Dear parents and carers,
Brr what a cold week it has been!
We were honoured to have Yasmin Ali, a local poet (and parent), visit our school this week and deliver two inspiring assemblies where she shared and performed her poetry. Yasmin’s infectious enthusiasm for poetry and her brilliant performances had everyone engaged.
Poetry has a reputation for being difficult - difficult to read and difficult to write. Yasmin made poetry more accessible, both for readers and writers at any level. In two weeks' time, Yasmin will visit us again, but this time to see the children perform poetry written by poets of colour.
Visits this week: All year 3 classes have had their first educational visit of the term to the Horniman museum to have a “Stone Age Adventure” in support of this term’s History learning.
The children had a wonderful time being archaeologists, handling artefacts from the Stone and Bronze Ages and using them to work out the differences between life in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic. They examined a 300,000 year-old hand axe, a real mammoth tooth, and learnt about flint knapping. This is a few children’s findings:
Evelyn: 'Have you ever seen a mammoth tooth? I actually held one!'’
Francesca: 'We found a 40 million year old elephant skull.'
Greyston: ‘How sharp were the spears to hunt huge mammoths!’
Mental Health & Well-being parent workshops were originally scheduled for the 30th & 31st January. However, there has been an oversight with parents' evenings being the week prior and will therefore need to postpone these until 5th & 6th March. The website calendar has been updated.
They will now fall after Children’s Mental Health Week which is 5th – 11th February and we will be building on this year’s theme: ‘My Voice Matters’ We will be sharing with you in next week’s newsletter, our plans and how you can get involved, if you would like.
Safer Internet Day also falls in Children’s Mental Health week on the Tuesday 6th February. Safer Internet Day is an annual event to help raise awareness of how to be part of a safer and better internet for all. It encourages everyone to join "Together for a better internet".
The Breck Foundation, who held both parent and staff workshops last week are fundraising, and we agreed to support. We will be asking if children could wear yellow on this day (6th February) and where possible to donate £1.
Diversity working group: Last year Dennis met with some parents to discuss diversity and to build on this would like to set up a Diversity Working Group that represents all aspects of our community; staff, parents, Governors and children (this part will be led through of Pupil Parliament Diversity committee).
We would like the working group to represent the range of different communities and backgrounds involved in our school, from race to religion, to sexual orientation to disability. It is aimed that the Group will look to celebrate the diversity of the school, examine the challenges that are faced by the different communities both within school and in the local community and be key in supporting in the development of our provision.
If you are interested in being part of the group, please complete the wufoo form.The first meeting will take place 9:10am Thursday 25th January in the Community Room. Do please come along.
Next week we have lots of things planned:
Parents evening is running all week (apart from Conor’s class – if you have not organised a time, please speak with your child’s class teacher or the office.
On Tuesday Dennis and Philippa are holding a SEND coffee morning 9:15-10am in the community room. It is a general meeting to share with you the changes to provision that are being put in place with the inclusion team, and how this will look for you and your child with time for feedback and discussion.
Thursday, we have the diversity group meeting, please see above – open to everyone.
Friday, we have Hannah’s class assembly, the first of the term. I do look forward to these as it is such a lovely way for the children to share a snapshot of their learning with you. They also are an opportunity to embed a whole host of skills too.
Safeguarding: Next week is Parents’ evening and every day there will be a member of the leadership team greeting you to sign you in. Please can you make sure you sign out upon finishing. It is essential we know who is in the school building, especially as we have clubs running alongside the parent meetings. The meetings will run the same way as last term and all year groups will be in one class. The classrooms being used will be:
Year 1: Butterflies (Naomi)
Year 2: Shona
Year 3: Elis
Year 4: Sarah R
Year 5: Rachel
Year 6: Vicky
Please accept my apologies. Last week I shared with you the office teams roles and responsibilities but somehow managed to miss off that part of Allesha’s role will be attendance and will be managing the attendance mailbox. In the interim, all staff will be overseeing it.
Have a lovely weekend and I look forward to welcoming you all back on Monday for another busy week!
Kind regards
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