Thursday 31 January 2013

Friday 1st February 2013


Dear Parents/Carers,

Incredible to think that, with ‘Issue 19’, we are exactly half way through another school year and into February already. Time certainly does fly at Cookridge...

 Paired observations!
The teaching team have embraced ‘paired observation’ in school, and over the next two weeks every member of teaching staff will have had the opportunity to observe teaching and learning in the rooms next door. This might not sound exciting to you but, believe me, what they don’t tell you about teaching is: once qualified and in the job you rarely get chance to see anybody else teach! It is SO important that paired observations become a regular feature of our school so that our entire teaching team has the chance to stand back, reflect and continue to learn from the magic happening just metres away! As ever, dedicating hours to be in classrooms is an absolute pleasure: incredible to see the kids bloom and grow, to have chance to flick back to the first page in their literacy or numeracy book and talk about their achievements so far... But also GREAT to be able to have those same conversations with staff about their ongoing blooming and growing! Thank you SO much to all teachers and children for having us in your rooms this week.

 Writers Workshop
Tuesday saw 30 talented writers from a range of local schools come together to work with Mary Colsen on a day long writing workshop. For the first time at Cookridge, the writing workshop focused on non-fiction which was a superb opportunity to stretch the children's writing skills. Mary, who has published up to 50 books, took the children through the writing process from drafting to publishing and gave them a real taste of how this works in the 'real world'.  The children drafted their own pages for an information text on animals and the compiled texts are going to be copied and sent to each school as a celebration of their achievements. Six Cookridge children took part  - Anna Weeks, Max Wilson, Nada Sultaan, Amy Clarke, Jake Smithson and Bradley Simpson - and they did the school extremely proud with their enthusiasm, effort and attitude throughout the day.   We really do have some talented writers at Cookridge.

Friends Update
There is a great level of enthusiasm in school for the movie night, to be screened in school on Wednesday 13th February, beginning at 6pm. Admission will be by ticket only at £2 per ticket or a bargain £5 per family, and the cost will include popcorn and a drink. Please return the attached reply slip if your child/children want/s to come along by Friday 8th February so that we can get tickets produced and distributed before the night.  

More news on next half terms social events - Mark’s Magic Show (20th March) and the Easter disco (28th March) - to follow soon...

Apologies but a very helpful ‘Friend’ has pointed out an error in the dates included in the last two weeks’ newsletter for upcoming meetings. The correct dates are:-

Thursday 28th February (not March – that’s disco time!)

Thursday 25th April @ 6.30pm

Thursday 23rd May @ 6.30pm.

All meetings are held in school from 6.30pm so if you are free and want to get involved – please do!

Sports News
We continue to wrestle with LCC to sort out our swimming. There has been progress this week but not enough to resolve it and set a date for the return of swimming. I will keep you informed and hope to have positive news very soon.
 
Standards update
On the school website, there are a few great sources of information if you are keen to keep an eye on how we are doing in our mission to secure outstanding teaching and learning so that ALL our pupils achieve well – or better! – during their seven years with us. The ‘Our School’ section includes an Ofsted tab, with links to Department of Education Performance tables  http://www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/school.pl?urn=107894 and the ‘league tables’ published by the Telegraph which allow you to compare our school with others, both locally and nationally. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/leaguetables/9739316/Primary-school-league-tables-2012-compare-your-schools-performance.html. Hours of fun!  The data published in these tables is a report of the achievement secured by Y6 in July 2012 (last year’s Y6’s) and the key data by which the success of the school is measured. The DFE data shows a clear improvement in the number of pupils securing Level 4 or above in both English and Maths each year since 2009, rising from 57% to 75% last year. 96% of pupils made expected progress between KS1 and 2, achieving the national expectation of 2 levels (12 points) progress. In fact, over 50% of pupils made better than expected progress to achieve national expectations or above...  

All of this is good news indeed and marks the beginning of our journey towards outstanding provision for our children. Hitting these benchmarks matters, as the pressure on schools to do so has clearly increased – I’m sure the media has made everyone aware of that. Let us not lose sight of the REAL reason all of this is good news however..... More of our children left our school more confident and competent in their reading, writing and maths last year and more of our children began high school more ready for that challenge as a result... Thanks to parents past and present for your ongoing support of your child’s learning: it really is ‘making a difference’.

I will also draw your attention to Parent View, a link for which appears on the same webpage. http://parentview.ofsted.gov.uk/ It is an online survey, conducted and reported directly to Ofsted, to gather parent views of their child’s school. If you have comments to register – go right ahead: ESPECIALLY if they are positive! :0)

Attendance
Brilliant news – our attendance continues to climb back from the low point in December and we are up 0.2% overall once again this week. Remarkably, nine out of eleven classes have posted attendance over and above the 96% target for the year. That is a brilliant achievement – well done to you all, and keep it up.. We’re half way through the year already!

National Minimum ‘Good’ Expectation
Target
2012-13
Attendance this week
Year to date
95%
96%
96.8%
95.1%
Class attendance figures for this week are:-
Rec
Class 1
Class 2
Class 3
Class 4
Class 5
Class 6
Class 7
Class 8
Class 9
A 99.1%
B 94.3%
96.9%
99.3%
93.1%
97.8%
97.5%
97.7%
97.1%
97.0%
95.2%
Coffee Morning
The next date is set for the coffee morning – Wednesday 13th February, 9-10am. It will be great to see you there... Mrs Speak and Mr Green will be on hand so if you would like to talk to them about anything at all put the date in your diary – don’t be shy!

 

Have a wonderful weekend,

Mrs Bailey
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