8 Feb 2008 - Newsletter 20

Newsletter No. 20
Friday 8th February 2008
 
Dear Parents, Carers and Governors,

Green class Assembly
What a super assembly Green Class did this week! Lots of songs, pictures and clay models all about animals – well done!
 
Purple Class Assembly – please note change of date (from 13th Feb to 26th March)
The children have requested that we change the date of the assembly; as they all really wanted to do their assembly about the puppets they’re making. Please accept our apologies for the change.

Year Two Prayer Journey
Next Thursday, Revd. Sally Dakin will be leading a session with the Year Two children. She will be inviting the children to take part in prayer activities. For example, the children will be weaving and colouring, whilst exploring ideas such as saying sorry, please and thanks to God.
If you would like to know more, please do speak to one of the teachers or Sally said she is happy to talk to parents herself.

Parents Evening
We look forward to seeing everyone next week for parents’ evenings. If you have not made a time to see your child’s class teacher, please do get in touch as these are such valuable opportunities to find out about the progress your child is making and ask any questions.

Marking Policy in Year One and Two
We are developing the marking of pupils’ work at the moment, particularly in their writing. We have found teacher comments are rarely read more than once and whilst “smileys” are fun and pleasing; they don’t capture what was good about the work. Whilst we may still write comments and put smileys in some cases, we are trialling a new system of marking. This involves using coloured underlining, in green and pink.
These are called “tickled pink”, where the specific learning for that lesson was achieved and “green for growth”, to indicate something that the child could improve on. This is both very Visual for the children and focuses on the specific learning objective for that lesson.
We are already finding that the children can recall the learning much more readily and are using it to inform their next piece of work. It is easy to flick back through books and see what went well and what needs to be improved. So when you look at their books at parents evening, you will see the new colour coded underlining. Do ask any questions you have when you come in, but first indications show that marking has become more effective and meaningful for the children.

Sports Relief
We will be getting involved with this fit and fun charity again this year. All children will be invited to try and run a mile – 11 laps of the field!! When we did this challenge 2 years ago the children were fantastic, many wanting to keep going! We will be selling the Sports Relief socks to children which cost £2 each; this will be their donation to their charity, so no additional cost will be involved.
As we did before, we will have a staff mile at some point in the week, with the children cheering us on! We thought this year, we’d have parents and friends slot too! So if you’re free and would be keen, pop this time and date into your diary – Friday 14th March at 2.30pm. A donation of at least £1 per adult would be appreciated – do take a look at the website if you want to do official sponsorship for the Sports Relief charity.
http://www.sportrelief.com/

Changes to the PE kit
We have decided to move away from using plimsolls for PE and use trainers instead.
The main reason for this change is that trainers have a better grip under foot, can be used on a slightly damp field and don’t get soaked through in slightly damp conditions. During last summer’s wet weather, we often couldn’t use the field as it remained damp and their plimsolls would give no grip.

This policy will be phased in so please don’t rush out and buy anything new at this stage – just wait until their feet grow and they need a new pair. Also we would strongly recommend that you buy a relatively cheap pair that can be left in school as we do with the plimsolls. As with all uniform, we discourage fashion labels and logos, as this escalates the cost to parents and creates unnecessary distraction when the children are changing for PE.

Cash For Schools
Cash for  schools returns on Thursday 1st May 2008. £10,000 will be distributed between all participating schools that collect a minimum of two tokens per pupil. The first token to collect will be printed in the Maidenhead Advertiser on 1st May.  Please see posters at either end of the school for more details.

Ofsted Inspection for our Junior School
As many of you will know, the Junior School have had their Ofsted Inspection this week. I’m sure they will have done very well. In a September newsletter I did mention that we are due an inspection too. As we only have 3 days notice, it will be over and done with very quickly, which I’m sure is the best way.

PTA News
On Tuesday we had great fun with our sponsored pancake toss. Thank you to all those who helped and took part. You should have received back your sponsorship form and a certificate with how many pancake tosses each child did. Please could you let us have any outstanding money (and forms if you don’t need them) back to school as soon as possible, with any cheques made to Polehampton C of E Infant School PTA. If you sponsored an amount per toss and were a little surprised at how many tosses your child made, we quite understand if you feel that you would prefer to make a donation instead of the calculated amount!
 
Thanks to all who helped with the Blue Class cake sale too. We raised £86.40 which is brilliant for their first cake sale!
 
We were also delighted this week to receive a cheque from Microsoft for £754 to match the profit made on the Christmas Raffle (thank you John Lawrence). Please do let us know if your company is able to do fund matching, as we are looking for someone’s name to put down as promoter for the upcoming Easter Raffle. No time commitment required – just a name and willing company!

Local Weather Forecast
Sunny all weekend !

Have a great weekend,

Helen Ball
Headteacher.