Headteacher’s Blog
Keep up to date with all the news happening in school at the moment.
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The weekly blog - keeping you up-to-date with school life; Stars of the Week; Housepoint winners and much more..
Thu 14 Oct 2021Wow, we have made it to the end of the first term - well done everyone for keeping us all safe and cases to a minimum.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the staff at the school for working hard this term and going above and beyond with helping children, parents, and each other as we move towards getting back to some kind of normal.
I hope that you have something lovely planned for half term and that you can have some quality family time.
As we move into term 2, the school parliament will be planning Children in Need and other events in the build up to Christmas. 🎅 I know that the children are always excited when the Christmas tree 🎄 arrives at school on December 1st.
I will keep you all updated with any releases from SBC or the DfE around guidelines but until we hear different, we will continue as we have this term.
This means that we will not do large gatherings of parents in the hall but we will do class assemblies where parents will be invited in. We will continue to come in through the large gate and exit via the small gate by the bike shelter, as this seems to be working extremely well.
Art Gallery
The art gallery should now be live on our Facebook page and Twitter and will be on the website soon. This allows you to have a look around at all the wonderful art the children have created this term. Thank you to Mr Timlin, who has used his IT skills to create a wonderful 3D tour with push buttons, so that you are able to zoom in on the quality of work the children have produced.
Stars of the Week
Nursery Mula M & Samuel T 🤩 Reception Frankie B & Savannah T 🤩 Year 1 Bella M & Enhar T 🤩 Year 2 Alfie R & Grace C 🤩 Year 3 Teddy N & Indigo P 🤩 Year 4 Ted V & Logan C 🤩 Year 5 Ruban N & Harvey D 🤩 Year 6 Thomas TA & Harry D 🤩 Housepoint Winners
EYFS Hugh R 🥳 Key Stage 1 Alfie R 🥳 Lower Key Stage 2 Harley S & Beatrice WT 🥳 Upper Key Stage 2 Thomas TA 🥳 The winning house is: St. Patrick
The attendance winners with 100% are: Nursery
Our overall attendance is 95.25%, which is 0.95% away from the National of 96.2%.
I hope you have a lovely half term break and we will see you on Monday 1st November.
Mr A
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The weekly blog - keeping you up-to-date with school life; Stars of the Week; Housepoint winners and much more..
Wed 06 Oct 2021Thank you so much for all your feedback this week. It is lovely to see that over 93% of parents feel that we are doing a great job and over 97% of our parents would recommend our school to other parents. You see all the results on our website by following the link: Parent Questionnaire
The best part for me are your ideas, suggestions, and inquiries about how we do things in the free text part, so thank you for those responses. It has been lovely to read all the lovely comments about myself and the staff, so thank you dearly. Thank you for the suggestions on how to improve, I do have some answers for you
Termly topic & Support Teachers always place the termly topic on the class page, which can be found here: Class Pages
If children are struggling academically or emotionally (anxiety around work) teachers should be having conversations with you at the start/end of the school day. Please feel free to also make appointments to see them for a more personal touch.
Changing Reading books more often We follow DfE guidelines around reading. Reading for fluency, meaning, and pleasure. The reading book from school is tailored to where your child is. This could be phonetical, decodable or enhanced for meaning. With our shorter books, the children should keep these for 2-3 days to make sure they are reading for fluency and then change them. If they are older and have larger texts, they should be reading smaller pieces and thinking about meaning/author intent. More Able Pupils being challenged In all lessons, the work is differentiated. Silver is for all children to achieve as this reflects the learning intent of the lesson. Gold is for children that need/want to be challenged. Both teacher and parent work together and decide which learning they are going to do within that lesson, depending on previous learning. Feedback about how well my child is doing in school. We give parents feedback about how well their child/ren are doing 6 times per year.
Term 1: October - parent meeting
Term 2: December - Termly Report
Term 3: February - parent meeting
Term 4: Termly Report
Term 5: Termly Report
Term 6: End of Year Report & parent meeting
Seeing more photos of my children learning This is sometimes a challenge especially in Key Stage 2 as the teachers 'live mark.' This means that once they have finished the main teaching, they move around the class marking and supporting the children's learning. This has more impact on children's understanding than marking at home after the lesson.
