Dates For Your Diary
 

Return Date for Academic Year 2019/2020 - Monday 9th September 


Monday 18th March - Friday 22nd March 
Bring a Parent to School Week - Storytelling (8:40am)
(Please see Letter for Details)

Monday 18th March - Newton Class to London City Airport
(Please see Letter for Details)

Tuesday 19th March - Parks Class to London City Airport
(Please see Letter for Details)

Thursday 21st March - De Coubertin Class to London City Airport
(Please see Letter for Details)

Date Change - Wednesday 20th March - Cheap + Healthy Meals Workshop - Come and Cook with your child (3:15pm - 4:30pm) 

Monday 25th March - Year 4 Spark Speeches​ at Salesforce Tower
(Please see Letter for Details)

Tuesday 26th March - Cheap + Healthy Meals Workshop - Come and Cook with your child (3:15pm - 4:30pm)

Tuesday 26th, Wednesday 27th & Friday 29th March - Book Fair

Thursday 28th March - Inset Day
(Great Oracy Exhibition)

Friday 5th April - Last day of Term
School finishes at 1:00pm

NOTICES:

Important Notices: 

From Monday 12th November, the Primary gates will not be opened until 2:55pm ready for a 3:00pm collection. This is due to the fact that many lessons are still taking place at this time and children may be working in the playground. Thank you for your co-operation and understanding.

Due to the confidential nature of information shared in the front office we ask that parents wait outside if you are collecting from clubs.  Parents should not be waiting in the Front Office reception area after 4:30pm without a staff member.  

Morning break snacks are to be fruit (fresh, dried etc) not biscuits or cereal bars. Please leave these items for lunch or after school clubs snacks. 

Reminder: Football shoes are not to be worn to school, they are dangerous as they do not allow the students to have a good grip when running on hard surfaces and could lead to an accident. Any student who wears them to school will not be allowed to participate in PE lessons or use the playground at break and lunch times. 
 

Break Time Snacks: All children can bring a snack from home to have at break time. This snack MUST be fruit. If any child brings a snack that is not fruit, they will be asked to put it back in their bags to eat after school. 

Birthdays - If you wish to celebrate your child's birthday by sharing a cake with the class, can we please ask that it is brought to the classroom the morning of the celebration and that it is already cut up and packaged. Our teachers do not have the time or equipment to be able to cut up sheet cakes and distribute to the children. We ask that you do not drop birthday cakes or party bags to the front office during the day as they are not always guaranteed to have the time to take them to the classroom, and this can lead to disappointment for your child. 

Lost Property -  We currently have an abundance of lost property in the front office, including winter coats. Can all parents please come and check if any of the items belong to your children. We will be donating all remaining goods to a local charity before half term due to space restrictions. 

It is important that parents model good behaviour for children. Please do not swear or use insulting language in the playground. If a member of staff hears this you will be asked to leave the premises and may be banned.

Please also remember that our staff are always working for the best interests of the children. If you would like to discuss anything regarding your child please speak to the class teacher, Mrs Drummond or Miss Dilger. Please do not shout or be rude to a member of staff as this makes the situation very difficult.

School Attendance - EVERY DAY MATTERS!

The school target for attendance is 97% or better.  As a guide the Education Welfare Service advises that if a parent would go to work with the same condition then the student should be in school.  We ask that students returning to school following sickness observe good hygiene rules as an adult would in the workplace.

We are keen to support all our students to achieve their best and this must include ensuring that they attend school as often as possible.  We will do the following to support students’ attendance:

• Write to you if attendance falls below 95% or is we are concerned about a pattern of absences.

• Invite you into school to discuss any concerns/worries with the Attendance Officer, your child’s Coach/ Class Teacher, Key Stage Leader/Head of Year, or Head or Deputy Head of School if attendance continues to fall.

• Where sickness absence occurs on 3 consecutive days or 3 different occasions within a half term, the school will seek medical evidence, such as a letter from GP, an NHS appointment letter, a prescription from GP, prescribed medication labels etc, so that we are able to support your child in school.  Additional days of absences may no longer be authorised.

• Refer the student to our Education Welfare Officer if attendance falls to 90%.

