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Friday 26th May 2023
What a term!
What a quick and whirlwind first Summer term this has been! We have managed to squeeze a lot of learning, fun and different activities into a 6 week term. We thank the children for all their hard work, especially the Year 2 and Year 6 children who have completed their End of Key Stage SATS assessments, you have made yourselves (and us) proud.
Have a lovely and safe May half term, enjoy the sunshine but remember to protect yourselves and stay hydrated! See you back on Monday 5th June for our final Summer term!
St Paul’s Garden!
This week, we were lucky enough to have Rev Pete (one of our Governors) and Dave from the Elim Church come to support our little ‘oasis’ at St Paul’s. We have a little, sunny courtyard in the middle of our school and as the sun is finally coming out for Summer, we wanted to make the most of this space.
Children in Phase Two helped plant tomatoes, strawberries and Sweet William flowers and will look after them carefully as they begin to grow. The children learnt about how deep to plant each plant and how to look after them. They learnt that just after planting, we need to water them every day to support their roots growing and finding nutrients in the soil.
Keep an eye on the blogs and the newsletter as we will update you with how they are growing.
The CREW delivered a great assembly this week on our value of forgiveness. They retold a story and added their own actions to it. The CREW really made the children think about how it feels to be forgiven and that it is often the only way that people can move forward. The CREW asked some very probing questions and the rest of the school did a great job in answering them. CREW were on the playground every lunch time encouraging children to be forgiving and asking them how it felt when they were given forgiveness.
A.I.M. High—Poetry Event
This week, 6 children from Year 4 and Year 5 attended a writing event at Kingsholm Primary School. They were supported by Debra Bertulis. Debra is a famous poet who writes books and poems about a variety of subjects, her most current books are
‘The Moon’s Gorgonzola’ and ‘Where do wishes go?’
The children had the opportunity to write their own poems, and perform them to a large audience of pupils from other primary schools. Debra was blown away with the quality of the poetry the children wrote and we are so proud of the budding poets and authors that we have at St Paul’s!
100% Attendance
As we know, attendance is key to a good education. It is really important that we have children in school every day so they do not miss out on their learning and also, time with their peers.
This term we celebrated those pupils who had 100% attendance from September! Huge congratulations to these children who have been in school every, single day since we started in September 2022.
They celebrated by wearing non-uniform to school, having some time outside with Mrs Bevan and a treat bag. Well done! Let’s hope there are lots more children who will join the 100% Attendance club!
Class Dojo Winners are:
Phase 1 Water
Individual Winners are:
Ph 1 Earth— Miracle
Ph 1 Water— Lucien
Ph 2 Air— Muhammad
Ph 2 Earth— Mashoud
Ph 2 Water— Ameera
Ph 3 Earth— Oliver
Ph 3 Water—Riley H
WELL DONE EVERYONE!
We have nearly 100% of parents signed up to Class Dojo—if you are not signed up yet, please speak to your child’s Key Worker as this is our main form of communication!
Important Attendance Reminder
We have now had half a term with the new starting and finishing times for the school day. Thank you to the vast majority of parents who have supported the school and have adapted to the new timings and ensuring that their children arrive to school on time and are picked up at the correct time.
Unfortunately, there are some parents who are persistently failing to bring their children to school on time. Gates open at 8.30am and close at 8.40am and the register closes at 9am. Parents have a duty of care to ensure children come to school and being on time helps the children to start the day in a positive way and enables them to engage with their learning. At St Paul’s we have Phonics and Guided Reading at 9am every day and if your child misses this on a regular basis, there is no time in the day to catch up the lost learning and your child’s progress will therefore be impacted. No child likes to arrive after everyone else and miss the ‘soft start’ that we have from 8.40 am to 9am, where they catch up with friends or check in with an adult. The children do not have time to regulate and get ready for the day ahead and this can have a negative impact on their well being and attainment.
This lateness affects individual children but it is now having a wider, knock-on effect to school systems, which cannot continue. Children arriving after 9am are late in letting the office know what they would like for lunch, which means we are later in sending in dinner numbers to our catering company. I have met with them this week as we have had some errors in the number of dinners being sent over, and they have said it is because our orders are coming in later and later and they have a limited time to cook our food and get it delivered to us before we serve at 12pm. So they start cooking based on previous numbers, which are not always the same. This is directly as a result of us having to delay sending them our daily numbers due to several children arriving after the registers have closed.
The smooth running of the wider is school is also affected when parents fail to pick their children up from school on time at the end of the day. School finishes at 3.30pm on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and 1.50pm on Wednesdays. Again the vast majority support the effective running of the school by collecting their children on time or phoning to let us know if they are running late. However some parents again, are persistently arriving ten or more minutes after the official end of the school day. This is impacting on support staff (who are having to stay beyond their paid hours to help accommodate children who have not been picked up), but also on staff who run after school clubs. These cannot start until all children in their classes have been sorted. This impacts on other children whose clubs start late through no fault of their own. Therefore, the failure of a few parents is now affecting the wider school community.
We understand that there will be the odd occasion when running late is beyond your control (traffic jams etc) but continually turning up late at either ends of the school day is not ok.
If you do come late to school, you need to bring your child(ren) into reception and not just drop them at the gates to be buzzed in. If your child is in Y5/6 and has permission to walk to school on their own and is late, we will call you to let you know this is the case.
Thank you for your co-operation.
IMPORTANT DATES
Monday 29th May—Friday 2nd June - Half Term Monday 5th June - Return to school
14th June - Rotary Club trip (Phase 2 Earth) 15th June - Y6 Leaver’s Service Gloucester Cathedral
19th June—Fizz, Pop Science Club starts 22nd June - Sports Day
