School Newsletter

4th September 2020 (Whole School - 04/09/2020)

School Newsletter 4th September 2020

In this newsletter:

Pick-up and drop-off: EVERYONE needs to keep us safe please!

IMPORTANT: drop off & pick up info for Year 1 Seacole (Mrs Moore) and Year 1 & 2 Nightingale (Miss Byrne)

Reading Books – getting the best learning for your child

Reading Books – a safe system

After School Clubs Years 1 – 6

Lessons about learning

Pick-up and drop-off: EVERYONE needs to keep us safe please!

We have 365 children on site and 65 staff so we need everyone to think about keeping everyone else safe. PLEASE continue to use the one way system so that you aren’t facing people coming on and off site, wear a face covering if you can and keep your distance from each other. The more people who do this, the safer your children will be.

IMPORTANT: drop off & pick up
Year 1 Seacole (Mrs Moore)
Year 1 & 2 Nightingale (Miss Byrne)

From next week, our new Reception Class families will be dropping off outside your child’s classes between 8.35 and 8.45 and picking up from 3.05 until 3.15. You will be asked to move away from the Year 1 pick-up / drop-off areas and come back later if you are there during Reception Class’s times. Being early will slow down the system so please help us keep your family safe by not being earlier than your door time from Monday.

Reading Books – getting the best learning for your child

Children whose parents encourage them to learn get the highest marks in school. The more children are encouraged to enjoy reading at home, the better their reading skills become. Our highest achievers have reading time at home every day and their parents make sure they give them all the encouragement and praise they need.

To help you at home, teachers will put a sticker in your child’s home-school diary that identifies which book band your child is currently working on. Each sticker identifies targets and questions appropriate for that colour-banded book.

You'll notice that there are different symbols down the side of the sticker…

• The bullet points inform you of the targets for that colour-coded book. Children should be praised as they do these things well.

√ The ticks gives you tips about questions and ideas to help your child.

X The cross tells you things that are not helpful.

We hope you find this helpful and if you have any questions please talk to your class teacher.

Reading Books – a safe system

We have spent this first week assessing the children so they receive the correct books for their reading level.
Starting next week, children will be given two books on a Monday which they will keep for the whole week then return on a Friday. This means we can quarantine every school reading book before they are given out.

In the summer, we spent thousands of pounds updating our reading scheme for our younger learners. Please encourage your children to be responsible and look after their books as these will be thoroughly checked on return. Any books which are damaged or lost will be billed for at the cost of £5 per book.

After School Clubs Years 1 – 6

The after school clubs menu letter goes home today with children. To make sure that after school clubs are covid-safe this term, all clubs all only be available to specific year groups. Although this means there is a reduced choice, it does means that children will be kept safe as they won’t be mixing outside of their own bubbles.
Please return your letter by Tuesday 8th September. Letters confirming places will be sent at the end of next week.
Clubs start from 14th September and finish 4th December.

Lessons about learning

We know that some children have been away from school for over five months. Before getting down to normal lessons, teachers have been taking a lot of care to make sure that children get back into the rules and routines of school, know how to behave covid-safely and how to use their brains to get the most from their classwork. To make sure that we understood “where children were at”, our children in years 3 and above did a survey at the start of the week so that we could tailor things to their needs.

As parents, it is really really important that you show your children how important their learning is. Children in families who talk positively about school and learning do better than those from families who don’t.

Have you asked them:

How are you feeling about being back at school?

Is there anything that has worried you about going back to school?

What has your teacher said about homework this year?

If you have any questions as a family, please get in touch with your child’s teacher who will be happy to talk things through with you.