Thank you

The beginning of a school year is always a busy time and despite it being an unusual time, with extra measures in place to reduce risks, this year is no different! Thank you for embracing the new expectations in terms of bubble timings and helping us to keep life inside school running as close to the 'old normal' as possible.  EYFS children have settled extremely well, as have all of the children returning. 

We are all getting used to the new routines and the children have taken these in their stride.  Assemblies are happening twice a week on Teams or via Zoom, and although we'd probably prefer to all be together, they are a good way for us to come together as a school community and continue to talk about school values, special events and celebrate class and individual achievements. Like many things this school year, we might have to think out of the box a little, but we're committed to try and keep school life as fun, interactive and well matched to the children's needs as ever. 

As part of our return to school and recovery curriculum, there are a lot of social and emotional type sessions in class to support the children's mental health and well being. In addition, we have now completed lots of early assessments to identify gaps in learning so that our planning, from this point on, can address these through quality first teaching, extra intervention groups, social groups, behaviour support sessions ...

When you have your parent and carer meetings this week via Zoom ( in all year groups except Foundation Stage), you'll be able to talk about the start of the school year and how it is going from your perspective. We've not had to run meetings in this way before, so please help us to keep these running as smooth as possible, by joining these meetings on time and recognising that conversations will need to stop after 10 minutes. If you have other things to discuss beyond this time frame, you can coordinate a time with the class teacher to continue the conversation. 

Have a good weekend.

Rachel Rice

head@deanshanger.northants-ecl.gov.uk 

Curriculum Meeting 

Thank you very much to you all of you that joined us for the parent meeting this week to share information about our recovery curriculum, blended learning ( ie, converting to home learning if there is a national or local lock down or if a year group bubble needs to self isolate for 14 days) and the maths and English curriculum.  If you have any questions about the curriculum, or indeed any aspect of school life, please do not hesitate to make contact.  

For more information about myON and Accelerated Reading, please read the information held on the curriculum pages of the school website.