Dear Parent/Carer,
Well done to all of those children who had an Early Bird fridge magnet for attendance for the last half term!
The best Foundation Phase class was Class 1D/M and the best Key Stage Two class was Class 3/4J. Well done to those!
The draw for the half termly 100% attendance Early Bird gift card for Foundation and Key Stage Two will take place tomorrow.
Last week, Year 5/6 classes had a lot of fun (and learning) on Friday when they marked Sir Isaac Newton’s birthday by having a ‘Newton Day’. We have lots of budding scientists in school!
This Week
The current Welsh Government operational guidance permits us to have sports coaches and special curriculum visits, as long as every person attending has had a negative Lateral Flow Test result before coming into school.
Class 5/6SP joined in with the first Dragon Rugby session of the year today and that went well, even though wet weather meant that it had to take place indoors.
On Wednesday. Classes in Year 5/6 will have writing workshops with Clive Sanders, Poet in Residence with the charity Never Such nnocence (www.neversuchinnocence.com), which helps give children a voice on conflict.
Learning
All children have brought home a copy of their class Theme Plan today, and at the end of school tomorrow a PDF copy will be sent to you via Schoop, for reference. These theme plans were revised last term and the same format is used in every class. I hope that they are helpful for you. As always, please chat with your child’s class teacher if you want to know any more about their work this term.
The United Nations Rights of the Child Article for this term across the school is:
Article 29 – The Goal of Education
Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full. It must encourage the child’s respect for human rights, as well as respect for their parents, their own and other cultures and the environment.
You will find this on the back of the Theme Plan. In addition, classes will be looking at other Articles throughout the term.
Covid Update
The national alert risk level is still ‘very high.
As you are aware, we changed our gate systems slightly last week to make it easier for you to ‘Drop and Go’ in the morning, and also for you to collect your child more safely at the end of the day.
I’d like to thank you very much for complying with these changes really quickly and helping one another.
Like all schools we are coping with some Covid related challenges with staffing, which may become worse over the next week or two, since we are about a week or two behind London and the pressures that they are currently dealing with.
If we have additional difficulty to maintain staffing that we are unable to solve with supply staff, over the next few weeks, these are the steps that I propose to take:
1 Consolidate classes wherever possible, (depending on the level of individual cases in a class).
This now would be possible because we no longer have to run Bubble Classes but still must avoid mixing whenever possible.
2 Put a member of staff who may not normally be part of our teaching staff but who works as a teaching assistant, into a class. They would work under the direction of a teacher and this could involve support staff doubling up in some circumstances.
This would mean that staffing ratios in Foundation Phase classes would change if teaching assistants were working elsewhere.
3 If I exhausted the possibilities above, had no supply staff and had no other options, I would have no choice but to close a class and send children home to do online learning for a limited period. This, however, would be a very last resort.
Children had their home logins sent to them before Christmas and they would follow exactly the same process as previously.
I want to stress again though, that this would be a very last resort.
In the meantime though, please bear with us if we have to have various supply staff teaching classes. I am always very careful about the supply staff I take on, and the work covered would continue to be that expected for the class. Supply staff are also always supported by other staff in their year group team.
I will send out separately some updated isolation guidance from Newport Council (in conjunction with Public Health Wales), which you might find helpful to refer to.
In order to keep rooms and the building ventilated, we are keeping lots of windows open. This means that the building isn’t as warm as it usually is and, during the next few days, when cold weather is forecast, will get even colder. For this reason, please send your child in to school with an extra jumper or cardigan to put on if they are cold. Please also send you child to school in a warm, waterproof coat (with their name on).
Staffing Changes
Thank you to Miss Wall, who has returned to cover Class 3/4S, while Miss Spearey is away. She hopes to return soon.
In a change to the class staffing in 5/6SP, Mrs Barton will be teaching them on a Wednesday and a Friday afternoon.
Finally
Some amazing news about our library! 😊
Before Christmas, we were thrilled to discover that we had been successful in obtaining a Literacy Trust grant to redevelop our library (which we lost when it became the temporary new classroom for Class 1M and now houses items from the ICT room, which is being refurbished from next week onwards.)
The even better news is that we then had the chance to apply for Literacy Trust ‘Flagship’ status for our Library and we heard last week that we had been successful with this. This means that we will have over £9,000 worth of fittings and books, staff training and also the help of a library designer (who is visiting next week). We are thrilled about this, not only because of the money, but because this ‘Flagship’ status only goes to a limited number of schools across the UK!
We will be focussing heavily on reading in school for the next two terms and plan to develop a ‘Family Friendly’ Library. We will be looking to children and you for ideas and suggestions and I’ll keep you posted about this.
Apologies for sending this newsletter later in the day. Have a good evening.
Very best wishes,
H Vaughan
Headteacher