Parent Feedback Form- Mid September

Feedback so far… 

I am keen to find out how your child has settled back into school. We are using something in school to support with critique and feedback and would like to trial this with parents. We are using this language with the staff and children. 

I praise… something you like/think is working well this year so far

I wonder…. Something you would like to propose to us in order to improve school life and is usually posed as a question 

Example: I wonder if school breakfast club could start up again soon? 

The staff within school have been working exceptionally hard in order to make our school the best it can be and I would love to be able to share some positive feedback with them as well as ways we can improve further. 

Morning everyone,

This week, I set every crew at CPS a challenge. I wanted each crew to really think about what ‘Working Hard’ at Carcroft Primary looks like. It’s one of those areas that people have different perceptions of what it looks like and I really want to be able to clarify this so that we all have the same understanding.

I asked the children to share their understanding during their phase assembly next week, in the hope that as a whole school, we can create a little video showing everyone what ‘working hard’ looks like for us at CPS and this can be shared with both Parents, Governors and the community so that we all understand.

In order to help the staff and children to work hard, leaders have put together a document which breaks down ‘working hard’ for each stage of the lesson.

Last year, I felt that sometimes, both Teachers and Pupils were not always doing what I would expect them to do at each stage of the lesson and this sometimes meant that the teaching and learning was not always as great as it could have been.

We have changed the structure of our Maths and Writing lessons (The Write Stuff) to fit in with this criteria and I am hoping that the children can see that by following these new structures, everyone can achieve and everyone can be the best they can be!

You can view our expectations for working hard by clinking on this link below.

Supporting Children to work hard and get smart

For 99% of our pupils, I have been blown away by their attitude towards learning since returning, we have a few pupils who still need to keep thinking about our expectations so that they don’t let their crew down.

Keep up the great work CPS!

Miss Laing

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.

This letter outlines some of the new initiatives in which we have launched at Carcroft this year in order to make our school the best it can be for our pupils. This letter will also be sent via Parent Pay.

I have tried to format the letter so it should read okay on smartphones, because if you are anything like me, you often read things on your phone. I would appreciate any feedback regarding the ease of reading this letter- thank you.

The admin team are going to send out another letter later today, which will cover some general bits and pieces including PE days, snacks etc. Watch this space!

September School Improvement Letter