Friday 15th November 2013

Dear Parents/Carers,

With Thursday’s training day, this week has gone at lightning speed – it seriously feels like Monday morning happened hours ago and yet here we are: Friday again. It’s a great feeling when you tell the kids that school is closed on Thursday and they groan - we must be doing something right?!

 

Training Day

I entered the teaching profession in 1997 (yes kids - last century!) and in all my time in (and out of) the classroom, I have never had the opportunity to be a fly on the wall in another primary school for the day. Thursday’s training experience was, therefore, a fantastic and unique experience and I am very grateful to Beecroft for opening their doors to us and sharing what they do. Having spent the morning touring school and observing lessons, the Cookridge team re-grouped for the afternoon to talk about what we had seen and talk about our next steps. Chief amongst our observations were the sky high expectations of pupils, both in class and homework and the fact that parents are very close partners in learning and the communication between home and school is very detailed and clear. Staff meetings this term will focus on deepening this conversation and developing a crystal clear plan of action for the next phase. This is a very exciting point in our journey, as we are now pitching ourselves against outstanding practice and the next layer in our cake will therefore be looking to refine what we’re doing to enable our children to secure fantastic achievements.  Watch this space!

 

Scholastic Book Club

You should by now have received your Book Club magazine. This is a great resource to increase the number of books on your child’s shelf and I don’t need to tell you what a great stocking filler books make! If you would like to place an order through the school, please return the order to school by Thursday 21 November 2013….

 

Library – books, books and MORE books.

We are very proud of our school library and the fact that within 2 years we have already invested over £20,000 in books for our school. This included an entirely new reading scheme. We are now beginning to invest heavily in class novels which cost around £300 per title – a project likely to take us two years to complete! Despite the heavy investment, we still need books aplenty to stock up the beautiful shelves in the library. If any parents work for companies who offer funding support for community projects, please consider putting our library on their agenda. 

 

Also – we are keen to ensure that we make the most of opportunities to read and be read to in school. Each class has time in the library each week to choose books but we are keen to extend this to a library time. We would love to fill the library with adults for these slots – adults who are willing to read stories to children! If you are interested and think you may be able to spare even an hour across the week – please let me know. Don’t discount yourself if you have a toddler – if they will listen to a story they will be welcome to come along!

 

Table top sale

Wednesday after school saw our first table top sale in the playground. This was all Mrs Herbert’s idea and I was delighted to see it well attended straight after school – I’m hoping you managed to bag some bargains! Enormous thanks also to the parents who set up their own stalls and braved the wintry weather to sell their produce. Let’s hope there is another sale soon and that even more stalls breeds even more custom. The next Friends event in the calendar is our beloved Christmas Fair – make sure you are there on the 4^th December, 3.30-5.00pm!

 

Christmas Dinner – pa rum pa pum pum!

It’s time to place the order for the traditional school Christmas Dinner! As with all our special occasion meals, ALL pupils in school have the option of joining in with the festivities by opting to have a cooked meal on the day. The recent Bonfire lunch was a fantastic success with the lunchtime staff serving 215 meals on the day! If your child would like to savour some delicious turkey and Christmas pudding (or the vegetarian alternative!) – please return the slip below by Friday 29^th November so that we can order and get the sittings organised – amazing if we could serve up 300 (although we may have to start at 9am!)

Children in Need

Thanks to Miss Hobson for organising events to support Children in Need. A great day was had by all with playground pennies, non-uniform, bun sales and Wii activity contributing to the fun. Thanks to parents for supporting the event – I will let you know next week how much we managed to raise on behalf of Children in Need.

 

Attendance

We have, this week, maintained our 95.9% attendance on the year and – with the chicken pox behind us - it is even possible that we will recover our 96% attendance target on the year! There is 0.1% in it this week with Class 5 and 6 battling for prime position: congratulations Class 5 who just pipped Class 6!

National Minimum ‘Good’ Expectation			Target 2013-2014			Attendance this week				Year to date
95%			96%			95.4%				95.9%
Class attendance figures for this w/e :- 13/11/13
Rec A	Rec B	Class 1		Class 2	Class 3	Class 4	Class 5	Class 6	Class 7		Class 8	Class 9
91.7%	95.5%	94.5%		94.7%	97.2%	97.1%	98.7%	98.6%	96.9%		91.9%	92.1%

 

This week, Mrs Lockwood has also been doing some wider analysis of the attendance in school. As part of this process, she has compared the levels of attendance for all pupil groups in school. During the last half term, BOYS were the lowest attenders, clocking up 2.8% of the 4% absences altogether. What an interesting observation. Come on boys – the girls are trumping you! I may have to introduce a reward… :0)

 

On a serious note, Mrs Lockwood is reporting that we are currently achieving first day contact in only 73% of all absences. Put another way – that means that 3 in every 10 children’s absences are not notified to school through the appropriate telephone call, and we are not managing to get a reply to telephone calls or text messages sent out. This is not good practice, as those measures are in place to ensure that children across Leeds are safe and that parents know where they are – which is all we are trying to ascertain through a phone message. Please make sure you make first day contact in the event of an absence, whatever the reason.

 

Dates for December!

We are hurtling towards the Christmas period and, as ever, it’s going to be a busy few weeks! Please see below for all the key dates that you need in your diary for the key events and coming festivities.

 

25/11	Y4 Robin Wood Residential	12/12	Christmas Dinner
28/11	Friends Christmas prep/meeting 6.30 onwards	12/12	Choir performance at St Pauls
29/11	Non – uniform day – Christmas fair	16/12	2pm LKS2 (Class 4, 5 & 6) performance
3/12	Sleeping Beauty – pantomime in school (am).	17/12	2pm KS1 performance (Class 1, 2 & 3)  5.30 LKS2 (Class 4, 5 & 6)  performance
4/12	Christmas Fair 3.30 – 5.00	18/12	2pm Reception performance
5/12	Woodwind Trio – music concert in school – pm	20/12	2pm UKS2 lead Carols Around the Tree.
7/12	Choir performance at Methodist church

 

 

Have a wonderful weekend,

Mrs Bailey