Dear Parents, welcome to our final newsletter of this term. It has been a very busy term. We have had our Ofsted Inspection, recruited a new Headteacher, a new Deputy Headteacher and of course, we are also saying some farewells. Miss O'Hara leaves school today after 17 years service to our community. We will all miss her, her calmness and wisdom but also wish her a very happy retirement. We are also saying farewell to Mrs Pester & Mrs Hutchinson. I am sure you agree that both ladies give everyone a very warm reception and give to time to parents and visitors. They too will be greatly missed and we all wish them well for the future also.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter and enjoys time spent with family and friends.
We look forward to welcoming the children back into school after the school holidays.
CORONATION PICNIC
As many of you are aware, we hold a community picnic each year we can. Originally, we had planned to hold the picnic on our Sports Day in July. However, since the Coronation of King Charles III is due to take place on Saturday, May 6th, we have decided to bring forward this event to become a Coronation Picnic. That way, the whole community can celebrate this very important event for our nation together at school. We will send further information after the holidays, but you will all be invited to attend a picnic on the school field between 12 noon and 1pm on Friday, May 5th. I hope many of you can join us then.
Reception Class
This week we have been learning about the Easter story and how Christians celebrate Easter. The children are very enthusiastic about Easter and have been asking questions such as: How does the Easter Bunny deliver the eggs to everyone in time? and Where does the Easter Bunny live? The children have been hiding toy eggs around the classroom for their friends to find and drawing maps to their homes for the Easter Bunny.
Reception class have independently written the Easter story and wowed us with how much progress they are making! We have also been looking at repeating patterns and the chidlren have been hunting at home for patterns, which they have shared photos of on Tapestry.
We have had lots of fun learning all about Wales in honour of Miss O’Hara too and have been saying Bora Da for our register greeting. We have also made Easter cards for our family and some special cards for staff who are leaving. We have shared some flowers and chocolates and shared our thanks with Mrs Pester and Mrs Hutchinson as everyone in Reception adores them and will miss them so very much! We also said goodbye to Miss Bellis this week who has been with us for a term. We have had a goodbye party and wish her Bon Voyage as she travels to Australia to work on the cruise ships. We will miss you lot Miss Bellis!
Year 3 - This week has been a wonderful end to a very busy half term! In English, we have been working on Poetry and we have been writing list poems about a fox. We thought carefully about our use of vocabulary and description to make our work sound interesting. We have also been working on Fractions in Maths and we used a cake to help us understand the idea of a Fraction being an equal part of something. We then developed our knowledge further to compare and order Fractions and to add and subtract them. Over the last few weeks, we have been working very hard as a year group to prepare for our Easter Performance and tell the Easter story through drama, readings and singing a song. The children approached this with such positivity and worked so well as a team to learn their lines and support one another. We are very proud of the children and the effort that they have put into making this such a success! We wish you all a very Happy Easter and many thanks to our all parents and families for their support with this.
Year 6 Robinwood Residential
One of the main highlights of the year for Year 6 took place this week, when we set off on Monday for our adventure at Robinwood. The children thoroughly enjoyed an action-packed few days taking part in lots of exciting activities such as climbing, the trapeze, canoeing, quests and even escaping the deadly piranhas! We were extremely impressed with the children’s attitude to taking part in all of the challenges and their behaviour was excellent. The group instructors all commented on how friendly and kind the children were and were impressed with the encouragement they showed towards each other.
Safer Internet Week
Across school, we have been exploring the 2023 Safer Internet Day theme: Want to Talk About It. In an ever-changing online world, it is important that a healthy line of communication exists between children and those people responsible for their care.
The UK Safer Internet Centre suggest that by talking regularly to children, we are putting children and young people’s voices at the heart of the day and encouraging them to shape the online safety support that they receive. They are asking parents, carers, teachers, government, policymakers, and the wider online safety industry to take time to listen to children and young people and make positive change together.
As well as exploring these themes in class, we have also held assemblies and a parent workshop during our Open Morning on Wednesday.
