Dear Parents

We had a very important visitor in school this week from the world of education called Shirley Clarke, who has written several books about Formative Assessment.  We held training for 16 schools including ours who are taking part in an action research project during the year where Shirley will BE working with us for 3 days.  This is great for our school because Formative Assessment is at the heart of quality learning and teaching and will build on our existing practice.  We had a very successful start and Jason wowed them with his ‘chef inspired’ buffet!

Road Safety Heroes message – please switch your engines off!

Our Road Safety Heroes were out and about this week.  Pollution is at the top of their agenda because some cars are parking and running their engines, which can be for up to 20 minutes, while they are waiting for the children.  The RSH team would ask you to“Please switch your engines off!” 

Behaviour

We are facing increasingly poor behaviours on the playground (KS2) as some children are being influenced by social media and the internet e.g. swearing and having a poor attitude to others. 

The latest trend is ‘roasting’ which I have addressed with the children.  As you may know, it is where things are said as a joke but causes offence and hurt to others.  The children are trying to pull the wool over our eyes by giving it a different name such as toasting but it is the same thing, being unkind to someone else.  Please monitor your children’s use of devices and check their profiles and settings regularly.  YouTube is cropping up more and more as a source. 

A wellbeing survey that we carried out recently with the children has highlighted that our children are very tired.  I was aware last term that I am often speaking to young children who are pale and have dark rings under their eyes.  Please make sure that the children do not have access to any devices two hours before bedtime or during the night. 

This is a useful link for support in managing the children’s devices and access: https://parentinfo.org/article/simple-life-hacks-if-your-family-wants-to-cut-back-on-screen-time   Thank you again.

Cross Country

Congratulations to Louie, Katy, Elsa, Luca, Anton, Josie, Erin and Claudia who represented Northampton at the Cross-Country County finals on Saturday.  All of the children placed in the top 26 have either automatically earned a place in the national finals or are a reserve for the Northamptonshire team.  They performed fantastically and did both themselves and the school proud.

Boccia

Mrs O'Hanlon tells us that the Boccia team behaved impeccably and showed good sportsmanship at a competition at Benham this week.  Well done team and keep practising. 

We have just had a wonderful assembly by 2 Rousseau, where we learnt all about the dragon situation in their class this term.  They showed us same detailed dragon drawings inspired by the author M.P. Robertson, retold a play and sang a song about another dragon called Zog – lovely.

Have a great weekend. 

Alison Harvey