Dear Parents and Carers,

another week has flown by! The children have quickly settled into the routines of their new classes. They are trying their best with their work and thoroughly enjoy their time for play too.

The children in Arundel, Bodiam and Cowdray classes have returned today from the 3 day Residential visit to the Adur Activity Centre. After a soggy start they enjoyed some lovely sunshine whilst carrying out all of their activities. The children have had an amazing time, some of them away from home for the first time and/or indeed sleeping in a tent! A special ‘thank you’ must be given to Mr Hughes for organising this trip along with Mrs Isaac, Ms Bevan, Mrs Diggens, Miss Hook, Mrs Hazelgrove, Mrs Bayliss and Mrs Dean for accompanying the children. I expect that there will be some ‘early bedtimes’ tonight!

The Novium visits are our next exciting ‘over-night’ events for Portchester, Pevensey and Southsea classes. I’m not sure who is most excited at the moment….the children or the staff! Sleeping the night in a museum will be an amazing experience and a fascinating way to learn.

 

ATTENDANCE

It has been great to start our school year without any ‘bubbles’ or Covid restrictions. I cannot stress enough how important it is that the children are here with us everyday. In our most recent ‘Community Circles’ we asked the children about the importance of coming to school everyday. I have attached an overview of their responses for you to read. I think the most poignant statement is “We build steps towards a good career in the future”. The children also talked about how school is a contributory factor for ‘strong mental health’. Both of these statements reflect the importance of planning for the future and how aspirational our children are.

If on a very rare occasion you need your child to be absent from school, you will need to come to the school office to collect a ‘Request for Absence’ form. This will need to be completed and returned to Mrs Farrell in the school office. Unauthorised absences can potentially result in a fine which is issued by the Local Authority. The school does not receive any money from the fine that is paid. 

If you are struggling to keep up a regular attendance pattern for your child, we will begin an ‘Individual Attendance Plan’ and meet regularly with you as parents to enable the attendance to be at least satisfactory which is over 95%. This plan will be a supportive process whereby we will look at ways to help you. It will also support any referrals that we need to make to outside agencies to become involved.

Our curriculum is exciting! Our school is a happy and fun place to be! Lets look forward to seeing everyone every day! Just let us know if we can help.

 

HOME LEARNING

As a staff teaching team we have looked closely at how we can balance the exciting ‘Hooks’ with the other learning that needs to be re-inforced continually. 

Our ‘Home Learning’ will now involve- 

READING- at least 3 times per week with your child. Each child will have a Reading Journal that you can write in. There will also be a ‘Reading Menu’ in the Journal for you to choose some optional additional reading activities. Please share these in the journal.

SPELLINGS- these will be sent home each week. They will be linked to the current learning in the class and/or the words that they are expected to be able to spell. The children will be able to use the LOOK-COVER-WRITE-CHECK method to learn to spell the words. LOOK at the word-COVER it up and WRITE it-the CHECK it to see if it is correct.

MATHS- TTRS TIMES TABLES ROCK STARS for Y1-Y6 and NUM BOTS for our Early Years children. The children will have log-ins and be able to access this via their personal log-in.

There will also be a Menu of optional activities to choose from that will be based around a theme. The first theme will be ‘ACTIVE’. Watch out for these.

We hope that this will simplify the ‘Home Learning’, make it less of a chore and make sure that our children are concentrating on the right things to advance their learning.

Thank you to all of the families who took part in our meetings about ‘How home and school can work best together to help the children’s learning’.

 

Have a lovely weekend.

Take care

Kim Huggett