school

Class 1 assembly (23rd November)

Class 1 have been looking at Cinderella this week and they have designed their own carriages and made invitations to the ball.

 

 

They then acted out the story…….

 

 Poor Cinderella was made to do all the work by her mean sisters.

 

 

 

 The fairy godmother came to visit Cinderella to grant all her wishes. She also gave a warning about getting home before midnight.

 

 

Cinderella met her Prince Charming but had to disappear without saying good night. The Prince found her glass slipper and searched everywhere to find his true love.

 

 

 

 

They lived happily ever after.

School Council

We have recently set up a school council. The aim of this is to allow the children to have a say on what goes on in school and to help them improve school life. As teachers we always want to do what is best for the children and it is very useful to get their opinions on school matters.

When we set the school council up we spoke to the children about what they thought a council’s role was. We talked through some areas that they would like to develop and how the council was going to work. The children were then asked to think about whether they would like to apply for the posts.

It was decided that we would have two school councillors from each class and that each class would vote as to who they would like to represent them.

Each Class was given a suggestion box and a note pad which they were encouraged to write down any ideas on and place in their box. These were to be discussed at our first meeting on November 13th.

The meeting was a huge success with over 60 suggestions. The group worked very hard debating each suggestion and were incredibly mature with their thinking.

                     

School councillors: Maisie, Joseph, Harry, Cain, Hannah, Brandon(away), Olivia and Elizabeth.

When the meeting had finished Mr Moss typed up the meetings minutes and the children gave them to Miss Sargent. She then looked through them and gave the children feedback as to what she thought was possible. She was very impressed with all the suggestions and the council’s responses.

The school council were then given a list of areas that we can work so that they could feedback to their classes and gain further insight into exactly what the children want.

So far the school council has been a great success and we look forward to working with them in the future.

                     

The school councillors get their special badges.

To look at a copy of the minutes please click on the link below.

File Attachment: Minutes for School Council meeting.doc (37 KB)

Class 3 Assembly (16th November)

Class 3 showed us their Diwali pictures.

         

 

They had been looking at the story of The Little Red Hen. They painted some pictures of the different character and they made some fantastic masks.

 

 

 

 

They then acted out the story. Kalum was a super hen.

          

 

Would you have shared the bread with the other animals?                  

Play leaders

We now have our play leader scheme up and running again. The idea of the scheme is to train children how to set up and run a variety of playground games. This not only increases leadership skills, communication and confidence levels in the play leaders but also helps with behaviour in the playground.

We are quite unique with the scheme because it is usually run by older age children but we have found Year 2 children to be very enthusiastic and more than capable of fulfilling the role.

We sent a letter out to all the Year 2 children detailing what the job would entail and invited them to “apply” for the job. The staff then looked through the applicants and chose 6 children who they thought would benefit from the role.

These children then worked with Liz Kendal from the High School. They spoke to some play workers from the High School about the work they did and compiled a list of qualities that a play leader would need. They watched the older children run activities and then had to swap roles so that the Year 2 children became the teachers.

We have also benefited from hiring a play worker called Sue. She works alongside the play leaders 3 days a week and has shown lots of enthusiasm for the job.

The work undertaken by the play leaders also allows them to partake in the Volunteering & Leadership Award Scheme. The children have to log the work they do at dinner times and the more hours they do the higher the award they achieve.

To keep the scheme fresh and exciting we aim to change our play leaders every term or half term enabling as many children as possible to benefit from the role. So far the scheme has proven successful with all the children happy to either lead or partake in the activities.

                

 

Our current play leaders: Oliver, Matthew, Thomas, Darian, Olivia and Hannah

Pole Star Planetarium

On November 12th we were lucky enough to be visited by the Pole Star Planetarium. The Planetarium was a large inflatable dome that contained projectors which lit up the dome with a variety of images. The focus of the visit was light and dark.  

                  

 

The children had a great time and below are some of their comments about the visit.

“I liked the stars” Ella

“It was good fun” Aidan

“I liked it when we had to look at the people who got thrown into space”  Matthew

“My favourite planet was Mars because it was my favourite colour” Elizabeth

“I liked the planetarium” Jordan H

Further information about the planetarium can be found at www.polestarplanetarium.co.uk

The story of Guy Fawkes

 

On the first day of the new half term, pupils in classes 1, 2 and 3 enjoyed a visit from the ‘Tempus Fugit’ theatre group. The pupils were encouraged to participate in retelling the story of Guy Fawkes and enjoyed the pantomime atmosphere of the show. Pupils were given the opportunity to dress up in period costumes; and ask questions about what really happened in the Houses of Parliament over 400 years ago. At the end of the show, the children were encouraged to consider the reasons for Guy Fawkes actions and whether he or King James were right to act as they did.

