children from other schools and they were great sports from start to finish. We are grateful to Mr Dobson, Miss Booth and Miss Abraham for supporting the children and keeping score. Mr Dobson even represented Torfield in the Teacher’s Competition!

We are noticing an increase of school bags with the child's name on the outside, as in the picture below. We appreciate that this is a good way to help children identify their name and their bag.  

This week our three upper Key Stage Two classes enjoyed a very special trip to London’s West End to see a performance of The Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre. Each class is learning about plays and playscripts and this educational visit will give them a clear understanding of what a professional production is like. The classes will also be studying William Shakespeare’s and will be identifying differences and similarities between Hamlet and the Lion King. This was an incredibly valuable experience for our pupils, many of which were visiting London for the first time and enjoyed seeing so many famous buildings. We are looking forward to giving other classes the experience next year.

The School Meals Summer Menu has been updated.

You may have noticed some changes if your child brought home a smiley face certificate today. From this week, when a pupil receives a smiley face for achieving one of their personal development targets this is now celebrated with a new Rainbow Award smiley face sticker. We have also introduced ten out of ten attendance stickers, these are given out each Monday to the children who benefitted from 100% during the week before. At Torfield we are really proud of both the progress our pupils make in their personal development and their fantastic attendance. This is why we are pleased to be able to celebrate these successes through their smiley face certificates which are awarded in each week’s celebration assembly.