• Please contact the Attendance Officer or Head of School if you feel your child is well enough to be in school, but not well enough to go to all their lessons.  We may be able to make special arrangements

• If you believe your child is well enough to be in school, but is refusing, it is essential that you talk to the Attendance Officer, or the Safeguarding Leads.  We can offer a variety of options to support you in getting your child back to school.

• If required, prescribed medicines can be brought to school – including those needing refrigeration, and stored in the Medical Room.  A form should accompany any medication, stating that the school has permission to administer it, along with the times that this should happen. This should also be signed off at the front office.

What you can do to support your child:

• Never grant days off for birthdays, shopping trips or any other reason other than illness.

• Lessons begin at 8.30am prompt.  We ask that all students arrive at 8.25am to avoid them starting their first lesson late.  Students who are ‘dropped off’ at 8.30am on a daily basis will be late to their lessons and therefore late for the start of the day.

• Please leave a message on each day of absence by 8.30am at the latest - please email attendance@school21.org.uk leaving the name of your child, their Coach or Class Teacher and the reason for absence.  It is for school to decide if an absence is authorised or unauthorised.  Stating ‘Unwell’ or ‘Poorly’ gives insufficient information for us to make that decision, and the absence could be unauthorised.

• Please phone or email daily unless you have made alternative arrangements with school.  We do not know if you have sent your child to school and need to know this in order to keep them safe.  If we do not hear from you we will endeavour to contact you, but we must have at least two up-to-date emergency contact numbers on record to be able to do this.

• Last/First Day of Term, Non-Uniform Days or ‘Off-Timetable’ days are full curriculum days with content that is required by the national curriculum.  It is unacceptable, and against the law, to keep students off on such days for any reason other than illness that renders a student too ill to attend.  Any absence on days such as these could be unauthorised unless medical evidence is received, or prior agreement has been reached with school.

• We have adopted a pragmatic approach towards the authorisation of Leave of Absence for Exceptional Circumstances where other schools have imposed blanket bans.  Each Head of School considers every case personally and may ask for additional information.  Taking leave of Absence in Term Time without authorisation is against the law, and phoning-in daily stating a student is unwell causes a breakdown in trust between home and school.

• We approve up to two days of religious observance over the course of the academic year that fall during term time.

We understand that the majority of parents and carers support us fully in terms of ensuring their children attend school regularly and that you may have received this message on more than one occasion. However, we share this letter with all as it is important that we all understand the responsibilities school has to uphold to avoid any misunderstanding.

Attendance Team

Mrs Drummond's Challenge 

Thank you to everyone who took part in last week's challenge.     Try this weeks challenge below:

Primary Attendance Winners W.C 04/03/2019

Reception Parks 98.1%

Year 1 Mandela and Kandinsky 97.6%

Year 2 Coleman 100% Joint Primary Winners

Year 3 Einstein and Da Vinci 100%

Year 4 Seacole 97.9%

Bring a Parent to School Week 

You would have received the letter regarding this on Monday 4th March with the details of dates that your class is hosting parents. Please be aware that each day will start promptly at 8:40am and parents will not be taken to lessons if they arrive after 8:45am due to the disruption this will cause.

First Aid Update

All First Aid Incidents will now be reported online using Medical Tracker. Parents will be notified by email automatically when a First Aid Incident occurs. Phone calls will continue to be made for more serious incidents. Please ensure that the School is notified immediately of any change of Personal Details.

Parent and Child Cooking Session

Come and make some healthy meals with your kids.

We will be learning about making healthy meals and getting the kids involved too. You will prepare a meal that can be taken home.

There will be 2 sessions:

Wednesday 20th March 3:15pm - 4:30pm

Tuesday 26th March 3:15pm - 4:30pm

THERE IS A MAXIMUM OF 10 FAMILIES FOR EACH WORKSHOP. Spaces will be allocated on a first come basis.

If you are interested in taking part please email Miss Dilger

cdilger@school21.org.uk 

Stating your name and your child’s name and which session you would like to come to. You will be emailed back if you have a place. This will not be a drop in session.

Inclusion Drop In

On Friday 22nd March from 8:30am -11:00am parents are invited to meet with Laura Tutty - Head of Inclusion and Empowerment 4-18. and Hannah Coles - SENCO for a 10 minute meeting to discuss any SEN concerns you have. 

