Month: January 2021

Weekly News for Families – 29.1.20210

Dear Parents and Carers
 
What a strange January this has been!  Once again, thank you for all of the hard work that is going on at home.  We have delivered some more laptops this week and have provided paper packs to support the learning at home.  Some of you have been to collect new exercise books because your children have already completed the ones they brought home before Christmas!  Please keep the Home Learning books safe as we are looking forward to all of them returning with the children when we are fully open again.
You may have heard on the news this week references to the 8th March as a potential date for the re-opening of schools.  We will let you know any information regarding this as soon as we receive anything from the DfE.
It continues to feel very different in school.  Although the children who are in school are working hard, they are missing their friends. 
 
Class Zoom Meetings
Many of the classes have begun their class Zoom meetings this week.  Despite a couple of teething problems, the staff and children were really pleased to connect school and home.  These meetings will continue for the time being, so look out for the meetings details on Google Classroom and ParentMail. 
If your child is joining a meeting from home, please can you make sure the screen is renamed using their first name.  This will allow the teachers to see who is trying to join the meeting easily.
 
BT Wi-Fi Vouchers
We have been successful in our application for 60 free Wi-Fi vouchers from BT.  Please read the attachment which provides more details about this and how to let us know if you require one of these.
 
Tuesday Chat
This week’s Tuesday Chat unfortunately clashes with a Governor’s meeting that Mr Hughes and I have to attend.  Therefore, we will move the online meeting to Monday 1st February.  The code remains the same but we will send a reminder after the weekend.
 
Children’s Mental Health Week
Next week is Children’s Mental Health Week.  As a family, please make sure at some point in the week you spend some time doing an activity which you enjoy or which is important to you.  This might be baking, playing a game, going for walk or watching a favourite film.  I am sure the list is endless.  We would love to see pictures of what you get up to!  Please add them to our school Twitter feed (Yapton C. of E. Primary School @YaptonOf).  I have attached some ideas for families during Children’s Mental Health Week.
 
Support For Families
We realise that this continues to be a difficult time for so many reasons.  We are here to help, but it may be that you require home-based support.  This can be found through the Arun Hub Enabling Families.  Their contact number is 07860 858616.  Please ring this number for further information and to book an appointment.
 
Road Names In Yapton
Here’s something to think about over the weekend.  We have been asked to suggest potential street names for the new housing development at North End Road.  The developers are looking for 6-8 street names for the site.  You may wish to think about the history of the local area or significant events or people linked to the village.  Please let us know of any suggestions on the office2@yaptonschool.org email address by Monday 1st February so that we can send them on.
Please continue to use the same email address to contact us if you need to.
 
Have a safe weekend.
 
Take care
Kim Huggett
WELLBEING IDEAS FOR FAMILIES FOR CHILDRENS MENTAL HEALTH WEEK 2021
Click here for BT WiFi offer details

The beginning and end of the school day

Dear Parents and Carers,
 
We need to make a slight change to where families need to wait at the beginning and the end of the school day. This is to protect the grass and the daffodils that will be beginning to appear.
Instead of waiting on the grass in front of the Pevensey Class door, please could you wait on the tarmac area in front of the school office.  Please continue to follow social distancing guidelines.
Thank you.
 
Take care
 
Chris Hughes
Deputy Headteacher

Weekly News For Families – 22.01.21

Dear Parents and Carers,
 
Can you believe we are half way through this half term?!  Thank you to all of our families for working so hard and doing the very best they can in these unusual times both at home and at school.  We appreciate there will be highs and lows but please remember that we are here to help you with anything that you need.
 
Remote and Home Learning
As part of the government scheme, we have received our allocation of 18 laptops.  Mr Hughes and I have already delivered some of these to families to support the learning at home.  If you are a family who are really struggling to access and engage in the learning through Google Classroom due to a lack of appropriate devices, please let us know on our office2@yaptonschool.org email address.
The teachers have enjoyed giving feedback to the children at home through Google Classroom.  As part of our marking and feedback policy, children would be required to improve some pieces of work following the teacher’s feedback.  During the partial opening of our school, we would like children to respond and improve one piece of English and one piece of Maths work a week.  Look out for a pencil emoji at the beginning of the feedback – this will indicate the feedback must be responded to, the work is improved and resent back to the class teacher.
 
Class Zoom Meeting
We are beginning to introduce Class Zoom Meetings so that the children at home and at school have a chance to see each and interact together.  The focus of these sessions will be one that encourages discussion between the children.  The details of the meetings will be posted on Google Classroom and they will also be sent out on ParentMail.  Please find the attached ‘Code of Conduct’ (which defines the parental responsibilities) and the ‘Expectations of Behaviour’ (which is for the children).  Please be patient with any teething problems that may occur but we hope they will be an enjoyable time.
 
