Dear
Parents/Carers,
I hope parents enjoyed
the residential assembly led by Y4 pupils this week. The children really enjoy
an opportunity to present to parents and it was fantastic that so many of you
were able to attend. The Y4 residential was a fantastic success and the children
certainly formed some life long memories during their time away from home. They
can now add the assembly to their bank of memories – so thanks for coming!
Nits
Please
be aware that we have an itchy problem with our favourite friends – head lice.
Nits are an irritating side effect of putting large numbers of children into a
confined space! Children happily play, work and share all day, every day and
all too often nits quite literally pass from head to head. Parents should take
advice from the chemist and can choose to treat nits using conventional ‘wet
combing’ or chemical treatments. The trouble with nits is you can remove the
nits but miss the eggs…. Which become nits again with 3-5 days, and so the
cycle continues! Any treatment should therefore be repeated as recommended by
the chemist or medical professionals. There is some good information on the NHS
pages - http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/head-lice/Pages/Treatment.aspx.
The advice is that you establish a routine for nit combing frequently. If you
haven’t checked your child’s hair recently, now might be a good time to do it!
If we notice nits in your child’s hair in the coming weeks, please don’t be
offended if we ring to inform you. Thanks for your help with this matter.
Friends
Don’t forget the
Friends events which are billed for the coming term. You need tickets for Movie Night on Wednesday 12th
February (5-6.30pm) and get them by speaking to the office. Tickets cost
£1.00 a head and a tuck shop will be available on the night.
There
is a non-uniform day on Friday 14th
February for a donation of £1.00. As part of our commitment to getting all children
to try school meals, we are also extending an invitation for all pupils to
enjoy a themed school dinner on that date – again please speak to the office by 31st January if your child would like to take advantage of this
offer.
The
Easter Disco is booked for Thursday
3rd April, with our favourite DJ returning for another fandango.
Tickets will be available nearer the time.
Sports
News
Currently, our children
are enjoying some of the best PE sessions I have seen in all my years in
primary schools. Mrs Wood joined us in September as a specialist PE teacher, an
appointment we were able to make due to Government Sports Funding that was allocated
to Primary Schools following the Olympics. The money is intended to improve the
quality of PE in primary schools, and our use of funding is allowing us to make
huge leaps in the quality of our PE sessions daily. Not only does Mrs Wood lead
brilliant sessions right across school, she also works alongside teacher
colleagues to guide and coach them in their teaching of PE – a subject seldom
spoken of in my 16 prior years in education – and is also brokering some great
opportunities for us such as Leeds United Football Club coaching our Y5/6
football skills. We are in discussion with schools in our locality to increase
the number of opportunities for sporting competitions across the schools,
making use of the good quality sporting facilities in the area. We will keep
you posted.
Next week, Y4/5 are taking part in a basketball competition
at Horsforth High School. Mr Gamble and Mrs Wood have been hard at work
training the team and we wish the players all the best next week. There will be
a report on the action next week.
Dogs
I am grateful to parents and pupils for alleviating the
difficult parking situation by walking to school and I fully appreciate it is
very efficient to walk the dog at the same time as doing the ‘school run’!
Please be reminded that, for the Health & Safety of our pupils, dogs are
not permitted on the school site for any reason. Furry friends should be
secured using the perimeter fencing. Thank you.
Attendance
Another
week below our target 95% overall sees our year-to-date figure continue to
drop. We are now ½% below our 2014 target of 96% but I am still optimistic that
we can get back to our best. Can I please remind parents to ensure that you
contact school to let us know if your child is not going to be in school for
the day – a quick phone call on Day 1 of a period of absence puts an end to our
worries and cuts down the time office staff spend trying to ascertain that a
child is safe at home each day.
We
have an actual tie this week with Class 1 and Class 6 both securing 97.3% attendance
– Cookie and Bourbon will have to do the honours next week!
|
National Minimum
‘Good’ Expectation
|
Target
2013-2014
|
Attendance this
week
16/01/2014 –
22/01/2014
|
Year to date
22/01/2014
|
|||||||||
|
95%
|
96%
|
94.5%
|
95.5%
|
|||||||||
|
Class attendance
figures for the W/E 15/1/14
|
||||||||||||
|
Rec A
|
Rec B
|
Class 1
|
Class 2
|
Class 3
|
Class 4
|
Class 5
|
Class 6
|
Class 7
|
Class 8
|
Class 9
|
||
|
95.4%
|
94.1%
|
97.3%
|
94.3%
|
91.3%
|
95.5%
|
96.7%
|
97.3%
|
89.9%
|
91.3%
|
97.2 %
|
||
Have a wonderful
weekend,
Mrs Bailey
