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..
Fri 29 Apr 2022Welcome back.
What a fabulous way to start this term by opening up stage 1 of our funded project around renewal energy. Thank you so much Libby Jackson for opening up the kinetic energy playground and for donating two of your books to the school library for our pupils to read and enjoy.
The books donated are: Space Explorers, which looks at 25 extraordinary stories of space exploration and A Galaxy of her own, which talks about amazing stories of women in space.
Thank you also to our Head Boy and Head Girl, who greeted Libby and took part in the opening of the play park. We now look forward to stage 2 of the project, which requires planning permission for our wind turbine to power our outdoor library.
COViD-19 Update
Now that we have moved into term 5, all covid restrictions have been lifted. If you need to speak with a class teacher, you can do this in the morning between 08:25 and 08:45; other than this, you can contact the office and arrange a face to face meeting with them to discuss your child.
We will be looking forward to inviting you all back into school at the end of the term to take part in our topic celebration events that we used to do before COViD hit. If you haven't taken part in one yet, you will be able to come into school and be in your child's class taking part in activities - this will take place on Thursday 26th May at 14:30.
Stars of the Week
Nursery Ahdeem A & Harrison T 🤩 Reception Eva D & Hugh R 🤩 Year 1 Enhar T & Dylan O 🤩 Year 2 Rumaisa S & Jibril S 🤩 Year 3 John H & Jaxon C 🤩 Year 4 Eymen T & Kai S 🤩 Year 5 Rayyan Z & Ellie S 🤩 Year 6 Ella H & Darcy L 🤩 Housepoint Winners
EYFS Ahdeem A 🥳 Key Stage 1 Jibril S 🥳 Lower Key Stage 2 Lyla A 🥳 Upper Key Stage 2 Farley D 🥳 The winning house is: St. Patrick with 545 housepoints. Well done everyone in St. Patrick's for doing an amazing job.
Attendance Cup Winners: Year 2 with 98.64%. Well done Y2 for being in school the most this week - keep up the good work.
Whole school attendance is: 94.35%, which is slightly above the national of 94.2%.
Next week:
We come back to school on Tuesday 3rd May, as Monday is a bank holiday. I do hope that you enjoy the long weekend and hopefully some sunshine.
As we move through the term, I will be inviting parents into school to look at how we are teaching reading and how important it is that we teach for fluency and automaticity before allowing children to move on - this will come out via the APP.
If you have a new child starting in September, there will be a parent meeting to complete starter forms, discuss reception and expectations, and introduce the class teacher for you all to meet. Look out for the letter coming soon.
Have a super weekend.
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..
Fri 08 Apr 2022What a fabulous end to the term. The children have worked extremely hard and are a pleasure to have in school.
Behaviour Certificates
I am trying to make more of housepoints and give real purpose to the children earning them. I have explained to the children how Gold, Silver and Bronze certificates are worked out and how they can improve their behaviour through housepoints if they make an error and receive some behaviour points. The criteria are as follows:
Gold: 97%+ Attendance and below 5% for behaviour (this is calculated Behaviour Points/Housepoints x 100 = %)
Silver: 95%+ Attendance and below 20% for behaviour
Bronze: Below 95% Attendance and above 20% for behaviour.
If your child was off for COViD or an operation or something along these lines, this would have been added back into the attendance so that it did not affect the overall percentage.Housepoints
The winning house this week with 413 housepoint is: St. Patrick 🇮🇪
Housepoint Winners for this week.
EYFS Natalia L 🥳 Key Stage 1 Amelle D 🥳 Lower Key Stage 2 Kai F 🥳 Upper Key Stage 2 Ruban N 🥳 Housepoint Winners for the Year to Date
EYFS Ben S 372 HP 🪅 Key Stage 1 Niamh C 270 HP 🪅 Lower Key Stage 2 Harley S 433 HP 🪅 Upper Key Stage 2 Esha B 290 HP 🪅 Student of the Term
This is a new celebration. This is from me as the Headteacher. Every old Term (December, April and July) there will be a student of the term. This is being awarded for their effort, overcoming difficulties, persevering, producing excellent work, and the way they are around the school.
