Good afternoon,

I wanted to begin by thanking you all for your support last Friday.  I had many emails thanking us for the opportunity for the children but also the organisation for parents.  It was a lot of work, but we will always do what we can to ensure smooth running and maximum benefit to the children. 

Over the fortnight, we have completed the Multiplication check with our Year 4 pupils and the Year 1’s have completed their Phonics screening.  We are proud of how confident the children were.  The support at home can really be seen and short, daily sessions make the most difference.  It would be great to see the children keeping this up over the summer.

Our Year 5s have been accessing some training.  Some of them are participating in some ‘Spacemaker’ training.  This is training from the Oxford Diocese for them to lead collective worship next year when our current group leave at the end of term.  Well done to all of them.  Mr O’Reilly also gave the Year 5 children an afternoon of sports leader training on Monday.  This was a great success, and we hope they will be keen to apply for the role over the coming weeks.  Letters have gone out today.

We were delighted to welcome Mrs Loosley this week to the Goldfinch team.  Mr Vansal will remain with Goldfinch as well for the next month.

With the warm weather hopefully here to stay, our new doors to the garden are being used with such a positive impact on learning and play.  The children had the guinea pigs outside at lunch and breaks and I enjoyed taking Year 6 out there for Art earlier in the week.

We are blessed with wonderful outside spaces and I wanted to take a moment to thank Mr Cundy and Mrs Gan for their hard work in maintaining the garden areas.  Over the past few weekends, Mr Bosworth and Henry have spent a lot of time improving the grounds and my thanks extend to them.  With budgets as tight as they are, we rely so much on generosity and kindness, and it makes such a difference.  Thank you.

As the warmer weather is due to continue into next week, I wanted to remind parents to send in hats, lotion if needed and water bottles which we can refill.  We will make decisions about PE teaching etc. day by day but I wanted to assure you that we will be cautious in our approach.  In the Autumn we struggle with so many leaves falling but at this time of year, we are so grateful for our wonderful trees and the shade they provide.

Thank you for your support today with smellies and chocolate donations towards the Summer fete.  The committee work so hard and we value the support everyone can offer, whether that is by returning raffle tickets, making donations or offering your time.  Next Friday we have our second non-uniform day ahead of the fete on the 27^th June.

Next week, I will email asking for support for sports day. We rely on parents to help with giving out stickers etc. I will also send out information about how Sports day will run.  My final request is to ask if any parents wish to look after our guinea pigs over the summer. Please let me know if you are keen to. I know of many children who would sign you up!

I wanted to finish by saying how fantastic it has been this week to see writing from each class.  The progress the children are making is great to see. There have been so many moments this week to celebrate learning progression and behaviour and I look forward to even more next week.

I wish you a lovely weekend.

Jacquie Vanstone