Newsletters

This week

Our mini marathon week has been amazing, with all the children and staff completing this challenge. I hope you have been able to see the pictures which have been posted to Class Dojo throughout the week. Everyone showed great resilience in completing this challenge and we all thought about how Mrs Burling would have been feeling as she completed the London Marathon!

This week has seen other extra-curricular events taking place – some children from Giraffes and Elephants represented our school in a cricket festival at Redditch Cricket Club, our Tigers enjoyed a wonderful afternoon in forest school and our Giraffes impressed their parents/carers at their ‘work with me’ session. Next week we have more exciting events, with Tigers completing Young Drivers and Lions attending a trampolining session at Birchensale.

Thank you to the parents who attended the Condover 2024 meeting with Mrs Hirons-Reed and Mrs Broughton this week. If you were unable to attend and you have some questions, please let Mrs Hirons-Reed know.

Please remember, school is closed on Monday 6th May as it is May Day Bank Holiday. We will look forward to seeing everyone back in school on Tuesday 7th May.

Nut Free School

Please continue to remember that due to severe allergies, we are a nut free school! This means no nuts or products which contain nuts are to be brought into school. Thank you for your support with this.

Attendance:

Our overall attendance for the year to date is 94.07%.

This week’s attendance:

Well done Bears!

Bears 100%

Giraffes 88.0%

Elephants 97.76%

Tigers 90.36%

Lions 94.48%

Whole School 94.01%

Attendance

Following on from the information shared last week about updating our attendance policy, here is an overview of what attendance percentages mean in relation to the number of days and lessons missed:

If attendance over the school year is: Number of days missed: Number of lessons missed:

100% 0 0

95% 10 50

90% 19 95

85% 29 145

80% 39 195

75% 49 245

70% 58 290

School Uniform

Although we are hoping for better weather soon, please ensure your child has a coat with them every day, and preferably one with a hood. We will still be going outside in light rain and children without a hood will have to stay under the quiet area. Thank you.

Reading Recommendations

Some of the reading recommendations we have had so far from the children are:

The Kitten Nobody Wanted (Izzy Lions)

Peter Rabbit (Alice Tigers)

Judy Moody Predicts the Future (Alex Lions)

Grandpa’s Great Escape (Eva (Tigers)

Harry Potter (Lena Lions)

We’ve also had lots more votes for Dork Diaries and Diary of a Wimpy Kid this week!

This week Miss Grubb also recommends:

Emily Brown, Stanley the bunny and Matilda the elephant are busy going on adventures, but every time they get to a particularly exciting part . . . Ring! Ring! goes the Emergency Telephone and it's Matilda's mummy on the end worrying that Matilda isn't wearing her wellies, or eating properly or almost anything. How can Emily Brown persuade her that sometimes adventures are good? This brilliant new title from this award-winning team is a witty and poignant book about the importance of spending quality time with your children and allowing them to explore the world around them.

Can you imagine a world without bees? Have you ever thought about how dung beetles are awesome recyclers? Insects pollinate, recycle and are an important food source for many animals they're tiny but mighty superheroes of the animal kingdom. Insect Poems is an anthology of wild and wonderful children's poems which will educate and excite youngsters about the wonders of insects!

Work with Me

We have had another great ‘work with me session this week, with the parents and carers of our Giraffes class invited into school to work with their children. It was another great success – thank you to all the parents/carers who attended – the children loved seeing you in school.

All classes have now held their work with me sessions and moving forward, we will be making these

termly events.

Mini Marathon

Our Mini Marathon is complete! Each class has been outside to the field across the week to complete their laps. Lots of children (and staff!) found the run up the hill a challenge – but they showed our school value of resilience and they kept on going! Well done to everyone for completing the mini marathon and a big ‘thank you’ to Mrs Burling for organising this event for us and for inspiring us to give it our all!

IMPORTANT DATES:

Upcoming Dates for Sports Days

Thursday 20th June – Years 1-4 (9am - 12pm)

Friday 21st June – Reception (9am – 11am)

Reserve Sports Day dates:

Thursday 27th June – Years 1-4 (9am – 12pm)

Friday 28th June – Reception (9am – 11am)

School Council Feedback

Before Easter, our School Council held meetings in their classes, asking the children to identify the things they love the most/enjoy about our school and the things they would like to do more of or start doing. Here are some of the responses:

Things I love/enjoy:

• Playtimes and playing outside

• Forest School – swinging and playing in the trees

• Reading and playing

• Listening to stories

• Going to church

• Clubs

• All my lessons!

• Everyone’s kind

• I feel safe

• Everyone is friends with each other

• People are welcoming

• We work as a community

• I’m proud of the English skills I learn

• Music – playing the ocarinas!

• Reading lots of books

• I have lots of friends

• Lots of fun activities

• There are no bullies

• We have understanding teachers

• We learn lots of different things

• School trips like Bishops Wood

• Sports Day

• Learning French!

