Middle School Newsletter

PARENTAL SURVEY: 

We would really appreciate your thoughts on how the school is doing.
Please fill out this survey to let us know.

School 21   

Key Dates

Monday 2nd December:  Year 8 Anti-Knife Crime workshop  (P2P Education - Newham funded, throughout the day one coaching group at a time) 
Tuesday 3rd December:  Last day to order iPads (Year 7 & 8)
See below for more information
Tuesday 3rd December:  Year 6 Residential Parents' Information Meetings  
(2 Sessions - 8:45am - 9:30am and 5:00pm - 5:45pm)
Thursday 5th December:  Year 8 Peasants' Revolt Project Group trip to Tower of London 12:00pm - 4:30pm (Selected students) 
Please make payment through ParentPay
Friday 6th December: Selected Year 7 Students to Pantomime
(Every Child a Theatre Goer)
Friday 6th December: Reception - Year 2 Festival of Light Concert
10:30am - 11:30am
Friday 6th December:  Year 3 - 5 Festival of Light Concert
4:00pm - 5:30pm
Wednesday 11th December:  Year 7 Science Trip - Centre of the Cell
(Ben Nevis / Rockies)
Thursday 12th December:  Year 6 - 8 Festival of Light Concert
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Friday 13th December: All other Year 7 Students to Pantomime
(Every Child a Theatre Goer)
Friday 13th December:  Christmas Jumper Day & Christmas Dinner 
Tuesday 17th December:  Reception - Year 6 Flu Vaccine
(More Information below)
Tuesday 17th December:  Year 7 Science Trip - Centre of the Cell (Himalayas)
Wednesday 18th December:  Exhibition of Beautiful Work
4:30pm - 6:30pm (School finishes at 1:00pm)
Thursday 19th December:  Attendance Award Trip - Winning coaching group for Autumn visiting Zap Space / Attendance Award Trip - Individuals with 100% Punctuality and Attendance (More Information to Follow)
Thursday 19th December:  Year 9 - 13 Festival of Light Concert
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Friday 20th December:  Just One Tree Free Dress Day - £1.00 Donation
Friday 20th December:  School finishes at 1:00pm
Monday 23rd December - Monday 6th January: Christmas Holidays 
Monday 6th January:  School closed for INSET Day
Tuesday 7th January:  School resumes for students

Middle School Attendance Winners

5 Matterhorn 96.7%
6 Kilimanjaro 98.3% OVERALL WINNERS
7 Rockies 97.3%
8 Fuji 98%

Thank you for your continued support regarding attendance. Our percentages are on the rise! Keep it up for our target of 97% or above!

Year 7 iPads - Information on ordering

Please click this link for the letter sent out regarding 1:1 devices. The portal is currently open for orders and key dates for the iPad roll out are as follows: 

Portal open from - Monday 18th November 2019

Portal closes - Tuesday 3rd December 2019 - No orders can be accepted after this date!

Device collection dates - 09/01/19 & 10/01/19 (3:15pm - 4:00pm and 5:15pm - 6:00pm) 

If you missed our parents' information session last term, the slides presented are available by clicking here. This will give you information about Acceptable Use, how we ensure students' safety online and how the iPads are used to enrich the curriculum. Information on the pricing and how to order is available here. 

If you have any questions, please contact your child's coach or Ms Kyrk. 

Exhibition Update

Coming up on Wednesday 18th December we have our Exhibition of Beautiful Work. To align with secondary and to allow teachers working on multiple projects to set up, we close at 1:00pm on this day. We do understand, however, that this can put pressure on some families, especially with two 1:00pm finishes in a week. 

If you have younger children in the primary and need to collect at 3:00pm, we will provide supervision for your Year 5 or 6 child from 1:00 - 3:00pm. Similarly, if you would like to collect your primary aged child at the earlier time of 1:00pm, we can also arrange this. 

If you would like to register your child to be supervised from 1:00pm - 3:00pm on the 18th December, please click here to do so. If you have any further questions regarding this, please speak to your child's coach. 

A reminder that the school closes for the Christmas break at 1:00pm on Friday 20th December.

