Principal’s Message

I can’t believe we are already 4 weeks in to the term! What a busy four weeks it has been.

Today is National TA Appreciation Day when we got the chance to thank our wonderful support staff for all that they do for our children. They were treated to a special assembly, personalised thank you videos, and tea and cakes in the staffroom as a small token of our huge thanks and appreciation for all that they do.

It was lovely to see so many of our newest parents for our Reception Curriculum Workshop on Tuesday and we look forward to welcoming them into school again in the future to see the children’s learning in action. A huge thank you to FOGS, who provided all our new families with a set of Little Wandle flashcards to support with their phonics at home.

As a school, we feel it is so important to develop leadership skills in our children and to give them a say in how the school is run. Last week, our new School Council were democratically elected for the year and what a great choice the children made! Their role will include a half termly meeting linked to our school values, supporting with charity and school events, greeting visitors to the school, giving out a School Council termly award and monitoring the class reward tokens.

Last week we welcomed our Chair of Governors, Peta Cocker, to KS2 to meet the children and staff. She was very impressed with what she saw and will be regularly visiting us over the coming year. As a retired headteacher, she brings a real strength to our governing body and will continue to provide myself with great support.

As you may already know, we have a SCITT (School Centred Initial Teacher Training) and have trained many teachers over the years, some of whom now work for us. We currently have four student teachers based with us and we welcome them to the team: Miss Campbell in Year 6, Miss Quddus in Year 5, Miss Rashad in Y2 and Miss Ahmed in Year 1. In addition to this, all the SCITT students visited our school last week to enhance their learning on the teaching of reading and many children benefitted from reading aloud to them and showing off their phonics skills.

A letter came out last week detailing the clubs we are running this term. As you will be aware, our KS2 gym is out of use for what may be quite some time and this understandably affects our ability to offer as many clubs as usual, so I do appreciate your understanding with this issue.

This week a group of twelve Y4,5 and 6 pupils ,who have been selected as our sports ambassadors , had their playleader training so that they can support the rest of the KS2 children at play and dinnertimes. Playtimes are certainly going to be even more more fun in the near future!

On Tuesday night our Y6 footballers represented the school against Holywell Green on the pitch at the Halifax Town game. The showed amazing sportsmanship and won the game which means they progress on to the quarter finals of the competition. Well done boys- you have made us all super proud.

Calling all Year 5 parents- our feeder school , Brooksbank, has advertised their open evening.  Many of you attended the talk in our own school gym last year from the new Executive Head who shared with us all the huge progress the school has made since their Ofsted inspection. If you would like to go along and see for yourself, the open evening is on Wednesday 4^th October from 6-8pm. I also believe the new Head of School, Mr Atkinson, is visiting all local primary schools in the coming weeks and so I will update you when he has visited us.

Finally, if any of you know someone looking for a place in Reception starting next September, please direct them to our Facebook page where there is information about how they can book a tour of KS1.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend.

Mrs Crowther