I am pleased to announce this term's Student of Term are:
EYFS Frankie B 👨🎓 Key Stage 1 Oliver S 👨🎓 Lower Key Stage 2 Samuel W 👨🎓 Upper Key Stage 2 Jack T 👨🎓 Attendance
As attendance is now playing a major part in helping children catch back up after the pandemic, schools are being charged with monitoring this more carefully and making sure that all children have good attendance. To have good attendance the children need to be 95%+. As a school, our target from governors is 98%.
The year's attendance to date is: 94.38%, which is 0.18% above the current national figures and 0.5% above the average for Swindon.
New Play Equipment
You may have noticed Mr Timlin working extremely hard installing some new play equipment. This is part of the science grant that we received from Wroughton Science Park to help teach our pupils about kinetic energy. As they play on the equipment it will light up.
To open this equipment we have invited Libby Jackson, who is a British space exploration expert who works for the UK Space Agency, to help open this to the pupils.
You are more than welcome to come along and be a part of the opening. This is taking place on Wednesday 27th April 2022 at 9am. We are really excited about the first part of our grant coming to life in the school for our pupils.
We now break for the Easter holiday, which is from today until Monday 25th April. On Monday 25th of April, we will be celebrating St. George's Day, so if you are in this house, you may come to school in something red, something that relates to St. George's or just non-school uniform. Everyone else should be in uniform as always.
Now that we are not writing about COViD weekly, I am wondering what my weekly blog will look like mmm. Maybe focusing on how well our wonderful children do in school and looking at all their great learning! Just a thought!
A thought for Easter:
'The more grateful I am, the more beauty I see.' Mary Davis. Have a great two weeks break - I am looking forward to being able to turn my emails off for the first time in two years.
Have fun and I shall see you all on Monday 25th April
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..
Sun 03 Apr 2022Good afternoon everyone,
I hope that you are enjoying the weekend and the sunshine that is around on and off. Weekends seem to go so quickly.
As we enter the last week of term, I thought I would update you on what is happening in school this week, COViD measures that are still in place, who are Stars of the Week, and who Housepoint Winners are.
COViD Measures
I am pleased to say that we can relax all our COViD measures that have been in place for so long. They will only come back into play if we have an outbreak, or the DfE updates us further. I would like to keep the one-way system in place, not for COViD, but it really has made it easier in the morning and at pick up. The double gates are now the school entrance and where Mr H and I will stand.
If your child does develop symptoms or tests positive for COViD, they must remain off school. This has now been reduced to 3 clear days and as long as they are well enough. This means for example, if your child tests positive on Sunday, as long as they are well enough, they would be able to return to school on Thursday morning. Adults working in the school, still have to isolate for 5 clear days if they test positive and up to ten days if they are still feeling unwell.
This does mean that we are able to carry out two of our events this week. The Easter Bonnet parade will take place and the Easter Disco. I cannot believe (I can) that some of our children would not have been to a school disco - wow! The disco is free but children are able to buy sweets and drinks (more details will come out this week via the APP). In the Easter Bonnet parade the children make these in school, so please do not worry about purchasing one. We then walk around the school field and parade them. Both events are due to take place on Wednesday 6th April.
We will not be doing our annual Easter Egg Hunt as there is just not enough time to get everything ready and we thought, with the cost of living increasing rapidly, we could save a little money.
Stars of the Week
Nursery Mula M & Lyla DS 🤩 Reception Skyla L & Molly B 🤩 Year 1 Carter R & Enhar T 🤩 Year 2 Romeo H & Jibril S 🤩 Year 3 Imogen D & Indigo P 🤩 Year 4 Lyla A & Ewan C 🤩 Year 5 Ray G & Zachary M 🤩 Year 6 Zuzanna K & Charlea D 🤩 I am sorry that we do not have any photographs of the winners but I was not in on Friday as I was at a training course.
Housepoint Winners
EYFS Natalia L 🥳 Key Stage 1 Amelle D 🥳 Lower Key Stage 2 Neve D 🥳 Upper Key Stage 2 Ava TA & Sophia B 🥳 The winning house with 408 Housepoints, well done, is: St. Andrew 🏴
Attendance
The winning year group this week with 98.28%, is: Year 3! Well done to all the children in Y3 for doing so well this week.
Overall attendance is: 94.3%, which is 0.1% above National and 0.5% above the average for Swindon. Well done everyone, let us keep going and see if we can get to 95% by the end of the year.
I hope you enjoy the remainder of the weekend and remember, we are keeping the one-way system in place to help with the flow of people.
Mr A
