Week Ending 27th September 2019
This week, the following children have received a Head Teacher’s Award:
James – Orange 2 – For creating a wonderful piece of homework all about the important things in his life. It must have taken a lot of time and effort – well done!
Ava – Orange 1 – For her fantastic effort during maths today. Ava independently compared numbers, using the <, > and = symbols accurately
Alfie and Lucas – Green 1 and 2 – For choosing to read books together whilst waiting for an adult to collect them for a lesson. The boys were engaged in the texts and even wanted to read with me. We sat in the entrance hall enjoying the storylines, pictures and vocabulary. They took it in turns to read their pages and asked each other great questions. This was a great opportunity for reading and the boys embraced the moment perfectly. I am very proud of them.
Theo – Violet 2 – For being very proactive and dealing with a difficult situation in a very confident and brave manner. He overcame his obstacle and was therefore very mature! I was very proud of you, Theo!
Emily – Yellow 2 – For Overcoming her obstacles by creating a beautiful mosaic based on our book ‘Belonging’. This showed her views from the window, which was very tricky to do! A super piece of creative homework.
Susie Maltby – Yellow 2 - Amazing writing using adverbs, conjunctions, similes and super adjectives. A very interesting piece of descriptive writing and very mature use of vocabulary for the start of year 3.
Positive praise home is as follows:
Sid – Blue 2 – For being the first in the class to complete the red ‘Rainbow Readers’ bookworm. Sid has been engrossed in his reading since the start of term and already managed to read many many times at home. Well done, Sid, and enjoy further reading to complete the next bookworm.
Monday morning started with our annual harvest festival. We were all very grateful for the food packets, packages and produce for the Eastwood Foodbank. Reverend David, from the local church, joined us and he shared his appreciation with the children along with a reflective story about kindness and sharing. Thank you to everyone who donated – your generosity means a lot to us and the families of Eastwood needing support and your kindness.
On Monday evening, Miss Manson, Miss Marvin and I attended some continual professional development on the mastery of maths through the Maths Hub. The training was very interesting and we were very pleased to know that our philosophy behind the Mastery approach to maths is echoed by specialists. We are excited about the plans we have in place for our maths developments across school – including enable tables to develop independence, working walls to aid fluency and morning maths to reinforce arithmetic skills and the fundamentals.
Linking onto this, we have finalised our school improvement plan for this academic year this week and shared with governors. This year we have the following strategic key priorities:
Priority 1 - To develop and embed the Curriculum of Greasley ensuring it meets the needs of our school community and leads to a good quality of education for all pupils
Priority 2 - To develop a whole school approach to reading in order to improve outcomes for all pupils
Priority 3 - To develop high quality maths teaching based on a ‘Teaching for Mastery’ (TfM) approach to improve outcomes for all pupils
Priority 4 – To increase the consistency of teaching and learning across the school
This week, we have been reflecting on ‘Respect and Acceptance’ and what these behaviours look like across school. Children have been reminded about what ‘respect’ means in practice and the way in which we demonstrate this to everyone in school (whoever they may be) and the equipment around us. We have high expectations for behaviour and hope that you will join us in reinforcing the ‘Respect and Acceptance’ Rainbow Value at home and around the whole community. Thanks for your support in advance.
Today, we hosted our Macmillan Coffee event. We had so many donations and I can’t thank you all enough. The staff worked hard in the morning to set up the event and during the first slot (in the morning) we managed to raise almost £100. After school, the atmosphere was amazing in the hall and we had queues in all directions. Thank you so much for taking part in the raffle for the fancy bottle of fizz, buying teas and coffees and giving donations for cakes and treats. Thanks also for the contributions from the children throughout the day. We are yet to count all of the money collected and I will share this with you on Monday. I can, however, inform you that the winner of the raffle was the ‘Jukes’ family.
If anyone would still like to make a text donation of £5 (with 100% of the cost going to Macmillan) then you can text TEA TAR9 to 70550. This is such a worthy cause and I think we all know someone, who has been affected by cancer. Thanks so much in advice.
Have a great weekend everyone.
Warm regards,
Michelle Bates
Head Teacher