Month: June 2021

WEEKLY NEWS FOR FAMILIES 25.6.21

Dear Parents and Carers,
 
as another busy week draws to a close, the children have been ‘superstars’ once again. They have committed themselves to testing their knowledge and have worked exceptionally hard. There has been some ‘scratching of heads’ and faces full of ‘concentration’, but they have been a credit to you. We will analyse the results and identify the key trends to inform our future teaching plans.
 
SCHOOL DROP OFF & COLLECTION
Unfortunately I have received a variety of complaints and concerns from our neighbours in the village and our own school families. I realise that parking is difficult, but parking on double yellow lines and the yellow zig-zags is not only dangerous but is illegal. Some families are parking across neighbours driveways, being verbally abusive, sitting smoking and blocking the pavement whilst swearing as other families walk past. We would not allow the children in school to behave like this! I hope that following this parentmail, the negative behaviour will stop so that the neighbours do not feel the need to take legal action. Thank you.
 
YEAR 5 & YEAR 6 RESIDENTIAL OUTSTANDING PAYMENTS
Please can the outstanding payments be paid as soon as possible. We are currently missing over £1,000 in payments and the school should not have to find this money within the budget. Please pay up as soon as you can so that we are not in the embarrassing position of contacting you! Thank you.
 
LOOKING AHEAD TO SEPTEMBER 2021
3.7.21: Royal Garden Party for our new EYFS families.
7.7.21: Uniform Pop Up Shop in the school hall before and after school.
9.7.21: Families to be notified of the class structure and staffing arrangements for September 21.
14.7.21: End of Year Reports will come home to families and information about your child’s class and teacher for next academic year. The new EYFS children will be put into classes after we have met them at the Garden Party and the ‘Stay & Play’ sessions.
21.7.21: Transition Day here in school including the ‘Stay and Play’ sessions’ for our new EYFS children.
 
DANCE TIME 2021
Unfortunately our dancing stars in Amberley Class were unable to perform their dance at the Alexandra Theatre this year due to COVID restrictions. We have arranged with the ‘Dance-Time’ organisers that Amberley Class will ‘open’ our Country Dancing Festival on the 22nd July and receive their medals from one of the organisers on that day. Amberley Class are going to be busy as they are also learning a country dancing sequence to perform too. We have our very own ‘Strictly Come Dancing Stars!’
 
SUMMER HAMPERS
We are looking forward to starting our collection of donations for our Summer Holiday Hampers on Monday 28th June. We will be collecting the donations from Monday 28th June until Wednesday 7th July. The money that we raise will help us to develop our Reading Areas in our classrooms. In September each class will be able to decide how they would like to spend their money.
The tickets will be on sale from Monday 12th July and the grand draw will take place at the Country Dancing Festival on the 22nd July which begins at 1.30pm.
 
Have a great weekend.
Take care
Kim Huggett
Summer Holiday Hamper Raffle

WEEKLY NEWS FOR FAMILIES 18.6.21

Dear Parents & Carers,
 
It has been another busy week here at Yapton C of E Primary School! Our youngest children in Lewes class have been in the wild garden fire lighting and climbing. Staff from Chichester Festival Theatre have been in school with our Y3/4 classes performing and reflecting on the topic of ‘well-being’.
Looking further afield, our children in Y5 and Y6 had the exciting opportunity of camping overnight last night whilst on their residential at the Adur Outdoor Activity Centre in Shoreham. A huge thank you to you the parents for supporting us in this venture and ensuring that the children had the correct equipment etc to be able to take part in this adventure. When I visited them this morning, they were a little damp but full of energy, throwing themselves into the activities and supporting each other as they did so. They were an absolute credit to you: the centre told the children that they were the ‘best behaved children that they have had visiting this season.’ It is important to thank our own school staff for accompanying the children and giving up their time to stay overnight with them. A special thank you to Mr Hughes for organising the trip. I expect that the children will be quite quiet tonight as they will be exhausted!
 
TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE WEEK
As you know, the last 15 months have been unusual in many different ways. For schools, one aspect has been the removal of statutory assessment, ie SATS and the Phonics Check. However, as a school we need to continue our assessment of the knowledge and skills of our learners in a variety of ways. Next week will be a ‘Test Your Knowledge’ week, when we will be doing exactly that and carrying out SATS for Y2 and Y6, the Phonics Check for Y1, the Multiplication Check for Y4 and we will use  past paper to do this. For the other year groups, we will use relevant assessments for their age. These will be carried out in a relaxed way so there is nothing for the children to worry about. It is important as a school that we continue to check and measure the progress of our learners. It is an opportunity for our children to demonstrate their knowledge in a different way. Any trends will be picked up and incorporated into our planning for future learning.
 
TRANSITION DAY 2021
Originally this day was planned for 7th July 2021, however due the restrictions remaining in place, this has been moved to Wednesday 21st July 2021. We will move the ‘Stay & Play’ sessions for our new Early Years children to this date as well as the internal transition arrangements for the other year groups (our current Early Years to Y5). I have attached a letter from Paul Wagstaff, the Director for Education and Skills for West Sussex explaining this further.
 
