Dear Parents,

 

All of a sudden the end of term feels incredibly close!  The Christmas play rehearsals are improving by the day and the children looked wonderful today in their costumes.  I am delighted to have been able to arrange for the play to be filmed.  This will take place on the Monday afternoon performance.  DVDs will be then be available to buy.  I would like to thank the team at Pulse 8 for providing us with this service.

 

On Monday after school Mr O'Reilly, Mrs Arlon and I took 20 Year 5 and 6 children to Bohunt for a Sportshall Athletics competition.  They were brilliant; Imogen and Evie won two events and Joshua had the top score in the Javlin (17.6 meters) and Mason got the top score in the Chest push event (8. meters).  The behaviour of our children was outstanding.

Today we have received the results for the Year 3/4 competition and the children came 4th.  This is amazing, well done to all the children who participated.  We await the Year 5/6 results.

 

On Tuesday this week we were delighted to welcome Richard O'Neil to our school.  He is a story teller who travels around the country working in lots of schools.  We enjoyed a wonderful assembly and then Richard worked with each class.  We received great feedback from Richard about the staff, children and the ethos of our school.

 

I am very excited to announce the amount of money that was raised at the Christmas Fair.  An amazing £3345.23 was raised and we envisage this increasing with the possibility of matched funding with two companies.  Thank you to FOFSA and everyone who supported the school.

 

We are looking forward to seeing lots of you next week at the different Christmas Play Performances.  We will have a collection for the charity 'Shelter'  This year we have a project with FOFSA to replace the very dated tables and chairs in Chaffinch and Goldfinch.  We will hopefully have details of the furniture we wish to buy available next week for you to see. There will be an opportunity for all visitors to contribute towards this if they wish by possibly sponsoring a chair or table!

 

Recently I have had several conversations with parents about behaviour – many thanking us for our prompt implementation of our Behaviour Policy, others querying what we do in different circumstances. We implement our Behaviour Policy consistently for all children.  Please address any need for clarification to your child’s class teacher or to myself: even with the best of intentions, playground conversations can be misleading.

 

I conclude this email with the news that Mr Fisher is sadly leaving our school at the end of term for health reasons.  Governors, staff, children and parents have all enjoyed working with Mr Fisher.  He has been an asset to our school and we hope to maybe welcome him back in the future.  I would like to thank Mr Fisher for his hard work and dedication over the last term and I know you will join me in wishing him well.  We are incredibly fortunate to have secured arrangements for Goldfinch which will provide continuity and high quality with staff known to the children (details were sent home with Goldfinch children today).

 

Best wishes

 

Jacquie Vanstone