Dear Parents

Thank you for all your support during this week, which you may have realised has been a very challenging week for class cover!  Our amazing staff team have covered admirably in-house and we hope to have almost all staff back in school fully recovered by next week!  Our Covid numbers for children are now remarkably low once again, so we have ridden the wave and there will be no classes in bubbles from Monday.  Hurray!  Thank you once again for your support for our contingency measures and for your help with spotting symptoms early and testing regularly!

Mission Week

This week Amethyst Class led their postponed Mission Week collective worship on the theme of Racial Justice.  They spoke confidently and eloquently about treating everyone in a fair and kind way; their class mission engaged with the charity Show Racism the Red Card to publicise the theme of Racial Justice in the wider world.  Equality, Diversity and Inclusion regularly in the news and our children had engaged with recent and historic racial abuse incidents and considered how they would like to change society for the better.  Some of their poems on Racial Justice can be read below:

POEMS

Assessment

On Thursday morning, Year 1 parents came into school this week to understand more about their children’s Phonics learning and to understand how best to help their children with the Y1 Phonics Check (presentation below). Year 4 parents had a Zoom meeting about the forthcoming trip to Hooke Court (23^rd - 25^th March) and also heard about the Year 4 Times Tables check and how best to help their children with this.  The government has now confirmed that all Primary national tests will go ahead as normal this summer, so we are also expecting the Year 2 and Year 6 SATS to go ahead in the Summer Term.  Year 6 SATS are held in the week beginning 9^th May 2022 and it is important that Year 6 children are all present in school for the assessments.  More information will be shared about assessments for all year groups nearer to the time.

Parent Consultations

Thank you for booking your parent consultation slots promptly this week.  We are looking forward to welcoming parents onsite to look at books and meet with their child’s class teacher.  Please be aware that there may be last minute changes to parent consultations, either to make individual classes sessions online or later in the term, if staff members happen to test positive beforehand.  Please bear with us on this - we will do our best to give you as much notice as we can, but as we all know, plans change very fast these days and some things are beyond our control!  At the moment, we are hopeful that all appointments will be face to face.

Parents are asked to please wear masks at the appointments with teachers and to take a lateral flow test in the 48 hours before coming into school.

As usual, the crèche will be available for children to wait while their parents have appointments.  Please bring the children to the front desk and we will point them in the direction of the crèche. 

Wishing all of you a very happy weekend.

All the best

Catherine Burnham

Headteacher