Week Ending 19^th January 2018

This week, the following children have received a Head Teacher’s Award:

Lucas – Year 3 – for developing a new positive and enthusiastic approach to his learning

Lucas – Early years – fantastic sporting achievements outside of school

George – Year 2 – beautifully joined up handwriting

Scarlett – Year 4 – fantastic achievement with spelling test and joining up her handwriting

Megan - EYFS - fabulous independent writing, using clear finger spaces, a full stop and her knowledge of her phonics

WILF will be visiting class 5 for 100% attendance.

Jessica will be visiting class 12 for 99.2% attendance.

3^rd place for attendance goes to Class 2 for 98.6%

Diary of the week:

How is it Friday already again? What another busy week and such a productive time in school. This week, I have been showing many visitors around school and I have been very proud to take them into classrooms. The atmosphere has been hard-working as well as fun, creative and enjoyable. Colleagues visiting have commented on the behaviour of the children; their use of manners; the ability to talk to adults and their overall warmth and friendliness. One visitor actually commented on the positive ethos around school and that has made me very proud of everyone.

This week, we awarded many children across school for their 100% attendance last term. Each child was acknowledged in an assembly, presented with a certificate and had their name entered into a raffle for a £10 book token. I am pleased to say that Ollie in year one won the book token, and many children were very proud of their attendance certificates. I also spoke to the rest of the children about not worrying about their actual percentage, and said that if they did not get a certificate this time then they may well do next term. We also spoke about the fact that the end of year target was to get 97% or better and that there would be a bronze, silver and gold award. Because of this, one day here and there would not prevent their attendance from being acknowledged. The children were pleased to know that they had a chance of being congratulated in some way over the course of the academic year.

The table below shows how we will award the pin badges at the end of the school year:

On Thursday evening, we had another staff meeting on developing our whole school vision. I took all the views to the meeting, which I had collated so far. I ensured that your views were represented in the meeting, and as a staff (along with a governor representative), we drew on the vocabulary extracted from all stakeholder consultations. We used ‘dotology’ to rank the words that we thought were most important to all of us and made a list of them to incorporate into the new school vision for 2018. These were as follows:

Effective communication, social skills, independence, creative, resilience, respect, self-confidence, challenging yourself, risk-taking, aspirational, empathy, curious and forward-thinking.

I’ve loved this week as I have had so many conversations with children about their successes out of school and the ways in which they are nurturing their talents. It was lovely to hear that Harlee, in year one, has been awarded a trophy and medal for his outstanding work on the football pitch with his passing skills and being very much improved so far this season. Likewise, Lucas in early years, has been awarded a trophy for his ability to be able to effectively tackle players on the pitch and the skill of saving goals. Very impressive, boys, and keep it up!

I also couldn’t think of a better end to the week than being in Early Years and being captured crawling into their brand NEW submarine. VERY exciting and the children were ecstatic about it. They found it super funny finding my head poking through! What a great place to work…I couldn’t think of a better job.

Have a fabulous weekend, everyone!

Warm regards,

Mrs Bates

Head Teacher