Collection after Clubs

Please note that parents collecting students after clubs are dismissed, must wait outside the main reception office on the left hand side for their children. The reception area must be kept free and clear for a safe dismissal, so waiting inside is not possible. Thank you for your support and understanding in this matter.

Please see Middle School After School Clubs Timetable below:

November Above and Beyond Out and About

This month's winners had a hot chocolate or fruit smoothie to recognise their contributions to the Middle School this month! Congratulations to Daria, Aretas, Zayn, Jessica, Isabel, Davi, Zoe, Mo, Akshaya, Josh, Sana and Sophia. December is a shorter month, so we will have our next group of winners shortly! Will it be you?

Student Voice Update

Each week the Student Voice Representatives from each class meet to discuss and work on issues the students have identified around the school. Recently, they have come up with an initiative to run a Secret Santa in every coaching group. Every student has a £3 limit to buy a gift for someone in their class. More details will be sent home by Student Voice this week. 

Last week, Student Voice arranged a meeting with Ms Barthram, the School Business Manager to discuss a number of questions which had been raised to the reps by the student body.
You can click here to read the minutes from this meeting. 

Kooth Free Online Counselling

A reminder that Kooth Online Counselling is available and promoted at School 21 to all of our young people. It is a portal through which free, anonymous counselling is offered by trained professionals. Click here to visit the website to learn more about and to access this offer. 

Year 6 - British Museum

As part of our current project, this week the Year 6 classes went on a trip to the British museum. We all enjoyed consolidating our knowledge on Ancient Greece and the students did a fantastic job at demonstrating all of our School 21 values. There were lots of comments about their exemplary representation of our school - we're very proud. Well done Year 6!

Y7 Inclusion Tea Party

This term Ms Linehan has been working with a group of students to design and put on a special Tea Party. This week the Tea Party evening hit - and it was fantastic! There were lots of foods and snacks and the teachers invited were hosted brilliantly. The dance floor was packed and it was a fantastic way to end our Tuesday on a high! Thank you to Ms Linehan and the other teachers who supported the project and a huge well done to everyone who made the project happen. 

Green Star Blitz and more Red Star Winners!

Congratulations to this weeks' additions to the Green Star winners list: 

Year 5: A'Sheerah, Chanelle, Ethan, Faizan, Jamie, La'Tayasia, Louis, Salem, Sameera, Samir, Shailah, Telerig, Tolga
Year 6: Albert V, Albert P, Aneesa, Eisa, Emile, Esther, Fay, Joshua, Marcell, Moses, Nabeel, Niah, Olivia, PJ, Selim, Tristan, Wayne
Year 7: Aki, Alex W, Alex D, Alyssa, Dara, Ela, Eric, Mohammad, Panos
Year 8: Amalia, Caleb, Cindy, Emma, Faiza, Kai, Mansur, Nayeemah, Rehan, Sahmara, Seeyam, Solomon, Shumon, Yahya, Zarah, Zainab

Congratulations to Maja, Mala, Akshaya, Zain and Isabel who have all reached their Red Star milestone this week!

Student Safety Workshop

Thank you to all the parents who came along to the Student Safety Workshop last week.  You can access the slides which were shared in the session by clicking here. The Safe Haven Logo (above) is especially important to share with your child. This sticker is displayed in shop windows to show that the shop is a safe place for young people to go if they are feeling worried or unsafe. There are 24 shops in Westfield Stratford City that are displaying these. 

Your feedback was very helpful - the issue of the time between dismissal and early evening (3:15pm - 6:00pm) was raised by a number of parents as an issue of particular concern. Currently, we contact and work with families individually if we have a specific concern about their child, however parents need to make arrangements to ensure their child is travelling home or being collected safely. We do look forward to working with parents to develop initiatives that could support our students at this time. 

Regularly communicating and checking in with your child about their social media / internet use greatly supports the school in keeping students safe online. We deal with a very high number of issues which happen outside of school, but then are brought into school and impact learning negatively. We greatly appreciate your support in this matter. 