I will take this to staff to see if they can upload more photos to the website about things that the children are learning.
Use of Pupil Premium (PP) All schools have to publish the pupil premium strategy on the school website on how they are using the funding in school to support pupils. PP is no longer used for individual children unless they were previously in care or still in care. You can find our strategy here: Pupil Premium Strategy Diversity - more in school, please Thank you so much for this comment. I totally agree that we need more diversity within the school. The school calendar does reflect some of the things we are doing. Black History Month was mentioned. This is in the diary and we are teaching all-year groups this throughout the month of October. Our RE curriculum, which can be found here RE Curriculum helps our children look at the 6 major faiths represented in the UK.
However, we need to do more. We need to make sure that each class is celebrating the different festivals at the right time of year.
Knowing when children have housepoint & a better system in place for warnings I totally agree. Our behaviour policy is all about positivity and rewarding children with housepoints rather than issuing warnings. We thought that we had mastered letting parents know when their child received a warning. But our children are smart and have worked out ways of forgetting things.
I have updated the school APP for teachers. They are now able to send direct communication to you via the school app. This means that once they put a housepoint or warning on the system, they can copy and paste it into the school app and send it directly to the parent. This way, you will know instantly or at the end of the day that your child has received a housepoint/warning.
We will launch this system after half term but teachers are going to try this next week.
Knowing what is expected of me as a parent. I am not making excuses but pre-pandemic, we always held a get to meet your teacher in the first week of term. This event was attended by all parents in the class. This way you got to meet the parents of the children in your child's class and the teacher showed you where to go on the website, what was expected for homework, and how to contact the teacher if you could not speak with them at the start and end of the school day. I will get each teacher to write a letter for each class, so that you know what is expected from us and hopefully next year, our meet the teacher event will be able to go ahead.
Stars of the Week
Nursery Muhammad A & Travis F 🤩 Reception Inaaya A & Skyla L 🤩 Year 1 Mackie C & Junior T 🤩 Year 2 James W & Mbale M 🤩 Year 3 Sade C & Bobby A 🤩 Year 4 Sidney M & George G 🤩 Year 5 Esther BM & Freya H 🤩 Year 6 Ethan L & Charlie J 🤩 Our Housepoint Winners
EYFS Sebastian S 🥳 Key Stage 1 Theo R & Mollie C 🥳 Lower Key Stage 2 Beatrice WT 🥳 Upper Key Stage 2 Freya H 🥳 The winning house this week is: St. Patrick
Our weekly attendance is: 95.03%
Our winning year group with 96.96% is our Reception children - well done.
Please remember that Headteachers are not allowed to authorise holidays and can only authorise exceptional circumstances.
In other news...
As we move into the final week of the term, thank you for following the guidance and helping us keep cases to a minimum. We are waiting for the DfE and SBC to release more guidance over the break and let us know what we are allowed to do in the following term.
New entrance and exit
During our feedback and watching this term, we seem to be gathering very tightly by entering and exiting via the small gate. From Monday, Mr. H and I will be at the double gate just slightly along for parents and children to enter and if you can then exit via the small gate, that would be great. This way, we should stop the bottle kneck and keep us all safer.
For me, slow and steady wins the race. We will get back to normal but it is essential that we take small steps and keep everyone safe.
We were hoping to have parents in the school to see all the amazing artwork the children have completed this term by having a gallery. Unfortunately, we are not going to be able to do this but we are going to create a virtual art gallery so that you are able to have a good look around. Y6 are in a competition as they are studying Banksy and I have said for those that complete excellent stencils, can spray their artwork on some of the outside walls around the grounds.
Next week
Make sure that you have booked to see your child’s class teacher so that they can give you an update on how they are doing academically and what they need to work on during the next term.
The Art Gallery should go live on Wednesday afternoon - who is the next Liechtenstein? Bansky? Monet?
All children from Y1 to Y6 can take part in the Maths Whiz. Who will be our first champions of the year? Any budding Einsteins?
And the final day of the term is Friday 15th October. We come back to school on Monday 1st November when will update you further on any guidance from the DfE.
Once again, thank you for your support and taking the time to complete the parent questionnaire. The questionnaire is now closed. Have a great weekend and we will see you on Monday 😊
Mr A
