Dear Parents and Carers,
To start us off, all students are invited to submit a photo of themselves reading in an unusual or exciting place. These need to be submitted via Google classroom. Everyone received an invitation, so have a quick look for it if slipped your notice. The last date for submission is Sunday evening. I look forward to seeing the crazy things some of the students have been up to.
Next Friday is a dressing up day when children can come to school dressed as a book character. Please help them sort out their costumes and we really like it if the students can show us a copy of the book. I am going to be dressed up but my copy of the book is in storage so I am going to print off a picture of it.
The time has flown by this term and so I will just remind you that reports will be out on the 1st of April and the 2nd April is for parent teacher conferences.
I was thinking back to years gone by when it was ‘cool’ for children to say they hated school and didn’t want to go. Last week when I spoke to some classes about returning to online learning for a week or so, they let out really big groans and ‘Oh no’ they would much rather be at school than at home. I think it is a really good sign that our students enjoy coming to school so much. I have to say, it is a happy place to be.
Thank you to the class 3 and 4 parents who arranged to have their children tested for Covid as requested and sent in the results promptly. Thankfully there are far fewer children affected than we suspected and the leadership team will be making decisions about when we return to school onsite on Friday morning.
Yesterday evening class 5 parents had an opportunity to get some insight into our excellent Secondary section of the school and the very personalised opportunities that we can offer our students. This was part of the transition process. Secondary staff work with parents and students to ensure that starting secondary school is a smooth and stress free process. Over time secondary is refining their curriculum by starting the International Middle Years Curriculum and extending the activities offered to ensure the best education for our students. I am sure the parents that attended found the introduction very helpful. Thank you to Ms Relf for organising it.
Our staff have started some additional training after school on Positive Mental Health. In recent times the pressure on staff has increased as they have explored new teaching media, faced all the additional requirements of the pandemic and tried to support our students who have also been facing additional stressors. The training is designed to help us to support ourselves in difficult circumstances and to learn strategies that will eventually filter through to our students, enabling them to keep a positive outlook too. It will be taking place over several months and we expect everyone to begin to feel the benefits soon.
Next week is Literacy Week. We have lots of activities planned for our students which we hope they will enjoy and will enrich their literacy learning. Activities such as Poem in your Pocket, Story dice and multilingual stories.
Have a lovely weekend.
Sharon Short
Lead Safeguarding Officer.