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