• Having responsibility to do different jobs in school

• PE

• Every day is different!

• I can talk to teachers if I’m lonely

• We have lots of clubs we can go to

• Science experiments

Things I would like to do more of:

• More independent writing

• Play outside more

• More phonics

• Cooking (this was a popular response!)

• More forest school

• More trips

• More dancing

• More crafts

• More singing

• Go to church more

• Halloween activities

• Fishy Friday fish and chips

• Start swimming

• Have medals for sports day

• A Geography club

• Lots of children also said they wanted MORE lessons such as English, Maths, History, PE etc

I have now met with School Council members to review these responses and can update parents and carers on the following:

More playtime - We will be developing our outside play over the coming months as we are going to be joining OPAL playtimes. Outdoor Learning and Play (OPAL) will be a change of approach to our lunch time play which will involve us making greater use of our outdoor space and ensuring the children have longer outside at lunch time to play. Staff will be receiving training on this later in June and we will then be rolling out a programme of this new initiative and support over the next 18 months. Watch this space for more information. You can also visit the OPAL website if you would like to find out more:

https://outdoorplayandlearning.org.uk/the-opal-primary-programme/

More cooking – this was a popular request, especially in our younger year groups so we will look to see how we can develop this moving forward.

More forest school – another popular request! All year groups are having forest school sessions this term and next year we will have a programme in place where all classes visit throughout the year.

School Trips - We would love to offer more trips for our children. Unfortunately, this is now very heavily reliant on parent contributions. School trips and visitors have always been funded through voluntary parental contributions, with school then paying any additional costs. We do have a small amount of money in our school budget for trips and visits, however as a school we can no longer afford to heavily fund/subsidise these wider experiences. Staff are currently looking into options for trips and visitors and before anything is booked, we are asking for a parental response on Class Dojo to see if you are willing to contribute before anything is finalised. I very much wish we had more money in our budget to fully fund experiences such as these. However, as we have realised through our recent budget setting - we are currently being given less money from the Local Authority and we are expected to do more with it, at a time when everything is increasing in cost!

Fish and chips – School Council are now going to go back to their classes to find out some more information about what the children think of school meal menu and any suggestions for improvement. We will then be sharing these with Cupcakes Catering to see what changes can potentially be made.

Swimming- I am pleased to confirm that swimming is booked for a 10-week block in September. Initially this will be for one class only, due to pool availability and costing of transport. The class who will be receiving swimming lessons will receive more information about this shortly.

The pupil responses to the School Council questions were really positive and lovely to read. It is clear they love their school! I am now looking forward to addressing as many of these areas as we can to improve our school even further.

Mental Health Week – 13th – 19th May 2024

We will be celebrating mental health awareness week later this month. Mrs Broughton is currently planning ideas for this and she has met with the wellbeing champions who have decided they would like to invite everyone in school to 'Wear it Green' on Thursday 16th May. We will look forward to seeing everyone wearing something green on this day – such as socks, hair band or a hat.

Collective Worship

This week in collective worship, we have continued to focus on our school vision and the psalm:

God’s word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

We have continued to talk about the main phrases from our vision:

St Luke’s Family Trust and Rely on God’s teaching

Develop relationships God’s children

Caring and Nurturing Flourish

We have considered how important our relationships are with each other in school and how it is important we encourage each other. We certainly saw a lot of encouragement to everyone during the Mini Marathon!

This week’s picture news question was:

How can shops make sure everyone feels represented?

As part of our Picture News assembly, the children consider and reflect on the British Values. This week, they have been considering the British Value of Democracy.

In our Celebration Worship we have said “congratulations” to children impressing their teachers by showing our school values. I was delighted to hand out values certificates to Phoenix (Bears), Bertie (Giraffes), Denis (Elephants), Esme (Tigers) and Rayn (Lions).

Bears received a 100% attendance certificate and Elephants received a certificate for great attendance this week!

Lunchtime award winners:

We also celebrated this week’s St Luke’s Stars of the Week:

St Luke’s Stars of the Week!

Each week in our celebration assembly, the teachers will be choosing a pupil to recognise for their excellent work and attitude to learning. Please see Class Dojo for pictures of our ‘St Luke’s Stars of the Week’. We are very proud of everyone for their hard work and achievements.

Bears: Jayla for remembering writerly skills and applying phonics knowledge in her work.

Giraffes: Hunter for a brilliant effort with letter formation and independent writing.

Elephants: Aleks for her amazing knowledge of time and working at greater depth in this area of maths.

Tigers: Nelson for accurately adding and subtracting fractions both mentally and drawing bar models to prove his answers.

Lions: Nuh for his science work on predators, prey and producers, correct use of scientific vocabulary in his writing and excellent explanations.

Please continue to send in certificates and awards from outside of school achievements so we can share them with the whole school community during our celebration assembly.

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