Today was our first Learning Legends Assembly via Google Meet. We had a few technical issues but these can all be resolved for next week- I’m sure.

However, I have to say I loved seeing so many of the children all on one screen. It made my day!!!!! I think the children enjoyed it too. That’s what it’s all about! ❤️

Hopefully your child will have brought their certificate home if they were the achiever.

They make us so proud and you should be too 🤩🌟🤩

Well done Frankie, Sienna and Ray in Crew Elmer. Your fabulous ideas made it onto your sentence stacking wall. Mrs Elmer must’ve loved your ideas. Keep up the fab work 🙌🤩

During lockdown, I kept the Teachers busy…today I feel so proud of their hard work and I want to share some fabulous work which has been produced as a result of some great teaching.

I wanted us to develop our teaching of Writing when we returned. After speaking with some Key Stage 2 children back in January, they shared that Writing was the hardest subject as there was so much to remember. I wanted to do something to make Writing easier to access, making it more enjoyable for our children.

During lockdown, we found a strategy called The Write Stuff which we are hoping will support our pupils to feel confident when writing. Teachers watched over 10 hours worth of training and have spent lots of time thinking about how to deliver writing lessons so children don’t feel overwhelmed. We are pleased to announce that we are seeing a huge impact in the quality of writing being produced. The main difference with The Write Stuff is that the lesson is broken into three small chunks and within every chunk, the Teacher models and then the children have a go.Nobody is ever going to be ‘stuck’ or ‘won’t know what to write’.

I had a visitor today… Harley Mullins in Y4 has blown me away with the progress made since Monday. Harley would openly admit that Writing was not his favourite subject last year, but today we agreed he needed to give himself a ‘4’ for working hard and getting smart. Keep up the amazing work Harley.

We will begin to share more work next week on class blogs. This is just a sneak peak. 🤩

Connect NOT content…

This time last week, the staff had just finished our first INSET day this academic year. I asked staff to think about this phrase: connect NOT content….

These are some of the things they came up with….

From spending time in and around school over the last week, I’m pleased to share that staff are really focussing on building positive relationships with the pupils in their crew and getting to know them as individuals. It’s only when children feel settled and safe that we can the really begin to plug the gaps in academic knowledge.

I hope that your child is starting to feel welcome, happy and safe in their new crew and they are beginning to get used to their new Teachers after many months away for most. Keep on making us proud CPS! You have embraced the return to school and we are feeling excited  🤩

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yT9NZzt_vKZp_wOCJ0xH3oXPWp6-ocM0fZUFUxH06X8/edit

I’ve just had a little chat with the Teachers regarding a little bit of a break down in terms of communication regarding the local visits this week that I’ve picked up on across some year groups

We would like to apologise for any confusion we may have caused this week and will ensure that this does not happen moving forward.

The Teachers had the children’s best interests at heart; they wanted to do the visits this week to ‘hook’ the children in which is great but time ran away for some of them and therefore things became a bit rushed and not executed as well as they could have.

Despite a little bit of confusion, the children have had a lovely week out and about with the vast majority loving it (although they were a little peckish after).

Some crews will be heading out next week…  We are going to confirm Crew Elmer and Crew Boswells on Monday when we have finalised staffing. Please bear with us… 🙏🏻

Thank you for bearing with us this week whilst we ironed out a few ‘return to school niggles’.

Finally, Mrs Wilcox is sending a text to KS2 parents sharing that we are not going to operate the snack system as we did before due to Covid regulations.

However, KS2 children can bring a healthy snack from home from Monday. This could include: fruit such as banana or apple or a cereal bar. Children will be able to have this throughout the morning.

Have a lovely weekend.