Co-op Academy New Islington Parent Portal - Newsletter 27th February 2026

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Welcome from Co-op Academy New Islington

Dear Parents/Carers,

It has been a lovely start in school to the half term. Some of our year 6 children joined Mr Berry and myself on the Senior Leadership team and carried out some pupil voice on our wonderful new library. We have also had some of our year 6 children carry out TA roles in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 after they were successful in applying and interviewing for these roles. We have all been incredibly impressed with how dedicated they have been to their roles and how they have applied themselves.

We have been busy preparing for careers week next week and are excited to celebrate World Book Day on Friday. We are also very excited to be receiving some new books for our library and more information on this will be coming across the next term.

Thank you to all the parents who joined Mr Berry in the Headteacher forum this week. There will be a parent survey shared by the Trust. As always we value your feedback to help us continue to improve our Academy. The survey will be open from 9th March.

Wishing you a lovely weekend

Mrs Williams

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Dates for your diary

Tuesday 3rd March- National Offers Day for Year 7 places

Thursday 5th March- 2MM visit to Hulme Garden Centre (please pay on Arbor)

Friday 6th March- World Book Day

Tuesday 10th- Friday 13th March- Book Fair after school each day

Tuesday 10th March- Parents Evening- please book on Arbor

Thursday 12th March- 2SK at Hulme Garden Centre (please pay on Arbor)

Thursday 12th March- Parents Evening- please book on Arbor

Thursday 2nd April- last day before Easter holidays

Monday 20th April- return to school

Forest School Dates

Please remember to bring Forest School clothing on these days- welly boots, waterproofs and a hat and gloves if it is cold. They will go outside in all weather so be prepared!

Year 6- every Tuesday afternoon

Bumblebees/ Ladybirds- Friday

Monday 2nd March- 5RC

Tuesday 3rd March- 5MW

Thursday 5th March- 1NE

Monday 9th March- 1HD

Tuesday 10th March- 2MM

Thursday 12th March- 2SK

Monday 16th March- 3MN

Tuesday 17th March- 4OF

Thursday 19th March- 4JJ

World Book Day

On Friday 6th March we will be very excited to celebrate World Book Day!

Children are invited to come dressed as a book character from a story or in their pyjamas for a bedtime story.

Throughout the day, the children will have the opportunity to share their favourite books and read with children from other classes.

Teaching staff will also swap classes and read a story to a different class.

As we did last year, every class from Nursery to Reception will read the same book and share what they have done in a whole school assembly.

If any parents would like to be mystery readers at the end of the day, please speak to the class teacher or the office.

What a Busy Week!

With the help of expert gardeners from the PLANT Co-op Manchester (NOMA), year 2 children planted dahlia, gladioli and bluebells in tubs for lovely colours and early pollinator food in our school garden. We learnt about the significance of planting spring bulbs to bring biodiversity to our urban ecology.

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Our Key Stage 2 children had a visit from ProjectsMCR to promote their skateboarding club, which will be happening again in the summer term. Keep your eyes peeled for an email with information regarding this as it will be first come, first served.

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We have had our first STEM Club of Spring 2 this week! For Year 5 and 6, we have been focusing on the 'E' in 'STEM', we have brought back our Engineering topic, focusing on structural engineering of bridges!.

We discussed the importance of having safety regulations for bridges and how bridges are designed to spread out the forces they experience, and then we had a follow up 'Spaghetti Bridge Challenge'!

The winning team held up a whopping 27 books! (Their bridge didn't even break, the books just couldn't balance themselves being so high up!) It was a very impressive piece of engineering design by our 3 person team!

Well done!

In Our Year 3 and 4 STEM CLUB, we have been looking at STEM Careers and Computer Science. We discussed the skills gap in STEM careers and addressed misconceptions about STEM related jobs, slowly building up towards our project going forward of pitching a product to solve a real life problem!

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Before the half term holidays, the staff were given the challenge of creating the best displays possible. Well done to Year 4 staff who were the winners with their fantastic Vikings display. The staff were rewarded with a tasty treat!!

All the displays look incredible throughout school. Thank you to everyone for their hard work.

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Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers

Mrs Williams Recommends

Anything by Oliver Jeffers is a winner in my book and they were firm favourites in my house with my son.

Here We Are is written as a manual to life on Earth. From land and sky to people and time these notes are a guide to start a journey about life on our amazing planet. It is a simple but beautiful book about kindness, tolerance and how we are responsible for our environment.

Perfect from age 5

House Leaderboard

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The points have been very close this week. Sissay are this week's winning house.

Pankhurst- 2158

Edwards- 2211

Sissay- 2231

Turing- 2112

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PE Days

Please remember you can wear your PE kit to school on your PE days.

Reception- Thursday

Year 1- Monday and Friday

Year 2- Tuesday and Wednesday

Year 3- Wednesday and Thursday

Year 4- Wednesday (PE) and Thursday (swimming)

Year 5- Tuesday and Thursday

Year 6- Monday and Friday

Swimming is just for Year 4 children on Thursdays as part of their PE curriculum.

Latest Stories

26 Feb 2026

Badminton Shuttle Stars

Proud moment as pupils feature on national television

29 Jan 2026

Coffee Morning Dates Spring 2026

Here are the dates for our Coffee Mornings for this half term. They cover a range of subjects and there is something for everyone.We look forward to seeing you there!

24 Sep 2025

Coffee Morning Dates Autumn 2025

All our parents and carers are welcome to join us at any of the Coffee Mornings listed below. Some may be more relevant than others but we aim to have a range of guest speakers and topics so there should be something for everyone.We look forward to seeing you!

Thumbnail for Facebook post created 2 weeks ago

Co-op Academy New Islington

We are on Newsround today! Some of our children who attended the recent BADMINTON England Shuttle Stars event were interviewed by the BBC, and you can see what they thought about the day here

2 weeks ago

See you next time!

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