Thursday, 24 April 2014

Friday 25th April 2014


Dear Parents/Carers,


Welcome back to a photo edition of the newsletter… Stuff happening in school is too good not to be seen!
 


Summer Term gets off to a flying start!

 
 
This week, we began the summer in earnest with a short but action packed week. Reception pupils returned to school on Wednesday all dressed for their holidays – bringing their carefully packed suitcases along with them for a flight to Spain! LKS2 pupils began the term with three jam-packed days of science investigation, UKS2 have been honing their mapping skills as they begin their study of the city of Leeds and KS1 are out at ‘The Deep’ next week to get their topic started with a bang. Having been into school for a few days over the holidays - and of course for Tuesday’s training day - I can honestly say a school is nothing without the 315 little hearts and souls we love and cherish: there has been a fabulous atmosphere in school since the children returned on Wednesday and we are all glad to be back!


 
The lovely library


Over the holidays, Miss Fowler worked her magic in our lovely library. The bulk of the work had already been done, however, by our Extreme Readers who visited Waterstones to select their choice of books during the final week of last half term. Each of the books carefully chosen by our Extreme Readers have a sticker on the inside front cover which singles the book out as one specially chosen for you by your friends. The gang of eleven pupils made a fantastic selection and the library has never looked so good – thank you to them and, of course, ENORMOUS thanks to Miss Fowler for creating the most magnificent school library I have EVER seen!
 


Welcome aboard!

The Cookridge Team expanded a little this week as we welcomed Mrs Brosnan, Miss Hester and Mr Joy into school, and Mrs Barnes began her new role. As the Family & Support Team are poised and ready to offer advice, guidance and find help on any and every level (excluding bank loans!) – PLEASE come and see us if there is anything you wonder if we might be able to help you with. We just might… Please ask!

 

150 mile ‘month of pain’…

I want to take this opportunity to draw your attention to the plight of one of our very own families. You may have seen Duncan Brownnutt zooming around the streets of Cookridge of late – last week he was even joined by local MP Greg Mulholland. Mr Brownnut is not running to keep fit per se – he is running 5 miles every day in April to meet his self-determined target of 150 miles in a ‘month of pain’ to raise money for a very special charity -  the Batten Disease Family Association. Both of Duncan's children, Ellie Mae in Reception and Caleb in nursery, have recently been diagnosed with Late Infantile Batten's Disease. This condition is very rare and only affects about 30 children in the UK with only 4-5 new cases diagnosed each year. Duncan is looking to raise £4500 to help the charity support families of children who have been diagnosed with Battens Disease. You can show your support by donating through Duncan's JustGiving page http://www.justgiving.com/Duncan-Brownnutt2, and if you see him pounding the streets give him a wave and a cheer to encourage him on! Watch this space, as Cookridge Primary School will be doing something to show their support for this family very soon….

 

Year 4 Australian Partnership

Miss Carroll has friends in HOT places and has been busy establishing a connection with Hillsmeade Primary School in Melbourne, Australia on our behalf. Year 4 have begun an extremely exciting, very old-fashioned, FUN project! Each child has been partnered up with a pen pal and they will spend time during school hours writing letters, drawing, making videos and taking pictures to send to Australia. Before the Easter holidays the children wrote their first letter to their pen pal. They were signed, sealed and delivered all the way to sunny Melbourne. This week we have received a fabulous parcel with letters and photographs from the children at Hillsmeade Primary School. As you can imagine, the Year 4 children were very excited to read their letters, and they can't wait to get started on their next letter! Thank you to Miss Carroll who has been in regular contact with the teachers at Hillsmeade to get this project up and running and create yet another wonderful opportunity for our kids!

 

Attendance

Yet again, attendance in school is pretty fabulous! CONGRATULATIONS to Reception A who have this week secured the magic 100% attendance… Wow! Last terms 100% attendance certificates and termly reports will be with you next week so you can see for yourself just how well you are doing! Keep up the excellent work, folks…

National Minimum ‘Good’ Expectation
Target
2013-2014
Attendance this week
 
03/04/2014 -23/04/2014
Year to date
 
04/09/2013 – 23/04/2014
95%
96%
            96%
96.0%
Class attendance figures for the W/E  19/03/2014
Rec A
Rec B
Class 1
Class 2
Class 3
Class 4
Class 5
Class 6
Class 7
Class 8
Class 9
100%
95.5%
97.8 %
92.2%
96.6%
 95.6%
95.0%
96.1 %
97.7%
92.5 %
 97.3%

 

Y6 SATS

Spare a thought for our Y6 pupils who are working their socks off at the moment in preparation for their national tests. We are very impressed with the level of effort and determination they are putting in and the children can be very proud of themselves for this, whatever the outcome of the tests in May! The test week is the week beginning 12th May, so please don’t miss your chance to shine by being absent that week, Y6!

 

Have a wonderful weekend,

 

Mrs Bailey

Friday, 4 April 2014

Friday 4th April 2014


Dear Parents/Carers,

The end of another half term is upon us and it has been another busy week in school. Unbelievable to think that we now have just 12 school weeks until the end of another school year and next half term we will begin our preparations for the transition of pupils from one year group to another in school. For 42 of our little people, we begin to prepare for the leap into secondary school…. Y6 parents should by now have received their offer of a secondary school place for September and most likely have had details from the secondary school in terms of their induction process for Y7 pupils. If you have not, please contact us as soon as possible so we can help you to resolve this key matter and support our children in this big step!

