Teaching Term

Just to let you know that this term, as in the Spring term for the past 16 years, I will be teaching a group of Year 6 pupils to support them as they prepare for SATs. This means that some days I will not make it to the gate in the morning.

A reminder-the school colours are navy blue and grey.

Focus on Reading

As reading is the key to unlock all learning, we are rejuvenating our approach to it. You will have received a letter from Mr. Howe, who is responsible for English throughout the school, explaining how, as a staff, we are maximising every possible minute so that we are able to hear more children read during the school day. You may see our signatures in the margins of that day's Reading Journal-it means that a member of staff or trained volunteer has listened to your child read. We've set ourselves a real challenge but there's not a more important skill for children to acquire so that every possible opportunity is available for them as they move through education into the workplace. It is vital that children understand the words they reading so exploring the language of the text is crucial even if reading is fluent. Your support in this can make a huge difference.

Chris Lloyd

Author Chris Lloyd is spending all day Tuesday with us. He is using the Science and Technology timeline as the theme for his talks and will involve the whole school from the Reception class to Yr 6. Chris will have all his Timeline books at the reduced rice of £10 for sale after school. He also has superb sticker books that really help children to learn all about different aspects of history.

SchoolComms

In the interests of spending public money wisely, we are in the process of changing our providers for getting email and text messages to you. Every text message costs us a fee and multiply that by almost 200 per message and it becomes a significant amount. Of course, this does not come without hiccups and problems so we currently have no service available. However, we are expecting it to be back up and running in the next week or two. Thank you for your patience.

Bad Weather

Despite the excitement of the media, there seems no significant snow forecast by the Met Office for the North East coast for the next 5 days. If we do have extreme weather in the next two or three months we do everything to keep the school open while others around us close. Listen to local radio stations for information and, once they are up and running again, keep an eye on text and email messages. If you don't hear from us assume everything is running as normal. Staff travelling a distance may be late but there are sufficient staff who live locally who will keep the school open until everyone arrives safely.

Christmas Jumper Day

The last day of term was a very colourful day with the most magnificent Christmas sweaters Sunderland has ever seen. The school raised £178.10 for Save the Children at the same time. Thank you to everyone for supporting this very worthwhile cause.