Lateral Flow Device Testing for School Staff
As part of the community test and trace programme, staff at our school will begin to take part in this type of testing twice a week.  In order to support our families, we have decided that school staff will test themselves on a Sunday and Wednesday.  As this test identifies asymptomatic carriers of the virus, any positive test results of school staff will result in a class being closed whilst a PCR is undertaken.  Following the outcome of this test, parents of the affected class will be notified of the next steps to be taken.  Information regarding this will be sent through ParentMail. Please check your ParentMail communications carefully on a Sunday and Wednesday evening.  We aim to let you know before 7pm.
Advice from West Sussex Public Health
Please find attached a letter from the Director of West Sussex Public Health with reminders about advice regarding the pandemic.
 
Tuesday Chat
It was great to talk to some more parents this week during our Tuesday Chat. These will continue every week and we look forward to seeing some more of you next week.  The meeting code will remain the same as last week.  We will send a reminder on Monday.
 
Have a lovely weekend.
 
Take care
Kim Huggett
Click here to view: Class Zoom Meetings Code of Conduct
Click here to view: Class Zoom Meetings Expectations of Behaviour
Click here to view: When to self isolate letter for parents from Director of Public Health

Weekly News for Families 15.1.21

Dear Parents and Carers,
Here we are at the end of week 2! Once again, thank you to everyone for working so hard and sharing with us your news and work. It was great to see some of our families yesterday when Mrs Hayes and I delivered the ‘food hampers’. We are really grateful to Tesco for supplying the bags for the ‘hampers’ and to St Marys Church Yapton for helping to top up the ‘hampers’ with additional food. Our teachers this week have begun to make phone calls to families in their class to offer support with ‘home learning’.
Home Learning 
We realise that learning at home is very different to learning at school. Please remember not to put too much pressure on yourselves to turn your home into a school. We are really appreciative of the support you have given your children so far.  Following your feedback and reflections from teachers on home learning through Google Classroom, we would like to share with the our updated arrangements as we move forward:
  • Learning will be available at 8am each day
  • Morning timetables (Monday-Thursday) will remain consistent and focus on English and Maths (some parents wanted to be able to plan their day)
  • Afternoon learning will consist of the foundation subjects
  • Friday’s learning will be focus on R.E. and more creative opportunities (some parents had noticed their children were getting tired at the end of the week)
  • The learning will be organised in weekly folders which will make it easier to you to find
  • Deadlines have been removed, so if the work is returned later in the afternoon it will not be shown as ‘late’ and teachers will still give feedback
  • We would like to encourage families to send in work regularly rather than just at the end of the week
  • If work has not been sent back by Friday, teachers will not be able to give feedback over the weekend
  • If you are struggling to return photos of your children’s learning through Google Classroom, please use your child’s email address instead (e.g. arundel@yaptonschool.org, camber@yaptonschool.org, etc)
  • On a Monday, there will be a link to a YouTube video which the teachers have made to launch the learning for each new week
  • There will also be a link for an afternoon story time at the end of each day where the teachers will be reading a story the children.  (These stories will be available from 2:30pm every day.)
Places in school
We have worked very hard to accommodate every request for a place in school.  Some classes are now full (in line with Union guidance) and as a school we are very close to capacity.  A waiting is list has been organised so if circumstances change, please let us know but there is no guarantee of a place at the moment.
Free School Meals
You may be aware the government has changed their recommendation for the provision of Free School Meals during this lockdown.  From next week, we are moving from food hampers to online vouchers.  These will be arranged to be sent to the families entitled to Free School Meals who are not in school.  This is because those children who are in school have the opportunity to receive a hot meal.
INSET Day
Friday 12th February will need remain as an INSET day as planned.  We cannot change this date due to scheduled essential maintenance work with the school.
Tuesday Chat
For the rest of this half term, Mr Hughes and I will continue to host the Tuesday Chat.  This will be via Zoom.  It was great to see and chat to some of our parents who joined us this week.  We hope that they found it helpful.  The details for the meetings are in the parent mail sent to you.  Please be patient if you are waiting in the waiting room whilst another parent is chatting with us.
The meeting will be open from 4:30pm until 6:00pm
Have a great weekend and don’t forget to use the office2@yaptonschool.orgemail address to let us know about anything that you need help with.  It is always nice to receive positive feedback or any snippets of good news!
 
Take care
Kim Huggett

Tuesday Chat 12.01.2021

Dear Parents and Carers 
 
As we continue to navigate our way through the latest lockdown, we thought it would be beneficial to give parents and carers the chance to let us know how they are feeling about various issues that we may be able to help with.
Mr Hughes and I would like to set up a weekly opportunity for you to be able to meet with us virtually.  We are going to host a ‘Tuesday Chat’ from 4:00pmand 5:00pm.  The first meeting will be tomorrow via Zoom.  The details for this are shown below:
 
Meeting ID: 933 7725 0880
Passcode: Yapton
 
This meeting will be follow a ‘drop-in’ format where by you will join a waiting room and we will let you in one at a time to meet and talk with us.
We look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow.
 