 

Parent Consults

Thank you to all parents/carers who came along to parent consultation meetings this week to find out about your child’s learning. It is always a pleasure for teaching staff to reflect on the year with you at this point in the school year, as it is only when describing the journey each child has made that we fully appreciate the very significant progress! I hope that you enjoyed the meetings and gained an insight into how you can continue to support your child during the last term of the school year.

 

Intergenerational Choir

This week, the Intergenerational Choir were in demand yet again on Wednesday afternoon as they performed at the Ladies` Tea Afternoon at Cookridge Methodist Church Hall. As well as a great afternoon of entertainment for the Ladies` Tea members it was also an opportunity for the children to mingle during the interval, introduce themselves and sit down and have a chat with the ladies. The children were impeccably behaved, incredibly polite and truly blew the roof off with their voices! They even found time to sing Happy Birthday to one of the ladies in the audience, Jean, who was celebrating her 90th birthday!

 

There is now also a Choir Blog which can be found either by following this link: http://cookridgeintergenerationalchoir.blogspot.co.uk/ or by  going to the blogs page through the school website. Here you will find photos of recent concerts and events, news and information about upcoming performances.

 

Speaking of performances, next term, there will be an opportunity for parents and family members to come and listen to the choir sing as they will be performing on Tuesday 13th May 2.15 - 2.55 in the school hall. Please take this opportunity to come and find out why the choir is so popular! Enormous thanks to Mrs Fletcher who has created the choir from scratch into the very successful entity that it is today – and to all of those pupils who consistently sing their socks off for our school!

 

Extreme Readers Hit Waterstones!

Tuesday saw last half term's Extreme Readers take a trip to Waterstones in Leeds to choose a selection of fantastic books for our school libray. The team of 11 - Oliver Marson, Jake Denton, Charlie Thompson, Niamh Fenton, Arthur Brigstock, Stanley Brigstock, Grace Philpott, Tobin Koopman, Ben Walker, Omar Elmedhem and Essay Belay - enjoyed a tour of Waterstones before being let loose to make their book selection. The level of enthusiasm, standard of behaviour and careful thought given to their book choices was extremely impressive and it was a delight for the staff team accompanying the children to spend the morning with them, up to their necks in fantastic children’s books. The books should arrived in school on Thursday and will be in the school library ready for selection straight after half term – look out for the Extreme Readers stickers on the inside front cover of the books! Our next group of Extreme Readers were selected by staff last week for their incredible dedication to the reading kingdom that is our school, and those pupils will be hitting the shops during next half term.

Easter Events

It has been a pleasure to see so many children enter into the spirit of things with their imaginative designs for our annual ‘decorate an egg’ competition. Thank you so much to parents and carers for your continued support of this fun event – the children really do love bringing in their designs and I am sure there is a lot of fun in the creation! Congratulations to all our winners: enjoy the eggs – the first of many over the holidays!

 

Last night’s disco was a great success: that D.J. really does know how to get the children partying. Once again, it is the parents who are members of the PTA who make this event possible, so thank you to them for organising another successful shin-dig for the children, and helping on the night. 

 

The next Friends event on the calendar is the ‘Challenge Night’, a family event due to take place on Wednesday 21st May. We will begin selling tickets for this new event on the calendar next half term.

 

Attendance

I am delighted that we end this half term with a brilliant 96% in our whole school attendance. This is a fantastic achievement and is all down to YOU – thank you so much for your efforts this year. It seems without snow and bouts of winter illnesses we have achieved the highest attendance ever at Cookridge. I just have to identify a sunny day for our bouncy castle celebration now! In other news – a staggering 197 pupils achieved 100% attendance throughout the month of March and will be entered into the prize draw with 100%ers in our local family of schools. Once again – wow! Final congratulations to class 1 who secured the highest attendance across school this week.

National Minimum ‘Good’ Expectation
Target
2013-2014
Attendance this week
27/03/2014  -2/04/2014
Year to date
04/09/2013 – 2/04/2014
95%
96%
96.3%
96.0%
Class attendance figures for the W/E  2/04/2014
Rec A
Rec B
Class 1
Class 2
Class 3
Class 4
Class 5
Class 6
Class 7
Class 8
Class 9
97.2%
93.6%
98.7%
94.0%
97.9%
 98.3%
95.3%
96.0 %
95.5%
 98.3%
94.0%

 

Next half terms dates

A further reminder of some key dates for your diary during the upcoming (very short!) half term:

Tuesday 22nd April – school closed to pupils: Training Day.

Wednesday 23rd April – return to school.

Tuesday 29th April – Y1/2 trip to The Deep.

Monday 5th May – Bank Holiday.

Tuesday 6th/Thursday 8th/Friday 9th May – Y3/4 visits to Leeds City Museum

Monday 12th – Thursday 15th May – Y6 SATS week

Tuesday 13th May 2.15 - 2.55 – Choir performance in the school hall

Wednesday 21st May – Friends Event: Challenge Night

Friday 23rd May – Break up for half term.

 

Please note – there is one final training day this academic year - Monday 7th July – when school will be closed to pupils.

 

Bon Voyage…

Today we bid farewell to the lovely Miss Glendinning. On behalf of parents, pupils and staff let me give one final round of applause to Miss G as she leaves the building: you have been a superstar and we wish you all the very best in the long and successful career ahead of you!

 

Have a wonderful half term break and we will see you all, fully rested and ready to rumble, on Wednesday 23rd April.

Mrs Bailey