 

 

Bad news

As I am sure you are all now aware we were the victims of a mindless arson attack during the half term holiday. On the evening of Tuesday 23^rd October the early years and play group outdoor sheds were set on fire destroying many of the children’s outdoor toys. The school bins were also set on fire.

The police and fire brigade were called and they managed to put out all the fires. Although we have lost a lot of our outdoor equipment we have to be thankful that the fire didn’t spread and cause serious damage to the school as well. 

Although the children have obviously been affected by this senseless act they have shown remarkable strength of character and now look forward to how our playground can be developed in the future.

We would like to thank you for all your kind words and the support you have shown us over the last few days. We would like to promise you that we will do our best to recover all our losses and we are currently looking at ways to improve our playground. We will keep you informed of any ways in which you can help us and if you have any ideas please contact Miss Sargent or any member of FAINS.

The blog is back

As you may or may not have noticed the website has been a little bare recently. After some training from Mrs Curtis (previously Mrs Marshall) during the half term holiday I feel ready to continue her good work. I will try to update the school news section as regularly as I can with news on any events going on in school and with any information regarding letters we send home. The class newsletters will also be updated in the near future.

Thank you for your patience

Dave Moss

ICT Co-ordinator

Harvest Festival – Thursday 12th October – 2.15p.m. – School Hall

This year the theme of our Harvest Festival is Homes. In their classrooms, the children have been thinking about their homes and families and the Harvest Festival will give us the opportunity to consider those less fortunate than us in other countries.

This year we will share our Harvest food amongst people in Almondbury who are elderly, ill or housebound. Please send any gifts of food to school on 11th and 12th of October. After the Harvest Festival it will be made into parcels which the children will deliver locally.

This year we would also like to support the Shelter Box scheme run by the charity Shelter. Following the Asian Tsunami in December 2004 and the Kashmiri earthquake in 2005, Shelter sent emergency boxes which provide shelter and warmth for up to 10 people for a prolonged period. Each box contains a 10 person tent, 10 sleeping bags, a multi-fuel cooker, cooking pots, a spade, rope and other essentials. The box itself can be used in many ways, for water, storage, a baby’s cot, a table, etc. The cost of a complete Shelter Box is £490. We are therefore asking for donations of money, no matter how small, as part of our Harvest Festival. Shelter suggest that children could help to raise the money by doing chores at home for £1 a time, for example.

Once a donation has been received by Shelter, the school will be advised of its box number. This number will enable the school to trace the box it helped to fund to its final destination. All the children will be asked to sign a School Signature Card which will be enclosed in the box. Donations of less than the cost of a box are used to purchase individual items toward a complete box, all items being obtained from UK suppliers at less than trade price. Assuming a box is used for 6 months, this equates to shelter and warmth for less than 30p per person per day. So far over 300,000 people in 24 countries have been helped. For more information please click to look at the official website www.shelterbox.org.

Please come and join us in school to celebrate our Harvest Festival. All the children will be taking part. Also, please send us the names of any sick or elderly people that you know who live in the village, so that we can add them to our list.

Help is also needed to assist with the packaging of gifts.
The children and teachers will distribute the gifts on Friday 13th October. If you can spare some time to help with the preparation of the gifts for distribution on the morning of Friday 13th October, please have a word with Mrs Sweeney in the school office. It usually takes just over an hour to prepare the parcels. If you have the time, you are then invited to accompany a class as they deliver the gifts.

Confusion about school organisation

I feel it is necessary to write to clear up some confusion about the way the school is organised this term. A couple of parents that have spoken with me or with other staff have left us thinking that there is some misunderstanding about how Classes 1, 2 and 3 are made up.

The number of teachers employed by the school is decided by the total number of children in school who are in full time education. We receive set amounts of money for every child attending the school. By law, classes are not allowed to contain more than 30 children. This year, as in previous years, we cannot afford to have one age group per class and therefore we have had to create two mixed age classes. These are Classes 1 and 2. They each consist of 16 children from Year 2 and 12 children from Year 1. Class 3 contains the remainder of Year 1 children and is not a mixed age class, nor is it a class which we have created to accommodate children with learning difficulties.

Last term, staff spent a great deal of time considering where Year 1 and Year 2 children would be best placed and decisions were taken after discussing a wide range of information which included consideration of individual children’s learning styles. Staff discussed which teaching style – and therefore which teacher – children were best suited to. We also tried to keep friends together or separate children where relationships were more problematic. In addition to all this we have to try and make sure that there are not too many boys or girls in each class.

The teachers of Classes 1, 2 and 3 are meeting together to plan work every week. This ensures that all Year 1 and Year 2 children receive age appropriate learning experiences. Year 1 children in Classes 1 and 2 are not being ‘fast-tracked’ as there are vital steps in their learning that must be taken to ensure that they make good progress in the future.

I hope that this goes some way to helping you understand us better and apologise if I did not communicate this with sufficient clarity last term. As ever, please feel free to ask about anything about which you would like to know more.