Kim Huggett

FRIDAY NEWS FOR FAMILIES 4.1.21

Dear Parents and Carers
 
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Thank you for your generosity at the end of term with the presents, cards and wishes that you gave to school staff. It really put a smile on our face. I would also like to say thank you for your patience, support and understanding about the situation we currently find ourselves in.
 
REMOTE LEARNING
Once again, thank you to all of the families who have engaged with Google Classroom and remote learning this week.  We appreciate all the difficulties families may face in completing this work.  We have also experienced teething problems at school.  I would like to ask you to be patient as we all learn more about Google Classroom.  Would you be kind enough to take 5 minutes to send us an email (office2@yaptonschool.org) to share you thoughts on what is going well and what could be improved.  We are going to do this at school and then use all the feedback to adapt where we can.
CHILDREN IN SCHOOL
The children in school have settled well and we have been able to accommodate 100 children.  As I explained before, this is following Union guidance that relates to the actual size of classrooms and the distancing rules. We do have some children on a waiting list – like we did we did in the first lockdown. 
The school feels very quiet as we are missing being together as a whole school family.  We would also welcome your thoughts on this in the feedback you give using the office2 email address.
TIMES TABLES ROCK STARS
Mr Thompson – our Maths Lead – wants to remind you the children need to be continue to keep their times tables knowledge fresh.  One of the best ways to do this is through Times Tables Rock Stars.  If you need to have your child’s login details resent, please email this request to ttrs@yaptonschool.org
JANUARY PRAYER
I have attached our school prayer for January which considers making fresh starts.
PINOCCHIO
We had planned for the Year 6 children to take part in the Chichester Festival Theatre’s School Fest Project linked to their recent Youth Theatre production of Pinocchio this term.  Unfortunately this has been put on hold.  However, they have made a recorded performance available.  It lasts about 80 minutes. Please use this link https://cft.link/PinocchioOnline and the password Geppetto to access this. Due to rights issues, the link is only available between 8:55am and 5pm on Monday 11th and Tuesday 12th January.  We hope you enjoy this.
 
Once again, we find ourselves in a challenging situation.  Please be assured that we are here to support and help in any way that we can.  Our office2 email is checked regularly or please phone the school if you find that easier.
 
Take care
Kim Huggett
January Prayer

Thank you 5.01.2021

Dear Parents and Carers
 
Thank you to everyone who has engaged in the remote learning on Google Classrooms today.  Thank you to those of you who were patient in receiving login reminders,
A good number of children have submitted some of their learning and the teachers have enjoyed giving feedback.  We fully appreciate the various constraints and difficulties families may face with the demands of remote learning.  We are very grateful for the time you are able to support the children in their learning.  Do the best you can and that is all we can ask and expect from you!
Here at school, we are having a few teething problems regarding the teachers’ videos.  For now, these will not be available, but the teachers will post a message to the children at the beginning and the end of each day.
We are monitoring the number of families who are logging on each day.  Let’s see if more families can get involved tomorrow…
Take care
 
Mr Hughes
 
Deputy Headteacher

Arrangements for remote learning 5.01.2021

Dear Parents and Carers
 
Following the preparations put in place in school and yesterday evening’s announcement from the Prime Minister, here are the details about the remote learning arrangements for the children who are not at school:
  • The national curriculum continues to be taught
  • The learning will posted on your child’s Google Classroom page
  • Here you will find the Knowledge Organiser which provides details of the learning for the week
  • Following the guidance, there will be about three hours of learning time, so there you will also find a timetable so that the children at home can follow the same structure of the day as those in school
  • Each lesson will be posted as an ‘Assignment‘ on Google Classroom with instructions and any other resources which may be needed
  • We expect the English and Maths work to be completed in the books which were part of the home learning packs which were sent home before Christmas
  • The same high expectations of neatness and presentation are required
  • Please submit photos of the completed learning so that your child’s teacher can look at what has been completed and give some feedback each afternoon
  • During the last full lockdown, we know that the children missed seeing their teachers so Teachers in the Early Years and Key Stage 1 are going to post a story on their Google Classroom pages at 3pm, whilst teachers in Key Stage 2 are going to post a message to their classes at the beginning of each day 
This is a new way of learning and there may be teething troubles to begin with, but hopefully you will soon be able to get into the swing of things.  Don’t forget video instructions on how to use Google Classrooms are on our school website.  If you have any queries, or you have misplaced your child’s login details, please contact the school using the office2@yaptonschool.org email address.
All the teachers are really looking forward to seeing what the children do at home.
 
Take care
 
Mr Hughes