Autumn Newsletter 11 [Friday 25th November]

Dear Parents & Carers

The stage in the junior hall has been assembled, the songs have started to be practised with great gusto & the faint sound of jingle bells can be heard carried from afar on the North Wind… Christmas is coming! The festive season starts early in a primary school. I’ll send home a list of dates early next week.

Y3&4 have been sharing their Ancient Greek topic homework; their classrooms have been turned into mini museums & are looking wonderful – Indiana Jones would be in heaven! The pieces of work are wonderful: trojan horses, Top Trumps cards, bingo, Greek urns, information posters, war ships & even a working catapult. Well done to everyone who helped bring these amazing museum pieces to life. Photos will be posted on the Y3&4 Class Blog on the website over the weekend.

Here are this week’s ‘nudges’.

Nursery

We have been talking about friends. Can you describe what makes a good friend?

{Personal Social Emotional Development}

Reception [Red & Blue]

Can you think of some rhyming pairs of words from ‘Room on the Broom’?

{Literacy ‘Room on the Broom’ Julia Donaldson}

Y1&2 [Green, Yellow & Purple]

How do we look after our pet animals?

{Science topic: ‘Animals & their Needs’}

Y3&4 [3G, 3/4M & 4T]

What is the moral from the Greek myth of Icarus & Daedalus?

{English topic: ‘Greek Mythology’}

Y5&6 [5D, 5/6P & 6R]

What are the five pillars of Islam & how do they influence the lives of Muslims?

{RE topic: ‘Islam’}

This week, our whole school attendance is 95.0%. We had no classes with 100% attendance this week & 4 classes exceeding our 97% target: Yellow Class (97.2%), 4T (97.2%), 5D (99.0%) & 6R (97.8%).

We only had 4 classes who had no late marks this week:  Yellow Class, 3G,  4T & 5/6P. We had 36 late marks across the whole school. 28 late marks were ‘before the register closed’ (that’s before 9.20am) & 8 late marks ‘after the register has closed’, that’s after 9.20am.

I’d like to finish off with a ‘heads up’ to our Y6 parents. With the government declaring an extra bank holiday to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III, the KS2 (Y6) SATs have been moved along by a day. The new dates are as follows:

• Monday 8^th May: Bank Holiday
• Tuesday 9^th May: EGPS paper 1 (grammar) & paper 2 (spelling)
• Wednesday 10^th May: English reading paper
• Thursday 11^th May: Maths paper 1 (arithmetic) & paper 2 (reasoning)
• Friday 12^th May: Maths paper 3 (reasoning)

Our Y6 staff will be holding a SATs information evening for parents in January (2023!) to enable people at home to help their children prepare for the tests as best as possible – there will be lots of handy hints & tips to enable your children to perform as well as they can.

Have a good weekend – there’s only 30 days until Christmas Day :/

KD Williams

Headteacher

Last word

I’m going to write a novel set on an allotment…

I just need to find a decent plot…