Even without a parade, our Future Job Day was a special opportunity to consider our plans and dreams. It was wonderful to see the children dressed up in their amazing outfits - thank you so much for supporting them/us with this.

Mr Peel was very busy with his camera and has put two photos galleries together on the school website.  It would be really fascinating if we could fast forward twenty years to see how many children followed these current dreams! Based on the breadth of outfits, I believe the future is looking very bright with a real range of professions well presented.

Thank you very much to Mrs Kupczyk, Mrs Peel and Mrs Wallace for inspiring us with your jobs in our special Zoom assembly on Wednesday. It was very kind of you to join us and extremely interesting. 

Although you probably won't be able to be in school in the near future, a new display in the entrance area will be going up shortly displaying the writing from the day and the photographs. I'll ensure that we share some images with you.

There will be a Reading and Phonic Meeting for EYFS and Year 1 families on Tuesday 17th November. This will be a virtual Zoom Meeting at 7pm. Keep the date free!

We would love to see as many parents as possible at this meeting. We will explain how and why we teach phonics. This will include a guide with suggestions on how you can support your child at home.

Reading continues to be a central focus for us as a school. This term we have had the amazing introduction of the Huxley Horse Challenge for Foundation Stage and Year One. This has included the use of e-books. It has been wonderful to see Tapestry videos of parents supporting their children with phonics. Keep up the good work!

From Years Two to Six we continue to use Accelerated Reader and myON. Several year groups have set projects in myON for homework that have been very successful in supporting home learning activities and homework at this time. 

The commitment to Accelerated Reader has been amazing across all year groups. At the present time we have read a staggering 21,849,563 words across the school. The amount of engaged time per day with reading is as follows:

Year 3 - 45 minutes

Year 4 - 54 minutes

Year 5 - 37 minutes

Year 6 - 35 minutes

This means we have exceeded our target of 30 minutes in four year groups. An amazing achievement!

During our weekly celebration assemblies, we have celebrated our 'Readers of the Week' and 'Reading Class of the Week'.

Our current top placings for our 'Reader of the Week':

1 Sienna Keswani, Year 4 Narwhal - 1,455,144

2. Kimberley Taylor, Year 5 Whale Shark - 886,398

3. Harry Maynard, Year 4 Narwhal - 846,987

4. Caelan Kumar, Year 6 Tasmanian Devils - 813,621

5. Euan Sharp, Year 4 Narwhal - 722,159

6. Sacha Muretti Robinson, Year 4 Borneo Pygmy Elephant - 717,150

Our current placings for our 'Reading Class of the Week':

1. Year 6 Tasmanian Devils -5,896,541
2. Year 4 Narwhal - 5,195,614
3. Year 5 Whale Shark - 3,739,184
4. Year 4 Borneo Pygmy Elephants - 2,136,856
5. Year 5 Mountain Gorillas - 1,584,095
6. Year 6 Red Pandas - 1,575,190
7. Year 3 Green Turtles - 1,137,374
8. Year 3 Bornean Orangutan - 383,411
9. Year 2 Snow Leopard - 139,544
10. Year 2 Sunda Tiger - 61,754

Over half term please encourage your child to read as much as possible. You will be able to take AR tests over half term. Please make sure that if you are taking a test on a myON book you do so in Accelerated Reader.

We have been extremely lucky to have been given a very generous donation by the Aaronson family for books for the school library in memory of Angela Aaronson - a teacher at our school for many years. We have also matched this with unspent money from our last school book fair, just before lockdown, and book vouchers we received as part of some research we have undertaken for the NSPCC. 

We know Angela, who was passionate about English and reading, would be extremely proud of our current achievements in reading. She would also gain huge satisfaction from the enjoyment that the children have acquired from reading the donated books. Her legacy lives on.

Could you please check your child's uniform over the break incase they have accidentally picked up uniform that doesn't belong to them;  some named items seem to have disappeared.  P lease also take the time to label all items that come into school, thank you.