Welcome Back

Welcome back to the second half of the autumn term. We all hope that you have a super holiday together with your family.

I wanted to update you that Mrs Bowen started her maternity leave last half term. This was an unexpected departure from school as she went into labour early. However, baby and family are doing well and Team GB welcomes baby Cody to the team. 

In addition, Miss Watson has started her maternity leave now also, and again both are doing well. Miss Watson had a little girl, and we also welcome baby Nancy to the team. We wish them all well and can’t wait to meet the new additions. 

Miss Schofield was due to get married the weekend that we broke up for half term, but sadly her wedding was cancelled due to the extreme weather and flooding that we experienced on the last day of half term. We wish her well as she reschedules her wedding and honeymoon.

Thinking Schools and Weduc

As a school, I have shared that we are becoming a Thinking School whilst working with a consultant from Thinking Matters. This is an exciting journey for us and really focuses on how children think, retain information, and draw upon knowledge to further develop understanding.

As a result of this, we are reconsidering how we use Weduc on a Friday. Currently, we share a lot about what we have been doing, but this is now going to change slightly. We will start to consider what is coming up and what children can think about further for the following week. Therefore, teachers are going to start asking questions in their Friday posts in the hope that this gives the children (and parents) something to engage with. We would love to see the children using Weduc to respond to the questions and posts and giving thoughts and views. We would love to see posts full of answers to questions to support learning the following week and to enable effective talk in lessons.

If you could support with this, we would be most grateful. We can’t wait to see what the children share and have to offer.

Wrap-Around-Care

Wraparound care consultations and meetings have now taken place and we have made the decision to use an external provider. I do whole-heartedly appreciate parents’ worries and frustrations about the lack of current provision and the need for childcare. When many of you applied to school, there was a provision in place. However, this subsided and was through no fault of school. 

We were hoping for a November start, but today we have had the last meeting with providers and any provision, starting in a new setting, does need to do a new Ofsted registration. This will take some time. We have not been able to rush this, and we have been searching for high quality provision, with the right offer (and prices) for our children and their families. That is important to us. 

As all providers have to Ofsted registered, this is now the next step. I can confirm that registrations have gone in now and we foresee a January start. Fingers crossed! 

The provider is very enthusiastic about working with the Greasley community and would also like to meet with parents before the provision is set up and starts. I will be in touch again soon when this date is set up with the provider.

We look forward to working with you further over this academic year, and I am excited with what we have in store. A reminder to read the weekly newsletters, posts and blogs to keep up to speed with exciting events and dates for the diary in the lead up to Christmas.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs Bates