Spring Term - Welcome back Spring 2017

Our jam packed autumn term has now been wrapped up and the spring term has started. Autumn term is always ‘busy’ in a school but with our ‘every learning minute counts’ approach this has escalated to a whole new level. I passionately believe that you start the academic year as you mean to go on. So we established every learning expectation with rigour and accepted only the best from every child. Consequently, our children have a solid base across the core subjects and are ready to excel across the spring and summer term. I do not believe children should be catching up at this point in the year. So through robust intervention and outstanding teaching our children can access the challenging curriculum. 

A major focus, as you know from the school development plan, has been improving reading so far this year. It is really hard to miss when you’re in school, with our pleasure for reading attitude seeping into every classroom, bookshelf and child! As ever, I wanted to thank all our parents for reading with their child/ children regularly at home. It makes such a difference! Once a child reads a whole new world opens before them. I am finding children discussing our Talavera 20, requesting new titles for the library and using what they have read within their writing.

Obviously for our children to make exceptional progress within the curriculum they need to be ready to learn! We pride ourselves on the ‘exemplary’ learning attitudes of our children, which were noted on our last local authority visit. Our children want to learn. They know how to learn and they gain satisfaction from learning. As I walk around the classrooms children often do not even know I’m there, as they are all so engrossed and focused. They all have a sense of purpose, which is so important for lifelong learning. I am very confident that when our children leave in year 6 they maintain their lust for learning.  While I was teaching narrative techniques in year 6 this week, it reinforced just how independent and focused our children are. So much so I felt slightly redundant!

Of course our children’s wellbeing is paramount to their readiness to learn. Alongside our rigour for learning we have our deeply embedded core values, which layout our expectations. We offer such a wide range of extracurricular activities so we see where our children shine! We have fabulous artists, debaters, sports people, actors and the list goes on. Also this term we are aiming to gain Healthy Schools Award. We want to provide and encourage every child to have the healthiest start and attitude to life! Take a look in a week’s time at our new website page showing the wealth of opportunities we are offering for Health Schools!

Thank you for your support

 

Mrs Amanda Webb