Millionaire Readers

Congratulations to Kai in Year 8 for becoming the newest Millionaire Reader. If you are unsure of how to access this, please speak to your coach / class teacher or see Ms Druce! 

Reading regularly makes a huge impact on your child's success in their education. Encouraging 20 minutes a night of reading gives a massive advantage to a child and exposes them to a staggering 1.8 million words per year! Get reading everyone! 

Dear Parents/Carers,

 Thank you to those who have registered with the Easy Fundraising platform, the donations have already started to come in!

 For those who haven’t, this platform allows us to turn everyday online shopping into donations for the school which can then be spent on equipment and facilities. If you haven’t registered yet and are happy to help (at no cost to you!), we ask that you do two things:

 1. Sign up to Easy Fundraising and register School 21 as your cause of choice here: https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/invite/GO6EW2/. (We get a £5 donation for every person that signs up via that link!).

2. Install the donation reminder on your computer: https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/donation-reminder/. This is a totally unobtrusive button that sits on your internet bar, and pops up with a subtle reminder every time you shop with a retailer that donates to us.

 Finally, please share with any family and friends.

 All at School 21

Flu Vaccine Information

The flu vaccine will be happening at School on Tuesday 17th December in the afternoon for students in Reception to Year 6. 

Thank you for your cooperation.

First Aid 

First Aid Notice

If you son/daughter needs to take medication at school it has to be brought to school by an adult and a form needs to be signed.  Please do not send medication in with your son/daughter as this is going against our school policy and the medication may not be administered.  Your help and cooperation is greatly appreciated.

Sun Newspaper

The Sun newspaper is offering primary schools the chance to claim a set of free Collins Big Cat books worth over £600 (106 books). 

To claim this offer, we need to collect 3,500 tokens printed in The Sun and The Sun on Sunday from Saturday, November 23rd - Saturday, January 18th 2020. 

Please help us claim this fantastic offer by collecting the tokens and placing them in a designated box at the front office.

School Lunches

A reminder that Year 5 and 6 students continue to receive free school lunches as part of the Mayor of Newham's initiative, however, when students start Year 7 they must pay for their school lunches through your Parent Pay account. A letter was sent again last week regarding this, including how to sign up through the Newham website if you feel you are eligible for Free School Meals. 

The letter is available again by clicking here. 

All families can sign up for Free School Meals (if eligible) at any time; it is advisable that current Year 6 parents look into doing so this year to avoid delays when their child starts Year 7. 

If your account runs out of funds, students are to visit Ms Nandra in E1 at lunch time - she will support students to get their lunch that day, and will contact parents to remind them to top up the account. Please note, we are unable to keep providing lunch for your child if the balance is still negative. 

If you have any questions or require any support to sign up for Free School Meals, please contact Ms Nandra through the front reception or via email at rnandra@school21.org.uk. 

Update your Child's Walking Home Alone Permission

All Year 5 and 6 students whose parents give permission for them to travel home alone must complete the online permission form sent home earlier this week. The link for doing so is available again here. 

Please note that students will not be permitted to walk home unless this permission has been received. If you have any problems completing the form, please contact the front reception for support. Please also remember that if someone who is not the regular adult collects your child, they must give the password for collection. Thank you for your support in this matter. 

Middle School Homework

This year all of our 12 coaching groups / classrooms have their own Google Classroom set up. All home learning tasks will be set through these online portals. Parents are warmly invited to sign up as guardians on these classrooms; this will give you the opportunity to see all the tasks set for your child so you can keep up to date and support them at home. If you would like to be added to your child's classroom, please follow this link to add your details. 

Recognition Board

This week saw Year 8 winning the title of the most names added with 258 of the over 700 names of the week! Can you find your name in the word clouds below? So far, approximately 150 students have reached their Green Star milestone! How long until the whole school gets there...? Who will be the first Blue Star recipient? Will someone reach the top level of Gold this year? Time will tell! Keep demonstrating our values of Humanity, Excellence, Community, Responsibility and Openness! 

Please note the Lunch Menu has changed

The Lunch Menu for This Week is Week 3!