Newsletter – March 2021

23 Mar Newsletter – March 2021

Message from Mrs Goodfellow & Our Governors

Welcome back (again!) to all of our parents and pupils. We had hoped that our term was going to last longer than one day when we returned in January, but we are very pleased that everyone has returned safe and well again.

As in my previous communications we are working hard to ensure our school remains as safe as possible for our children. We are carrying out regular hand washing, keeping our bubbles separate and spending as much time outdoors as we possibly can. All of our staff are all doing twice weekly lateral flow tests to ensure that nobody attends school who is Covid positive. Please remember that families of school aged children are able to access two tests per week whether you have symptoms or not and we encourage all families to make use of them, information on that can be found here.  After the Easter holidays, all children are expected to return to school even if they have a member of that family who is clinically extremely vulnerable.  The government announcement on this can be found here.

I’m sure nobody will have missed the building work that is going on around school at the moment. We are getting a lovely new roof that should keep us safe and dry for many years to come. We will be updating the school blog with progress at various stages, and we’re pleased to say that the roofers will be helping with our building topic in Year 2 this term as we can’t go on a visit to a building site, we’ve brought a building site to school and the site manager has kindly agreed to give our children an insight into their work.

We also want to say a fond farewell to one of our governors, John McGowan, who has served on our governing body for more than 30 years and he has now decided to step down. We hope to invite him back to our school for a special assembly when we’re able and we thank him for his dedicated service to us. This also means that we have vacancies on our governing body. We are looking for parents and other members of our community (including those who have no family members at the school) who would be interested in standing on our governing body and ask that anyone who is interested, to contact the school office and one of out senior leadership team will get back in touch with you.

Best wishes,

Mrs Goodfellow.

Important Dates

All entries for our Easter Egg competition need to be sent to school on Thursday 25th March for judging on Thursday evening. Designs will be returned home on Friday 26th March.

School will close for the Easter holiday on Friday 26th March and the term begins again on the Monday 12th April.

Monday 3rd May is a Bank Holiday and school will be closed on this day.

School closes for May Half Term on Friday 21st May and we reopen on Monday 7th June.

Announcements

• A reminder that SATs for out Yr6 and Yr2 pupils are not taking place this year because of the disruption to the school year. The official updates can be found here.
• Our Toddler Group isn’t yet back up and running. When our volunteers are ready to begin again, we’ll be sure to let you all know and you can tell your friends who would like a friendly spot to bring their toddlers to play.
• Mrs Judge has asked for some help sourcing materials for Forest Schools.
  We would greatly appreciate any old shelving that anyone may have so that we can kit out the greenhouse.
• All children are taking part in our Walking to school challenge so if you can, please walk, scoot or ride to school. If they do this once a week for a month they will receive a special badge.
• We are focussing on pupil well-being in school since our return and because of this, we have chosen to reduce the expectation for formal homework for the rest of the school year. However, we do still expect all of our pupils to do 15 minutes of reading a day with their parents. Please try and make time for this as it is vitally important practise for all of our pupils.
• Our relaxed school uniform will stay in place until the end of the summer term and our teachers are finding it very helpful that children are coming into school dressed for PE on days that they have it so thank you for helping with that.
• Miss Tulip is sadly leaving us at the end of this week as she begins her maternity leave a little earlier than planned. Her class will be taken by Miss Welsh who has worked at the school for a number of years and will be familiar to all of our children. We send all of our best wishes to Miss Tulip as she begins a new chapter.

Regular Reminders

Nursery Registration

All parents of children under three years old who wish to attend our school nursery need to register for a place to ensure they are allocated one. If you need to register a child for nursery, please contact the school office.

Inconsiderate Parking Around School

As a school we like to prioritise the safety of our children and local residents by ensuring that parking in the local area is both legal and considerate. We regularly get complaints from parents and residents linked to inconsiderate and on occasions, dangerous driving and parking.

If you can walk to school, please do, or even consider parking a distance away and walking the final half-mile or so. Our pupils would also enjoy cycling or scooting to school if this is practical. But if you really need to drive to school, please make sure you avoid the ‘Keep Clear’ zig-zag markings and yellow lines when parking. To help ensure this happens, Gateshead Council staff carry out regular enforcement and issue Penalty Charge Notices (tickets). There have been several instances of vehicles causing obstruction to the main car park gates at drop-off times, preventing our staff from being able to enter the car park.

We also need to remind parents that when dropping your children off or picking them up, please don’t sit in your car with the engine running.  Firstly, it is illegal and could result in a fine but more importantly it is affecting asthma sufferers and the environment of our school community. We realise it is becoming cold but please turn off your engine when parked.

Many thanks for your help and cooperation with this matter.

MyEd App

We have launched the MyEd app in school as a simpler and more cost effective way of keeping in touch with our community. It is simple to setup and you will receive all updates directly to your smartphone. It is available on both Apple and Android phones. We are encouraging all parents to use it as it is a huge cost saver for us and it means we can spend money on classroom equipment and improvements to our school instead of text messages.

If you are having any problems with the app and getting it setup, please contact the school office.

Breakfast & Tea Time Club bookings

We politely remind you that the deadline for booking Breakfast Club & Tea Time Club is Thursday prior to the week required. Registers for the clubs are printed each Friday for the following week, to allow us to ensure we have an appropriate number of staff and food supplies for all clubs. We continue to have a number of parent/carers booking their child into clubs over the weekend following the deadline, meaning a number of children are turning up unexpectedly on Monday morning.

If you require a last minute booking into either club, we ask that you first contact the school office to check availability as places are limited or alternatively for Breakfast Club bookings you can contact the staff directly each morning from 7.30am, by choosing Option 4 from the main switchboard. If you are told that space is available, you can log in to your SIMS Pay account to make payment.

Your ongoing cooperation with SIMS Pay is very much appreciated.

PTFA News

Until further notice, PTFA meetings will not be held as we can’t organise many in person events.  If you’re interested in being involve with the PTFA in the future, please leave your details at the school office or speak to Mrs Clare Freemantle during the school run at the KS2 gate.

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