Newsletters

Friday 24th April, 2026

Dear Parents & Carers

We enjoyed having the Norfolk Children's Book Centre with us this week, and we purchased some lovely books ourselves for the school library. It is important to keep refreshing it as much as we are able to, to ensure we have interesting books for the children to read. Please can I give a reminder also of the importance of home reading and of the ability to quiz on a book at home too. Children should be able to access the Accelerated Reader log-in details through their Google Classroom.

We have included some important dates below which we hope will help with forward planning. We will include all dates through to the end of July in the next newsletter. One date next month we are looking forward to is a whole school STEM Day. More information to follow on that shortly. 

Well done to the winners of the Science competition and all who took part. Thank you also to Mr Reeds for organising it. We will be launching a new design competition next week as we look to create a new logo to display on the new SHIP building. 

The building work for the SHIP is coming to an end this month.  The children have been brilliant at adapting to the building work going on and I think they have enjoyed seeing the building take shape. We look forward to showing them around the new area soon. 

We've had a lovely day in school. Lunchtime was so nice with so many activities happening in the playground, from some tennis to games of chess. It was a lovely atmosphere and so lovely and sunny!  I hope the weather continues in the weekend for everyone. 

Kind regards

Matt 

Matt Walton, Headteacher 

Staff Change 

We will soon be saying goodbye to Mrs Tokeley our School Office Manager. Mrs Tokeley will be leaving at half term and starting a well-earned retirement! She has had a long and successful career in school administration and has been a valued and important member of the SJS staff team for many years. I'm sure you will join us all in wishing Mrs Tokeley all the very best for the future. 

We are pleased to tell you that we have appointed Mrs Fuller as our new School Office Manager. Mrs Fuller is looking forward to being part of the staff team and will be starting next week. 

Norfolk Children's Book Centre visit

We are delighted to welcome Chris from the Norfolk Children's Book Centre this week. The morning was full of wonderful story reading sessions for Year 2 from Sprowston Infants and Year 3/4 classes. This included reading 'The book with no pictures' and 'Don't Trust Fish!'. 

In the afternoon, Year 5 & 6 had time to look around the lovely books on show.

A big thank you to everyone who was able to come along to the book fair at the end of the day. 

The Norfolk Children's Book Centre is in the process of moving premises to Wroxham Barns. Click here to find out more and for a virtual tour of the new bookshop.

Sprowston Pupils Shine at National STEM Racing Finals

Two teams from Sprowston Junior School recently travelled to the STEM Racing National Finals, held at the Magna Adventure Centre, after qualifying through the regional competition earlier this year.

The day began with a very early start, as pupils left school at 5am to compete against 70 teams from across the UK and as far afield as Hong Kong, making it a truly international event.

At the finals, teams presented to judges, took part in design portfolio interviews, discussed their pit displays with judges and fellow competitors and raced their cars live on YouTube! Both teams represented the school superbly: Lapping Lizards finished an impressive 15th, while Striking Starlight placed 54th overall.

Pupils also enjoyed exploring the Magna Adventure Centre’s Air, Earth, Water and Fire zones and visiting the many interactive exhibits.

Here are some of the children’s highlights:

“Taking part made me feel really professional.”
“It was great being part of something so big!”
“I enjoyed learning new skills and building the cars.”
“My highlight was visiting the other teams’ pit displays.”
“It was an amazing experience. My uncle live-streamed the event in Bulgaria!”
“It was so exciting and we got to make some new friends.”
“The Big Melt was brilliant!”

The school would like to thank everyone who supported the teams along their STEM Racing journey this year. We are incredibly proud of all the Year 6 teams who took part and look forward to returning next year with new teams—watch this space!

Earth Day 2026

Mrs Connell introduced Earth day with a wonderful assembly on Tuesday. This was followed up with most classes watching an online webinar. The webinar looked at organising a concert in an environmentally friendly way. 

Many of the classes then had a go at a number of challenges - looking at planning choices, lyrics for a low-carbon song and designing a flyer to help promote the concert. 

Ollie (Wroxham) said his favourite part of the webinar was the science experiment and Meera (Wroxham) enjoyed creating the song lyrics. The children said they all enjoyed the webinar and activities and learning more about making environmentally friendly choices. 

Click here to find out more about Earth Day.

Our new school Pond!

The new building is almost complete and with it, a new garden area for the school. The new pond has been created and it even has its first frog! We look forward to working together to create our lovely new area. 

Safeguarding at Sprowston Junior

At Sprowston Junior School we are committed to supporting all of our children to do well. We will do everything we can to ensure our children are safeguarded and protected from harm. If you have any concerns about a child at our school and feel they could be a victim of abuse or are at risk, please report your worries immediately to one of our designated staff (DSLs). DSLs can be identified by their green lanyards.