Newsletters

Friday 21st October, 2022

Half term has arrived, and it's time for the children to take a break.  Well done to all the children so far this year. We've celebrated many good examples of effort and work today, and I'm sure they'll be ready to do the same again in the lead up to Christmas. 

It has been the most successful autumn term for the last few years (attendance wise) and this has been pleasing to see. We are still feeling the effects of the unsettled last few years but with a better spring and summer last year and a good start to this term, we can look positively look to the rest of the year and beyond.

We are working with the children to know more and remember more from all their learning across the curriculum. We are encouraging them to talk about their learning so if you ask them, hopefully you might get more than the 'can't remember what we've done' line that we are all accustomed to getting on most occasions!

We have a lot to look forward to next half-term. We have stopped our 8 week school improvement focus of previous years and are now focusing on aspects of school improvement for shorter periods of time.  Next half-term, we are focusing on improving cooperative learning techniques in lessons. 

The next half term is always a busy one. We'll be launching the 'Marvellous Me' app, having a focus on different countries and cultures to celebrate the World Cup and of course, there will be Christmas celebrations too! 

Wishing everyone a restful half term. 

Kind regards

Matt Walton, Headteacher 

Uniform 

Thank you for all you support helping us to keep to the uniform rules for school uniform and PE kit. Children coming to school in PE kit continues to be a much better idea than having them change at school, saving valuable time and helping kit not to get lost! However, we are still getting a lot of different colour PE kits and will keep asking all families to follow the rules set:

• Plain white or blue t-shirts
• Blue/black shorts
• blue/black plain tracksuit or school hoody

Bikeability 

Over the past few days, children in Year 5 & 6 have been improving their skills, supporting them to be safer and wiser when biking on the roads. We know the group have thoroughly enjoyed the sessions and had certainly gained from the experience. 

We hope to have playground sessions for the Year 4 children later in the school year. 

Year 3 tours & lunch 

We thoroughly enjoyed welcoming all year 3 parents/carers and family members into school this week. The children sang the school song, and we hope you enjoyed seeing their books, the treasure hunt activity and eating with them. 

The year 3 children have had a very good start to junior school, and we thank you for your support in these first few weeks.

Half-term learning highlights

We asked some of the children what they've enjoyed learning about the most this half-term: 

Francesca (Yr 5) - I've enjoyed literacy and maths; literacy has been good because we have been developing our descriptive writing.

Lewis (Yr5) - I've enjoyed art the most - we've been learning about pointillism - creating a picture using tiny dots of various colours

Ayva (Yr 6) - I've enjoyed Literacy the most because we've been learning how to write a speech and how to structure one. Our class book  'Floodlands' is fantastic. 

Andrei (Yr 6) - I've enjoyed maths as we've been learning how to round decimals and to improve our calculations. 

Attendance

Attendance so far this term is 95.97%. We currently have over 50% of the school who haven't had any time off this term so far. Hopefully, they will all stay fit and well, and we will be celebrating a lot of 100% attendance awards in December!

Every year each class nominates a pupil to represent them at our School Council. At meetings the School Council talk about what that they would like to see happen at our school and how they can help make things even better. It was School Council who decided they would like to raise money for school (and treat everyone) by selling ice creams after school. This year, we have a new School Council who met for the first time today. They have already got a lot of great ideas, so watch this space!

This year's School Council is: Kendadee and Ben (3W), Carissa (4I), Amber (4P), Amy (5B), Francesca (5H), Ella (6R) and Ruby-Ann (6W).

Guess the weight of the pumpkin!

After a successful harvest of pumpkins, Nicola and her gardeners ran a 'Guess the weight if the pumpkin' competition at break time today. They had lots of entries - here are the lucky winners...