Boats, Pairs and Sharing

This week in Reception we have been working really hard in Maths to understand the concept of pairs, halving and sharing into equal groups. Children have worked together to share objects into pairs and practised counting in groups of 2. We looked at different animals and carried out an investigation to see how many pairs of socks each one would need!

We also explored sharing objects into equal groups and learnt that when we share into two equal groups we are sharing in half. There has been a lot of excellent mathematical language being used to help deepen our understanding.

For our project this week we have been looking at different types of water vehicles. There has been a lot of discussion about which vehicle is the best - a water scooter, submarine or cruise ship?! Children have been really good at justifying their decisions and giving some great explanations. All this talk has led to some excellent sentence writing too.

Finding the Difference in Year 1

This week in Maths we compared numbers using the words more, fewer and difference. It was tricky to find the difference between some numbers at first so we used cubes to help us. When we put the two cube towers next to each other it was much easier to spot the difference between them. We worked in pairs to compare different sets of numbers in a range of contexts before having a go independently.

Documentary Detectives

This week in Year 2 we have been using the iPads to create a documentary. We are super excited to share the history of earth! We have been working in trios and have been using a special app called Puppet Pals. Working in trios has been amazing we have learnt to share, delegate roles and listen to each others ideas.  

Year 3 Filmmakers

This week we were very proud to watch our films at the Stratford Picturehouse. Not only did we get to show our film and discuss how we made it but we learned more about how films were made, we won awards for our animations and even met a real actor who answered all our questions about show business.

What a great day, well done Year 3 for working so hard!

Spark Speeches

Year 4 are fully focused on developing our ‘spark speeches’ for the next 2 weeks. This is a short project where the students are writing, practicing and performing a 2 minute speech around a barrier/difficulty they have encountered in their life, and how that has made them who they are today. These speeches will be performed at Salesforce Tower in Liverpool street on Monday 25th March – so any further practice at home is always appreciated! In-class we will be focussing on key elements of speech writing based around the 4 strands of oracy and allowing for a lot of practice, collaboration, and feedback between classes and year groups.

Our new Maths topic is decimal numbers, focussing on rounding to the nearest whole number and adding and subtracting numbers with one decimal point. This will help when we come to our money and measurement topics after Easter. 

Expertise Certificate Winners 

Well done to those students who went above and beyond in our Expertise Attribute, using feedback to improve their work. This week using feedback to improve their work. This week we celebrated Bryan, Zane, Alana, Marcel, Omari, Nya, Daria, Kian, Rayan, Eshaal, Marius, Telerig, Makai, Siyana, Sarim.

We are running a very successful club every morning from 7:45 to 8:25  (last entry 8:10).

I would like to remind everyone of the Breakfast Club Code of Conduct so that parents can share this with their children.

• All pupils are expected to pack away resources and tidy the area.

• No pupils to leave the club area without the permission of an adult.

• Middle School pupils to stay in the club until 8:20. Pupils are not allowed into Middle School until this time.

• Pupils should help each other and be supportive of each other.

• Pupils will be warned about inappropriate behaviour twice then parents will be informed.

• If the behaviour continues pupils will not be able to attend for a week.

• If conduct does not improve they will not be allowed to attend the club for the rest of that half term.

• Extreme behaviour will result in a ban.

The club is for everyone to enjoy themselves in a friendly and safe environment. Thank you for your support.

Book People Book Bus

A book bus will be visiting School21 on Friday, 15th March. 

Primary students and parents will be able to visit the bus after school (until 4.30) and will have the opportunity to buy books. 

This is a great opportunity to raise funds for our school library.

Look out for leaflets coming home soon.  

Mrs Fisher

Librarian

Recieving Emails from School 

Those with Yahoo email accounts need to add: 

3164001@capita-intouch.co.uk  as a safe contact so that they can receive emails from the school.

Overdue Library Books

Please return your overdue library books! We currently have over 500 books overdue. This means that students are unable to borrow popular books. 

Students are allowed to borrow up to three books for a loan period of one month and can be renewed after this period should the need arise. Any books that are lost or damaged must be replaced. 

Mrs Fisher
Librarian

Next Week's Lunch Menu is Week 1!