Lane End Primary School

November 2013 - Newsletter 9 (28th November 2013)

Dear Parents/Carers,

PTA Christmas Fair – the Christmas Fair is this Saturday. It promises to be a fantastic family event and we’d love to see you there! There’s still a chance to sign up to help if you can - either to set up or during the fair (please!). We’ll be setting up from 1:40pm tomorrow afternoon and then on Saturday morning from 9:30am. Thank you for selling raffle tickets – please could any remaining money with stubs or unsold raffle tickets be brought in to school tomorrow. It is also our last non-uniform day tomorrow with children bringing in cakes, chocolate or a hamper gift. Thank you again for all of your support.

Road Safety Competition – Thank you to all of the children who entered our Road Safety Competition, we had some great entries. Thank you too to Mr Belfield who came to present the prizes in our assembly on Monday.  The winners were: Mia Mather, Ayla Maydanchi, Sarah Calvert, Sophie Webster, William Bancroft and Kieran Stringer. Mia and Sophie were the overall KS2 and KS1 winners and their designs are shown below. Can I also take this opportunity to ask again for drivers to do their part in road safety – driving and parking carefully and considerately around school and the neighbouring roads. Thank you.

Christmas Trail Next Week

Cheadle Hulme Methodist Church have kindly invited us to see their ‘Christmas Trail’ which will tell the Christmas story through live scenes. It is being created by Peter and Julie Fraser from Bible Encounters who also come into school each term to hold an assembly. It should be a great experience for the children. We were lucky to see their Easter Trail a couple of years ago which was spectacular. Each class will walk down to the church on either Thursday or Friday next week so please make sure your child has a warm coat in school.

It’s a busy week next week with the swimming gala on Friday morning (children in Year 5 or 6 who are taking part know who they are – good luck!). Mr Gosling will be taking a group of Year 6 woodwind players to play at the Christmas market in Cheadle Hulme Precinct between 11and 12 next Friday morning too – please stop by if you are around (as this clashes with the swimming gala, swimmers who also play woodwind in Year 6 will need to go to the gala!). Our choir are singing at Cheadle Hulme Methodist Church on Sunday (the Community Carol Service starts at 6:30pm) and also at St George’s Church on Tuesday evening. The infants will be doing their dress rehearsal next Friday afternoon, ready for their performances the following week.

Anti-bullying Week – all of the classes worked on anti-bullying messages last week during National Anti-bullying Week and produced class contracts which we will display in the hall. We also talked about this in assembly and discussed the need to speak to an adult if you think there is any bullying going on so that it can be dealt with. We discussed what bullying was (ongoing and sometimes with a power imbalance – e.g. from more than one other person) and different types of bullying – verbal, physical and cyber bullying.

Years 4, 5 and 6 were also visited by Sandra Scott from ‘Positive Attitudes’ who worked on disability awareness with them. She was very pleased with how the children dealt with the issues, emailing me afterwards to say: “I had such a great day with your year 4, 5 and 6 children and staff. The children spoke with such maturity and from the heart. All years 4, 5 and 6   surprised me in how well they accepted me into their classes and I never felt different (disabled).  Please acknowledge this to them and thank them for me for having me into their classes to work with them.”

I will put some photos of the above in the ‘School Events’ section of the website under ‘A Busy Autumn Term 2013’. Other highlights shown so far in this section include: Barclays Bank (led by Mr Paddock) delivering Moneyskills sessions to Years 5 and 6, a taster of some of the clubs on offer this term, Matthew Walker’s visit to school and our Walk to School fortnight. There is also a new section of the website entitled ‘Connecting Classes’ (see the tab on the left of the site) which gives a good overview on our work linking with the schools in Africa and the two other schools in Stockport.

Just so you know - the hall walls are looking slightly bare at the moment as we are preparing for it to be decorated!

Christmas Post Box - The school Christmas Post Box will be available for Christmas cards from next Monday – please make sure that the envelope has a full name and class on it. Sending Christmas cards is very worthwhile writing practice, particularly for the younger children.

We aim to be approachable and work in partnership with parents, so if there is anything you wish to discuss, please do not hesitate to come and talk to us.

Yours sincerely,   

James Twigg