SUMMER HOLIDAY HAMPERS
Our Christmas Hampers were really successful (thank you) and as we find ourselves still following restrictions, but needing to raise money for our school, we are going to create Summer Holiday Hampers. We would like to raise money to improve the Reading Areas in the classrooms. We will divide the proceeds between each class equally and the classes can decide how to spend their money. Reading will be a focus for our school in the Autumn Term. We will start collecting hamper donations on Monday 28th June… with a summer holiday theme. Thinking of summer holiday activities for the family, perhaps buckets and spades, crab nets, story books, picnic bits and bobs (no fresh food), cocktails, hula-hula hoops, games, bubbles, balls, inflatables, balloons, etc – just a few ideas to help you. We will be selling raffle tickets for these hampers from Monday 12th July and are hoping to hold the ‘Grand Draw’ at the Country Dancing Festival on 22nd July providing we are allowed to go ahead with inviting parents into school to watch the dancing. Thank you for your continued support for our school.
 
ONLINE SAFETY
Please follow the link to free webinars which give guidance about children and their online gaming habits. We thought that you might find this useful.
Have a fabulous weekend.
 
Kim Huggett
2021.06.15 Letter to Parents and Carers from WSCC

The Return of The Chichester Corporate Challenge!

Dear Parents and Carers,
 
GREAT NEWS! The Chichester Corporate Challenge is back!!
Mrs Huggett and I are really excited at the prospect of putting teams together from Yapton C. of E. Primary School to take part in this brilliant event.
The Chichester Corporate Challenge is a series of 1400 metre road races which are held in the centre of Chichester.  These are going to take place on the evenings of Wednesday 23rd June, Wednesday 7th July and Wednesday 21st July.   There are separate races for year 5 girls, year 5 boys, year 6 girls and year 6 boys.
The school entered teams for the first time back in 2019 (before any lockdowns were even on the horizon) and everyone who took part had a fantastic time.  They also felt incredibly proud representing the school amongst so many other children of their age.  Before the first race, those who made up the teams did some extra training during school time to prepare them for the races.  This of course would happen again this year.
We haven’t been given long to enter the series of races, so if your child would definitely like to take part, please can you let me know using the office2@yaptonschoool.org email address by midday on Tuesday 15th June.
Further details about the actual event will be sent out later next week, once we know we have got sufficient numbers committed to take part.
These events are of course subject to the current restrictions being lifted on 21st June.  Let’s hope there is some positive news about that!
 
Kind regards
Chris Hughes
Deputy Headteacher

WEEKLY NEWS FOR FAMILIES 11.6.21

Dear Parents and Carers,
 
the start of the second half of the summer term has been a busy one! You may have noticed an invasion of ‘pirates’ on Tuesday. Our youngest children started their learning focus with a ‘Pirate Day’. They had a busy day that included searching for treasure and ‘walking the plank!’ Our classes in Year3/4 had an unusual visitor to their classrooms whilst they were not there, leaving clumps of hair and a jumbled message as part of the clues. They discovered that it was a Yeti! Imagine that…here in Yapton! Our children in Y5/6 had an ‘explosive’ start to the half term beginning their study of ‘volcanoes’.
 
SCHOOL UNIFORM
We will hold a pop-up shop for uniform on Saturday 3rd July for our new Early Years children and on Wednesday 7th July for our current Early Years to Year 5 classes. This will be held in the school hall both before and after school on that day. You will be able to try on the uniform to decide on the correct size and then place a phone order to Ricara (our uniform suppliers) at your convenience. You will be able to pay whilst making the order during the phone call. Ricara will then deliver to your home. we hope that this will make it easier for you to buy the uniform and save you a journey to Littlehampton.
 
PE DAYS
From September, we will continue to ask the children to wear their PE kit to school on the days that they have a PE lesson. This will be twice a week. The PE kit will include the school jumper instead of a hoody/sweatshirt now that Ricara is open again following the lock-downs. Ricara also stock the white PE T-shirts with the school badge on them.
 
HEALTHY SNACKS
We realise that it is not always possible to send the children to school with fruit everyday. Bread sticks, cheese and similar items will be fine. We just need to make sure that the snack is actually a healthy one (no chocolate bars, sweets etc.. or anything that contains nuts). Thank you.
 
INSET DAYS FOR THE NEXT ACADEMIC YEAR
Thursday 2nd September 2021
Friday 3rd September 2021
Friday 18th February 2022
Monday 28th February 2022
Monday 6th June 2022 
 
A ROYAL GARDEN PARTY FOR OUR NEW EARLY YEARS CHILDREN
We are looking forward to meeting our new families on Saturday 3rd July 2021. To confirm the arrangements, children with surnames that begin with the letters A-K please arrive for the first session and children with surnames that begin with the letters L-Z will attend the second session.
Originally we had arranged for you to attend as either Lewes or Camber class. However, I am delighted to say that we are ‘full’ for our September Early Years intake and in fact have a waiting list, meaning that we are ‘over-subscribed’. This has meant that we have needed to re-think our class arrangements. These will be confirmed with you after the ‘Stay & Play’ day on the 7th July 2021.We also have a waiting list for Year 4 too. We are currently working with the admissions team at West Sussex. This is thanks to the support and hard work of our whole school family, we appreciate the enormous amount of support for the school from our families. Thank you.
 
PRAYER FOR JUNE
I have attached our prayer for June that we say together in school. You may like to use it at home.
 
LOOKING AHEAD
Our Y5 and Y6 residential is next week on the 17th and 18th of June. The children will be paddle-boarding, canoeing, rock-climbing, shooting, mountain biking and completing other exciting challenges. We can’t wait!
Y6 will also be going ‘rock climbing’ on Monday 19th July 2021 (not the 11th).
The Chichester Corporate Challenge: 3 road races in Chichester for children in Y5 and Y6 are taking place on 23rd June, 7th July and 21st July. A parent mail explaining further details has been sent to Y5 and Y6 families.
 
Have a lovely weekend.
Take care
Kim Huggett
June Prayer