More information can be found on the ‘Internet Safety’ page on our school website and by visiting: https://saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/safer-internet-day-2023/parents-and-carers
Sport & PE
Last week, children in Y5 took part in an introductory after-school event of Handball. They played a couple of games against other schools, and it was brilliant to see all the children working together to succeed. Well done to all who took part.
As part of Y5’s PE lessons this half-term, Brad from the Leeds Rhinos Foundation has been working on their communication, navigation and teamwork skills through OAA (Orienteering). This week they used a map of the school grounds to find symbols that helped crack a code.
As well as Brad coming to school, last weekend saw many of our children attending the Leeds Rhinos RL game vs Catalan Dragons. It was a fantastic game, with Leeds Rhinos overcoming a large first half deficit to win the game. Hopefully everyone who was able to attend through our school’s offer had a fantastic time. Continuing this partnership, Leeds Rhinos are offering reduced price tickets for their game against Huddersfield Giants on Sunday 9th April. This is a double header, allowing fans to watch both the Rhinos men’s and women’s teams, and there are lots of other child friendly activities happening on the day, including a visit and DJ set from 2023 The Masked Singer winner Charlie Simpson! All junior tickets for this event, in any area of the ground, are just £5 and these tickets will be bought directly from the Rhinos, and not via the school if you wish to attend. (Poster attached).
Leeds Rhinos have also confirmed that our school will repeat its special reduced tickets offer for adults and children for their match against Hull KR on Friday 14th July 2023. The school will open this offer up after the May half-term holidays.
Green Team
A huge thank you to the Friends of Calverley for all the hard work and effort they put into the incredibly successful Easter Spectacular.
Thank you to Mrs Chamberlin who prepared the wonderful Green Team activities after years of collecting mussel shells! Thank you to all the families who came to join us. We loved seeing you all enjoying our wonderful outdoor space.
I would like to thank the Year 6 Eco Monitors for their dedication all term for monitoring the use of lights across school. Thank you for all your hard work and for so confidently and bravely awarding the Green Team trophy in Celebration Assembly each week. Next half term the responsibility will pass to year 5 who I am sure will maintain the excellent stands set by year 6. In the meantime, everyone keep remembering to switch your lights off when you leave the room.
Another big thank you to Year 3 and 4 for being our litter pickers this half term. You have been very resilient in the most extremes of weather too and set a great example for other year groups. The role of litter picking will now pass to Reception for the next half term.
We also have a set of litter picking tools available on the bottom playground every lunchtime for the children so they can lend an extra hand.
My final thanks to year 6, 5, 4 and 3 members of the Green Team after school club. It has been immensely rewarding to work with you each week during the past term and your hard work will be able to be appreciated by all the staff and children at school. Next half term will be Year 1 and 2’s turn to join the Green Team after school club.
Silver Birch Fundraising:
Thank you to all the support to raise money for outdoor learning. Every class visited the year 6 classrooms and added either coins or leaves to create this Silver Birch tree. The results were incredible, and we have submitted it to the Woodland Trust and earnt 2 more points bringing us closer to our Gold Woodland Trust Award! Thank you to Mr Harkins (senior) and Mrs Harkins for volunteering their time to prepare and support the classes with this. The children have loved being involved!
Date for your diary: Saturday 22nd April is Earth Day. We will be celebrating this in school on Friday 21st April. There will be a whole school assembly on Wednesday to learn about Earth Day and we are focusing on plastic pollution. We are going to create a huge whole school art installation and we need your help. We would like the children to please bring in any plastic they may collect over the Easter holiday. We are going to create a huge globe entirely made from plastic in the small hall. If you could please bring it in the first week back from Monday 17th April.
We would also like to invite you on Friday 21st April to a morning litter picking around the school grounds from 8.30-8.45 all meeting with Miss White on the bottom playground if you would like to assist or take part.
If you have been down the lane, you may have also seen some pallets in the process of being constructed into a compost box. We will be launching this on the first week back with the children too so watch this space to learn more.
As we move into sunnier and warmer weather, we hope to continue to offer lots of exciting outdoor learning opportunities to all the children and to make use of our beautiful outdoor space.
Miss White
Outdoor Learning Coordinator
School closes - Friday 31st March - Easter holidays
School opens - Monday 17th April