Headteacher News 18-9-23

Always Learning…. Aiming for Excellence

This week, I’ve had the pleasure of focusing on some of my own learning as Headteacher and I was able to attend two conferences in two days. One with local headteachers discussing the local issues affecting education in Scarborough and one in Birmingham, where myself and Mrs Valancius attended the conference induction day for the DFE Behaviour Hub programme. This is a year long project where we will be focusing closely on our behaviour curriculum for the children and staff of Northstead. We are part of this programme because we are a school who believe in excellence in everything we do and we only achieve excellence when seeking to improve all aspects of school every day. We are very excited by this project and will be working closely with a leading school in auditing, planning and improving our provision and skills.

Further information on this will be shared with our community in the coming year.

Having a gratitude attitude…

In Y1-Y3 assembly this week we talked about having a gratitude attitude. We explored the things we are grateful for in our lives and developed an understanding that what we want is not always what we need. The children (despite a wasp flying into the assembly!) understood that being thankful for the things they have and not always the things they want will help the maintain positivity.

Attendance Matters

The average attendance at the end of this week is 95.08%. This is a great start for our community. We all know that high attendance means more time for learning and more time for learning means better progress. Our aim for this year is to achieve an overall average of 2.4% higher than last year. This means we are looking for an average of 95.5% over the entire year. Thanks for your support with this.

We are receiving a number of holiday requests into school. Parents/Carers who take their child on a holiday during term time for 5 or more days are referred to the learning authority and are likely to be issued with a fine.

Uniform

Polite reminder to all of our community that our uniform expectation is a stiff collared white short or blouse. Children should not be wearing a soft collared polo shirt (unless part of a provision plan agreed with our inclusion team).

Next week in school…

Next week in school, we welcome Lis Marsden, our school improvement advisor for a safeguarding review and Mr Ian Clennan from Selby Educational Trust for an initial visit to school. Ian, as mentioned in previous blogs last year is our chosen improvement partner as part of our involvement in the DFE priority investment area. Both will visit on Wednesday. They may be around at home time to ask parents their views of our school.

Parent View – OFSTED

https://parentview.ofsted.gov.uk/login?destination=/give-your-views

We try to collect as many views as possible from parents and carers. One such way is through the parent view section of the OFSTED website.

When you have a spare 10 minutes, please take the time to complete this survey. We gathered 77 responses last year, but we would love over 100 this year. These views will help to shape further improvements in school.

Don’t forget…

Friday 6th October is a training day for staff in school. Children do not attend school on this day.

Parent Governor

We are on the hunt for a new parent governor to join our team of dedicated volunteers who work as governors for our school and our community. If interested, please have an initial conversation with myself about the role in person on the KS1 or 2 gate on a morning or evening or by calling 01723 362249. Further information about this will be sent out next week via email to all parents and carers.

Year group highlights….

This week in EYFS….

Our new EYFS children have had a wonderful first week at school. They have settled into school life well and are getting to grips with our routines. We’ve explored the different learning areas and even visited the library for the first time! Lots of new friends and memories have been made.

This week in year one…

This week, we have been learning about different types of picnic food and where they have come from. Today we had a Teddy Bear’s picnic and then worked together to write a shopping list of picnic food. Next week, we will explore and taste different picnic delights!

This week in year two…

Class 7 have had a brilliant week partitioning 2-digit numbers in different ways! The children were reasoning superstars as they were able to help Tiny and Kim count and write the numerals and number names all the way to 100! 

This week in year three…

In year 3 we had a fantastic French launch afternoon to begin our learning of the French language! We learned facts about France, tried French food and even sang Frère Jacques. The children have all blown us away by continuing their learning by answering our register in French!

This week in year four…

This week in year five…

Our first full week on a new school year has come to an end already! Class 18 have packed lots in. We have started our writing topic ‘Hidden Figures’ and the children are loving it. They have taken on the role of NASA employees and are helping with the space race.

In Design and Technology, the children were looking at different materials that clothes are made of and found it very amusing to be examining half of my wardrobe!

The highlight of the week has been going on a ‘scavenger hunt’ in science so we can investigate why objects are made out of certain materials. The children really enjoyed this activity.

This week in year six…

Class 20 have brought their writing to life this week! The children used role play to empathise with the characters which they then produced some outstanding pieces of writing. They have blown me away. I am extremely proud of everyone in Class 20 this week for their positive learning attitude and determination to be the best that they can be!

We’ve had a fabulous week in Class 21. One of the highlights was playing mini table tennis in the classroom as we couldn’t play hockey outside due to the rain!

Our focus book, ‘The Arrival’ has caused quite a stir this week. The predictions the children were making about this picture book were astounding. What imaginations they have! I have loved their enthusiasm for the text and their faces when we didn’t have time to read anymore until the next day!

The photos show the children in role as the characters from the story when we dramatized an image from the text.

We are very fortunate to have Mrs Mitchell to take the children for their Wednesday PE lessons this half term. Following the lesson, a few children commented that it was the best PE lesson they had ever had. There were lots of smiles… Fabulous!

In class 19 this week the children haven been part of a ‘portrait  club’ allowing each of them to draw portraits of each other as well as model for it.  The children have had great fun learning how to do this.  Here is an example of one group studying their subject and the work produced by one child.