Daresbury Primary School News Summer 2 Headteacher News Hello and welcome back after the Whit holidays – I hope you all had a lovely week off, whatever you did. This final half term is really going to fly by as we have lots of activities planned. As I write this, the staff are busy organising a whole range of things for their classes and their new planning and information should be updated on the school website class pages very soon. Your children will also be bringing home updated information sheets on How to Help your child at home and other useful information. Staff News Julie Hooten, our cook, is back after a period of illness and we would like to thank Judith Twigg for covering her role. Samantha Dean is to finish for her maternity leave in July and we are currently seeking someone to cover her role as 1:1 support for a named child in school. Natalie Viggers will shortly be completing her qualification as a teacher and will leave Daresbury at the end of the year. We wish her every success for her future in the profession and thank her for all her hard work with Class 4. Your children will soon be bringing home a letter notifying parents of our classes for 2015/16. Parents should note that this information has been circulated as soon as possible following the deadlines for staff resignations etc. Children in both Y2 and Y5 will continue to be split across 2 classes. Parents please note that this IS NOT a case of ‘keeping children back’ and pupils in both classes will access the curriculum for their year group. Pupil News Well done again to Thomas Hampson, Y1, for being the third lucky winner of the Reading Raffle. Keep on encouraging the children to read and comment in their records – we have seen a marked improvement in the children’s attitudes to their reading and books. ☺ Curriculum News If you can spare any time and don’t mind going through the DBS (CRB) process, we are also still looking for volunteers to do reading activities with children in school. We want to thank all those volunteers who have already come forward, Anne & Steve Kirkbride, Anne Windridge, Helen Shaw and Heather Baskeyfield – you are already making a difference! www.daresburyschool.co.uk Reports Our end of year reports have now been changed to reflect our new assessment and hope you will find these as informative (if not more so) than our previous end of year reports. The Parental Engagement Group have seen them and made positive comments. Reports should be coming home with the children on Friday 10th July, 2015. Medicines in School Please can I remind parents that we should only be asked to administer medicines which need administering 4 times a day. There is a form available on the website which needs completing prior to the medicine coming into school and being stored in the office. There are a number of forms which need completing by school staff and so it can take some time to do this, even when you have already completed the original form at home. I apologise but this is a Halton requirement. Water Bottles Please make sure your child has a named water bottle filled with water (no juice) in school daily. Baking As you are aware, we try to ensure that each class has access to the baking area on a termly basis and I know how much the children love this opportunity. We do, however, have to ask for contributions towards the cost of the ingredients and have kept this at £2.00 for some time with school making up the difference in costs. Most recently we are finding that very few contributions are coming into school and we are unable to continue to sustain the high level of subsidy that has been needed recently from the school budget. I do feel that it would be a shame if we had to start cutting back on this area and so would encourage parents to send in their contributions to allow this to continue. Thank you. Twitter:@Daresburyschool Telephone: 01925 740309 Sun Awareness Parking At this time of year we usually start to get some lovely days (we hope!) with sunshine. Can I ask that parents please put suncream on pupils before school and make sure they have a cap or hat to wear outdoors. As lunchtime is now staggered the children are not outside for longer than 35 minutes but the sun’s rays can be strong at midday and we do not want children to be at risk of burning. Unfortunately we are not allowed to apply suncream to children ourselves or indeed have children applying suncream themselves in school as this gets terribly messy and they often end up with it in eyes, hair and all over clothes and each other! Please make sure you apply it at home before school. Also please can you ensure that children wear socks, even if they are wearing sandals for school. This is part of our uniform. Thank you. As in all schools, parking at the starts and ends of the day can be a nightmare. Please be aware that our PCSOs do regularly attend and will ticket anyone parking illegally. I am also aware of a couple of incidents of careless driving where children have narrowly missed being hit on the pavements as cars have parked or carried out U turns. Please drive carefully and slowly around the school vicinity. The Police have asked me to let parents know that they have issued some tickets now and will continue to do so. Governing Body News Attendance, Punctuality & Absence We are really proud of our high levels of attendance and wish to maintain this, or even improve on it. We would ask parents to ensure their children are always on time for school and lead in with the rest of their class from the playground. If your child is late and arrives after the class have gone into school, please bring them to the office, sign them in and leave the school staff to take them to their classrooms. All parents will be contacted if their child’s attendance is starting to give us cause for concern. It is important that children are in school as much as possible. The school’s Full Governing Body will be reconstituting at its Summer Term meeting on 4th June. This is a national requirement. The new Governing Body will have 11 members including the Headteacher, a staff governor, an LA governor and 2 parent governors. The remaining 6 governors will all be co-opted governors. Due to terms of office ending and a resignation we should be able to reconstitute easily. The two parent governors will be Mr Mike Sherwin and Mr Alastair Teague. Mrs Jenny Grimes and Mrs Hilary Watts will both change from being parent governors and become co-opted governors. We also have a new co-opted governor, Mrs Anne Windridge. After the summer term meeting in June we will update the website to reflect the changes. The School Website – www.daresburyschool.co.uk . Pupil Activity All details of Leave of Absence procedures are on the website and requests for holidays will only be granted in the exceptional cases listed in the policy. Parents should also remember that children do tend to tell their friends or teachers when they are going away too! In these circumstances the absence will be recorded as unauthorised, even if you ring to say they are ill! Twitter As you know School now has an active Twitter account – so please follow us! Check out our latest news on @Daresburyschool. Thank you to those parents and grandparents who have already tweeted! Team Points Congratulations to Cheshire Cats for another win last half term. The children were rewarded with a non-uniform day! www.daresburyschool.co.uk Twitter:@Daresburyschool Telephone: 01925 740309 Information for Parents Can I remind parents that we have a parents’ suggestion box on the little table in the entrance area? Please fill in any ideas you may have and add them to the box – it is checked regularly. Please also remember that every Wednesday you have the opportunity to come into school between 3:15pm and 3:45pm to see your child’s work and teachers are available for a chat then too. We just ask you to remember that they have to attend a staff meeting at 3:45pm ☺ Clubs The new Rounders Club for Y4,5 and 6 pupils has now started on a Monday evening. Reading Records / Home School Diaries Huge thanks to the PTA who are supporting school in purchasing new Home School Diaries for both KS1 and KS2 ready for use in the new academic year. Pupil Activity Further Improvements to the school Over the Summer holidays we will be having some work to create a new entrance to school by Mrs Clarke’s office. This will have a hatch through to the office, along with a signing in area. We also hope to have a second hatch installed internally so that no visitors will enter the main office, where money and personal information is stored. Unfortunately not all of our bids have been successful. We hope to be able to improve the infant toilets by the hall and possibly the outdoor KS1 toilets at some point in the Autumn Term but this will very much depend on the total cost of the new entrance. I will continue to seek funding for improvements to the Junior toilets. I am still awaiting the outcomes of our lottery funding to have the old sandpit removed and a lovely hexagonal gazebo built in its place. This will provide some more seating, a shaded area and also significantly improve that area of the field. I will let you know how we get on! And Finally…… This half term we have included an updated date list for the last few weeks and a copy of this will be placed on the website. We will be issuing a new full year list to accompany our next newsletter which will be issued after the summer holidays. We are also hoping to issue a new Home School Agreement following discussions involving staff, governors and our Parental Engagement Group. This should be coming home in the next couple of weeks and will be included in our new Home School Diaries too. Mrs Roberts & Staff If you have any suggestions for future newsletters or other comments to make, please complete this slip and return it to school. www.daresburyschool.co.uk Twitter:@Daresburyschool Telephone: 01925 740309