Dear Parent/Carer,

I hope that you had a lovely half term week, even though the weather wasn’t as good as hoped for.

Just before we broke up, Class 1/2AB did a really great class assembly which focused on Chinese New Year. They explained the race of the twelve animals that the Chinese years are based on, and told us that this year is the Year of the Dragon. Well done to them! 😊 It was lovely also to see so many family members joining us for their assembly. Thank you for your ongoing support. 😊

The Cantonese way of saying ‘Happy Lunar New Year’ is “Gong hei fat choy” (恭喜发财), which means ‘Wishing you happiness and prosperity and we send those wishes to all of our families!

The booking link for our Parental Consultations next week, was sent out before we broke up, with a deadline of the Friday when we broke up to choose a time. Staff will allocate an appointment time this week at the end of Thursday to all parents who missed the deadline or had trouble booking, so that no child or parent are left out. These Parental Consultations will take place on:

Tues 27th February – Rec-Y6 Parental Consultations – 3.45pm-7.30pm
Weds 28th February – 3.45pm – 6.00pm
Tues 5th March -Nursery Consultations – 3.45-7.30pm
Weds 6th March – 9.15am-3.30pm

These consultations show your child how much you value what they do, give you the chance to find out about the lovely work they have been doing and find out how you can help your child to continue to succeed. 😊

As always, we will run a children’s film in the Nursery, if you’re unable to get childcare.

Because this is the Spring Consultation, Year 6 pupils will join their parents for the meeting, in order to help them prepare for their move to high school.

Also joining us for both evenings will be Afshan Morgan, a Psychological Health Practitioner (PHP), attached to Newport schools. This is a relatively new post and her role is to support families in particular by running parent courses in schools for any areas that parents would find helpful, such as anxiety, or wellbeing advice.

She will be able to tell you more about her role and will be giving out a short survey that I have put together, which is completely anonymous, which will give you the chance to ask for any courses or information that you might find helpful. This will also be given to any Nursery parents who won’t be attending for other children next week.

We will then use your feedback to arrange sessions that you will find most helpful.

Growth Mindset
In our INSET day yesterday, we covered a number of curriculum areas. We also focused on our Metacognition strategies (Awareness and understanding of ones own thought processes) and I thought that it would be helpful to reshare the six Growth Mindset statements that pupils helped us to devise last year, which we use consistently throughout the school. They help us to show children that it’s ok to make mistakes and to find some things hard, because that’s when real learning takes place.

They are:

I can’t do it YET!
I love a challenge. What am I missing?
I’m going to keep going.
It’s tricky but I’m not going to give up. Mistakes mean I’m learning.

As adults in the school, we’re trying to use these ourselves also.

If you want to find out more about Fixed or Growth Mindset, which is based on the research by Prof Carol Dweck, this link might help. It’s a YouTube film which is just over six minutes long. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyIF5VUOJc0

Pantry
This will run tomorrow as usual.

Manor Park
Lots of luck to Year 6 pupils who are visiting Manor Park Adventure Centre in Herefordshire for two nights until Friday! I know that they will have a really great time! 😊

Thank you also to staff who are also joining them- Mrs Agland, Mrs Dickenson, Mrs Davies and Mr Bowen. Y6 pupils not going will also have some special fun activities in school as well. 😊

Parent Governor
Apologies for the delay in sending out the nomination forms. We’re just waiting for confirmation about whether we will

have one or two vacant posts. I hope to give you more information this week.

Yours sincerely.
HL Vaughan Headteacher