Dear
Parents/Carers,
A
very busy, very wonderful week in school! The bank holiday weekend certainly
seemed to reinvigorate us all, and the children were full of news of wonderful
weekend adventures on Tuesday, including the seaside, camping and simple family
fun at parks across Leeds . The weather seemed
to be on our side for once and I’m delighted that Cookridge families made the
most of the extra day to do something different...
Summer Magic!
Having
managed to get onto the field for lunchtime a few days this week, the summer
sunshine was most definitely working its magic. We had rounders, two bubble
machines, a parachute, full pitch football, rolling down the grass banks,
children making daisy chains and children making their own fun exploring in and
around the trees. Simply glorious. We aim to get onto the field as much as
possible during the summer months. Can I please ask parents to be vigilant
around weather conditions and encourage you to apply sun cream on your child
before school when the sun is set to shine, as the field provides very little
natural shade and sun burn is a very real possibility.
Can
I also repeat an earlier request to provide a water bottle for your child. All
children in school have access to a water fountain in each class but I am
conscious that, even if a drink is taken, it is very rarely more than a sip.
Again, in the warmer weather, I would encourage children to be drinking more
and would ask you to support this initiative. Thank you.
Class Photographs
Tempest took some stunning shots of the
children and staff on Tuesday and this year all class photos will be the
‘vista’ style, presenting the children in various, fun configurations! We hope
you like them... Proofs and further details will be provided very soon.
Funtime Club and
Little Sunshine’s Preschool - Volunteers Needed
The AGM (Annual General Meeting) for Preschool
and Funtime (our before and after school club) is on Thursday 16th
May at 5:30pm. The committee urgently need new members to help
in the management of the settings and have expressed concern that without
sufficient volunteers, the future of the settings in their current form may not
be able to operate from September 2013. Please let Ann Sadler – Funtime - or
Julie Bird – Preschool - know in advance if you are able to attend.
On line learning
Our
newly appointed ICT leader in school has fantastic plans for the development of
this subject – watch this space. In her first weeks in the role, Miss Streams
has already begun her evaluation of the website (updates coming soon), the
equipment we have in school and the online learning resources we have invested
in for our children. Children across school now have access to a wide range of
online tools to accelerate their learning: Sumdog, Iamlearning, Matheletics,
Bugclub and Learner Journey, to name just a few. All of these resources are
used in school during conventional literacy, numeracy and wider curriculum
subjects, are increasingly featuring as part of your child’s homework and –
most importantly – are being accessed by our children out of choice, in their
‘leisure’ time. The impact on learning is very evident... We believe in
simplicity and view learning as the most natural phenomenon known to man:
practice, practice, practice. Much research proves that 10,000 hours invested in
any one thing will lead to expertise, and we know that ICT is definitely a way
to get children clocking up their 10,000 hours practice! Ellis Ba has answered more than 10,000 questions in the last
year on SumDog! Thomas Hampshire is
not far behind with 8,983 and Ilyas, Tobin, Omar, Jaidon, Aya, Max, Raj and Zak
have ALL answered more than 3,000 questions each. Congratulations and well done
– this dedication and hard work is time well invested in YOUR future! If
parents do not have passwords, information or indeed internet access - please
see your child’s class teacher: let’s give all
children this same life chance.
Sports News
Congratulations
to the Y5/6 football team who kept up their impressive form by beating Ireland
Wood 12-2 on Tuesday night. The goals were scored by Jack Appleyard (2),
Dominic Purrell (2), Elliott Coultas (3), Nathan Brown (4) as well as an own
goal. It was another great team performance, with Nathan given man of the
match, and we go on into the quarter finals full of confidence!
Kickboxing
Club- thank you to all those parents and children who returned kickboxing
slips. I am pleased to announce that we have enough children for the club to
run and it will begin next Thursday 16th May. Children will require a PE
kit and need to be collected from the school hall at 4:15pm. Thanks also to
parents who responded to Mr Gamble’s Sports questionnaire last week. The
feedback was very positive and will help us shape our plans for next year’s
clubs, which are an important and much loved part of your child’s whole school
experience.
To celebrate all the hard work Year 6 put into their SATs, they have the chance to go and watch the first day of
Attendance
How
very bizarre! This week sees four of our eleven classes achieve JOINT first
place with 96.9% Goodness knows what’s going to happen with Cookie, our
attendance bear, who usually spends the week with the one class who have
surpassed the rest. Well done to Reception, Class 1 and Class 7...
|
National Minimum
‘Good’ Expectation
|
Target
2012-13
|
Attendance this
week
|
Year to date
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||||||||
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95%
|
96%
|
94.9%
|
95.1%
|
||||||||
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Class attendance
figures for this week are:-
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|||||||||||
|
Rec
|
Class 1
|
Class 2
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Class 3
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Class 4
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Class 5
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Class 6
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Class 7
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Class 8
|
Class 9
|
||
|
A 96.9%
B 96.9%
|
96.9%
|
96.8%
|
92.2%
|
94.6%
|
95.6%
|
93.9%
|
96.9%
|
91.4%
|
93.1%
|
||
School
Calendar Update
I have now posted the school calendar for 2013-14 on the school
website http://www.cookridgeprimaryschool.org.uk/parents/school-calendar.php. Please use this information as you make holiday arrangements for
the year ahead. Training days for the year ahead have also been set as:
|
Monday September 2nd
|
Tuesday September 3rd
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Friday October 25th
|
|
|
Monday April 22nd
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Monday July 7th
|
||
Cross everything for Y6!
I
want to end this week’s newsletter with a personal note of thanks to all staff,
parents and pupils who have worked their socks off in readiness for next week’s
national tests. Next week, months of hard work will be evident as the Y6
children sit the SAT tests, which this year include a reading paper (Monday), a
spelling, punctuation and grammar test (Tuesday) and maths papers (Wednesday
and Thursday). We have a number of children entering Level 6 papers, and are
very hopeful that the outcomes of the tests reflect the hard work and
dedication of staff, parents and pupils at Cookridge. The very best of luck to
everyone involved next week... You CAN do it!
To all my friends in Y6: don’t
fret! Relax, enjoy the weekend and be sure of some early nights next week!
Have
a wonderful weekend,
Sam
Bailey
