On 11th March, Hazelwood hosted its very first Community Iftar! What started as an idea at a HPSA coffee morning, turned into a wonderful community event with over 170 adults and children attending. An Iftar is where Muslims come together to break their fast every day during the holy month of Ramadan. 
It was lovely to see so many families, both Muslim and non-Muslim recite and listen to prayers and join together to eat traditional foods in a fabulous display of our community spirit. 
Huge thank you must go to all the local businesses who supported us with food and drink as well as everyone who brought food to share. And the biggest thanks to our wonderful HPSA organisers: Alia, Anna, Sara and Eva. It was such a special evening.  

The amazing HPSA Christmas Fete on 6th December raised a whopping total of over £7000, including the raffle, Christmas trees and the fete itself. This is an incredible amount and it could not have happened without your support for the school.

Huge thank you to Anna, Sara, Eva and the entire HPSA team of incredible volunteers. Many of us will have no idea of the workload involved in organising a fete - the work begins months and months before. Evening meetings, meetings at school, lots and lots of emailing, texting and phoning, everyone with a role to do to ensure it all comes together on the day.

And all of this hard work benefits every single child and family at Hazelwood!
Thank you so much! 

For lots of photos, please click here: HPSA Fete 2024

A Message from John Gilbert:
A World 1st at Hazelwood - a pre-school Newspaper Group.
 
At 8.20am on any Thursday morning at Hazelwood School there are 50-60 Newspaper Readers. From Yr 1 to Yr 6 there is debate and discussion and illustration and thought and questions and questioning on geography, history, politics, the environment, global heating, science, engineering, business, sport, fashion and more. 
The catalyst for every ‘student’, our readers like to be called students and not children, is the 90p ‘I’ Newspaper. All attending take their intellectual momentum forward into their classrooms and onwards to their families for afternoon and evening discussions. Most importantly, there isn’t a screen in sight. We celebrate their reading skills, a growing vocabulary, the human voice, positive and expressive body language and the ability to interact and discuss about anything and everything with anyone and everyone. Our Headteacher Mr Newham and John Gilbert, the world’s oldest paper boy, believe that every primary and secondary school in the world would benefit greatly by creating their own Hazelwood style Newspaper Group 🍎

This year, we were thrilled to have two children from each year group selected to represent our school in the highly anticipated ETSP Spelling Bee. These talented spellers worked hard to prepare for the semi-finals, where they showed off their impressive spelling skills by tackling words from their year group’s statutory spelling lists, and even rose to the occasion of spelling some Challenge Words!

With courage and ambition, they faced each round with determination, showing great teamwork and resilience. Although they didn’t make it to the finals this time, each participant was absolutely brilliant and should be immensely proud of their achievements.

Congratulations to our Spelling Bee stars! They’ve made us all proud and we can’t wait to see what they achieve next.

On Monday 30th September, Hazelwood had a very special guest - Dr Fuzz, the author of ‘Poppy the Pea’! Dr Fuzz started the day with an inspiring assembly, where he shared how a pea flying off his plate during dinner inspired his book, ‘Poppy the Pea’. He also spoke about the ups and downs of his journey to becoming a writer, encouraging the children to show resilience and courage in pursuing their dreams.
Throughout the day, Dr. Fuzz held exciting workshops with different year groups:
Year 2 took part in a ‘Fear & Courage’ workshop, where they watched clips from the ‘Poppy the Pea’ audiobook. Dr Fuzz explained how Poppy’s journey involved conquering her fears and encouraged the children to reflect on their own moments of bravery.
Year 3 participated in a ‘Dreams & Plans’ session, exploring how to turn big dreams into achievable goals. The children were challenged to think about the steps they would need to take to realise their ambitions, such as becoming an athlete or scientist. They discussed key elements like staying focused, practising regularly and researching their passions.
Year 6 attended a thought-provoking workshop on ‘Setbacks & Comebacks’, where they explored stories of famous figures like J.K. Rowling and Michael Jordan, who faced obstacles but persevered. The children were invited to share their own experiences of setbacks and reflect on how they could turn challenges into opportunities, some linking the discussion to their recent experiences at the PGL trip.

The Year 6 production of ‘Matilda’ was simply magical. The children performed incredibly well, having learnt their lines, the songs and the dance moves over the past few weeks. Whilst they might have been singing about being “revolting children”, they most definitely were not. Everyone played their part, from the usual characters of the Wormwood family, Miss Honey, Bruce, Amanda Thripp and the very scary Miss Trunchbull, to the lesser known characters of our story, including the Backstreet Boys! Every single member of the cast put in a performance to remember! Not forgetting the technicians, who worked tirelessly to ensure that the props, music, lighting and staging was always on point! 
Huge thank you to all of the adults who helped to make the show so special: Mr Jack, Miss Rosalind, Mr Constantinides, Mrs Kelly, Mrs Watson, Mrs Conner, Miss Gardiner, Ms Reid, Mrs Walls, Mrs Hammond, Miss Bispham, Mrs Chappell... and, of course, Miss McBride for directing the show! And a special thank you to Laura, Sara and Eva who helped with the artwork, choreography, singing and staging - we are very grateful!