Dear Parents and Carers,

October has arrived and with it has come another busy and successful week in school.

This week our first Honours Award assembly celebrated the children who had settled well into their new classes. It was striking how many of the individuals had been selected by their teachers not just for demonstrating our PRIDE code but also for their determination to succeed and apply open mindsets in lessons. A huge well done to all of our winners. There will be a shake up to the themes of some of our Honours Awards this year. Our Learning Toolkit skills, now very much rooted in the life of school, will be replaced by the 5 Ways to Wellbeing. We have utilised the 5 Ways to Wellbeing for a number of years and recognise how fundamental they are in shaping healthy, happy, successful and productive pupils. Our next award will focus on Kindness and will prove a tough choice for teachers, I’m sure!

School Visits

We open our doors to visits from many professionals in our commitment to school improvement and as part of the OWN Trust we also benefit from the offer of further academy wide support. This past week we have welcomed separate visits from Mary Foreman, the OWN Trust Chair of Trustees and Sarah Levy, Quality of Education Consultant. Both visitors commented on the calm and focussed atmosphere present as they toured our classrooms. As part of her advisory role, Sarah met with Katy Wyatt (Maths lead) to review our curriculum coverage and provided some great insight into how we can further improve the quality of teaching and learning in Maths.

Books

We have made changes to the exercise books each year group use this year. Children now have an individual book for each of the subjects they cover in class, with the aim for many of the books to travel with them throughout their school journey. We see this move as a positive way for the children to strengthen their ability to review their learning and revise previously taught skills. It will also help to significantly reduce waste.

Where possible, we have re-allocated our current book stock for year groups to use. However, we do have some excess books which are no longer required. We will be holding a ‘freebie table’ after school on the KS1 playground next week- please help yourselves to any you can use at home.

Have a great weekend everyone!

^{Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash}