Welcome Back!

Welcome back to school.  I hope you all had a lovely summer and had some great family time.  All of us in school love seeing the children after the long break and the children have settled into routines very well.

As usual, we have a busy term ahead with lots planned.  We took a long time over the summer term planning our curriculum for this year making sure that children see the purpose of what and how they learn.  This term we are linking our curriculum focus to who the children are and why the learning is relevant to them, next term our curriculum focus will be linked to what their learning means to them as part of a community and the summer term will be focused on the children’s growing responsibilities.  Each year group will be learning different topics but embedded with the same theme. You can see what each year group is learning on our website (clicking ‘Teaching and Learning’ on the top bar then scrolling down to ‘Curriculum’). Please have a look to see all the exciting learning planned.

Our key focus for school improvement this year is reading.  Being able to read well is so important and makes learning in other areas much easier.  We want also want to improve children’s love of reading which is also very important. Please look out on the calendar dates and latest news, opportunities we have planned for you to share and celebrate reading in school with us.

Good communication with parents is very important to us and unfortunately this term we are no longer able to use BLOOMZ so are looking into a communication system called ‘ParentHub’ for parents and teachers to message.  Hopefully this will be up and running very soon and we will keep you updated. The website will still be where I post all information and celebrations and is my ‘newsletter’ rather than sending out paper copies. Teachers are asking all parents and carers to subscribe so please pass on to any parent who is not currently subscribed.

During our last Parent Forum, we discussed homework.  Parents who attended liked homework but there was discussion around how much was appropriate.  Over the past few years, projects have been completed but not all children have completed them and we have had to assess what impact they have had on children’s learning in school.  So, we have taken all those factors into account and reviewed our homework policy. Because reading is our school improvement focus this year, every child will have reading homework each night.  If they do not read the previous night they will have time the following morning during break to catch up so they do not miss out. They will also have spellings each week and when children move into Key Stage 2 (Year 3) they will be set times tables challenges.  Children in Year 6 will be set extra throughout the year to prepare them for moving up to high school. (Please see our Policies tab on the school website for our homework policy). Thank you in advance for working with us to make sure our children achieve their best.

Calendar dates will be posted on the website on latest news, on the calendar and on the drop down menu of ‘Key Info’ (in ‘What’s Happening This Term’).

It has been a great first week and I am very pleased to be back.  Thank you for your support and partnership. Please do come and see me or contact me if you have any concerns and let me know what you think is also working well or suggestions to improve our school even further.

This term is always a great start to our academic year with autumn themed learning, bonfire night and then Christmas to look forward so it should be a brilliant term!

Many thanks

Mrs Fletcher