Class Stars 🙂 Well done to…
Our Early Years… Molly Facey
Class 2… Nicholas Woodeson
Class 3… Amelie Crossman
Class 4… Sam Land
This ½ term’s school value is…
We are Kind.
Together with our parents and our church, we provide a caring and nurturing environment where we learn to value and respect others by being valued and respected ourselves.
‘Do to others as you would have them do to you.’ (Luke 6 v31)
Attendance so far…
School average for this week:
Class 1: 98.4% Class 2: 97.5% Class 3: 99.0% Class 4: 96.6%
Well done Class 3 for excellent attendance this week!
School average for the term so far: 97.4%
(Please have a look at our Attendance page on our website for more information.)
This week…
We hope you enjoyed the chance to come in to school and see your child’s classroom during Wednesday’s Open Afternoon. We try to make our open afternoon as similar as possible to what normally takes place in school and so we hope you were able to explore some of the children’s learning and enjoy your visit. Thanks to those who were able to come along.
A big well done to the girls’ football team who represented Georgeham and played marvelously at the BLC festival at Kingsacre today. Thanks also to our parent volunteer coaches – Julian, Wayne, Matthew and Liesha for their time coaching and their time at the tournament.
Thanks also for purchasing books at our book fair. We may just get in passed the threshold for commission for holding it, but it was a great opportunity for our parents to buy Christmas presents too! We’ll be placing the order as soon as possible and will email you when they arrive.
I’m loving the Parents’ Year Reps system that we’ve put in place. We’ve been able to spread messages through our parents wider social networks and it’s really helped. Our Parent Reps know to redirect your questions over to your child’s teacher or directly to me, Mr Thomas, but this week I was asked a question that hasn’t been shared on the Newsletter so it’s proving useful for this purpose too.
Your Year Group Parent Reps are…
Rec: Debbie Sanders
Yr1: –vacant–
Yr2: Sam Humble-Smith
Yr3: –vacant–
Yr4: Cat Kennedy
Yr5: Amy Barrow
Yr6: Holly Kennedy
The question that was passed to me…?
I’m happy to report that Miss McCormick will be teaching in Class 4 for the whole year, rather than just the term as was originally planned.
Mrs Boreham is also going to remain in Class 2 through to the Easter Break, covering for Mrs Rinvolucri’s absence.
Mrs Hapgood is also remaining as our interim SENDCo through to Easter.
Useful online software … Mrs Karen Ivall supports speech and language work with our children. For this, we use a very good programme called Speech Link and, through the pandemic, we discovered that it was really useful for our families too.
Speechlink’s Parent Portal provides free access to lots of resources, so please explore these links below.
Please also email or ask Mrs Ivall if you have any queries or would like further help.
Homepage – https://speechandlanguage.info/parents
language activities – https://speechandlanguage.info/parents/activities/language
speech activities – https://speechandlanguage.info/parents/activities/parent-portal-speech-activities
FROGS team This week, FROGS sent an email out to families through Lottie’s email. Please have a look at this as they’ve explained what they’d like to do over the year. (Thanks again to the team for their excellent work in supporting the children!)
Hopefully you spotted that it’s an Inset day tomorrow… See you back in school on Monday 31st.
A message from our Education Welfare Officer …
Click here for a poster > UKHSA-should-I-keep-my_child_off_school_guidance-A3-poster
Prompt exclusion of children, young people and staff who are unwell with an infectious disease is essential to preventing the spread of infection in education and childhood settings. The poster linked above may be useful for parents so they are aware of requirements.
Children with mild, respiratory symptoms such as a runny nose, sore throat, or slight cough, who are otherwise well, can continue to attend their education or childcare setting.
The school has a policy for the appropriate exclusion of staff, children and young people while they are likely to be infectious, and also has a procedure for contacting parents and/or caregivers when children become unwell at the setting.
In most cases, parents and caregivers will agree that a child who is unwell and has symptoms of an infectious illness, such as a fever, should not attend the school, given the potential risk to others. If a parent or caregiver insists on a child with symptoms attending your setting, where they have a confirmed or suspected case of an infectious illness, the school can take the decision to refuse the child if, in their reasonable judgement based on the health protection guidance, it is necessary to protect other children and staff from possible infection.
The government now recommends that children and young people are only tested for Covid-19 if directed to do so by a health professional. However, if a child does test and is positive, they’re advised to stay at home and avoid contact with other people for 3 days after testing and for adults they are advised to stay at home for 5 days. The guidance may change but is available here.
Clubs Webpage for more info…
French Club … Sarah Cox is planning an after school French Club after the 1/2 term break – years 1 and 2 on Tuesday, and years 3 to 6 on Thursdays, after school. Please get in touch with Sarah by clicking the link below…
Basketball Club … Rob from Devonshire Tennis Academy is planning to start a Basketball club for years 2 to 6, on Friday mornings, starting on the 4th November. Please contact Rob if you’re interested by emailing bookings@devonshiretennisacademy.com
Piano… a message from Sophie Kerslake…. We have space for children to have piano lessons at school. Please phone her directly on 07799 719865
Guitars… a message from Sarah Cox.
I teach children from Year 2 and onwards. Preferably they would have their own guitar, but this is not essential as I have some I can loan out for the short term. Parents can email me to get in touch: sarahcoxtutoring@gmail.com
Attendance… We frequently report the attendance of individual year groups as it’s a really good way to see if school attendance is at a good percentage… with it as high as possible of course! The DfE have a target of 96.5% but sadly, we finished the year, last July, being slightly below this.
Attending school regularly is vital to help children achieve and to give them the best possible start in life. It’s also a legal requirement of parents once children are of school age and enrolled in mainstream education. Ofsted has a strong view about attendance of course and, therefore, too many absences can lead into difficult discussions about how we can support children to achieve and do well – we could even be downgraded for our current Good status as a result.
Absenceswill only be authorised if they meet exceptional circumstances. With only 190 statutory school days in the year, there are 175 days (weekends and school holidays) left to plan for family visits, non-urgent medical/dental appointments, holidays etc. School holidays are published well in advance and parents are expected to plan and take family holidays at this time so as not to disrupt their child’s education. We also try to arrange our Inset (training) days to provide time for travel… such as this term’s October 21st.
Holidays… are almost always not recognised as meeting ‘exceptional circumstances’ and therefore an absence would be unauthorised. This could result in a penalty notice being issued by DCC.
Punctualityis important too, and the earlier we get our children into the right habits, the better. You may not realise that being just 5 minutes late every day equals 3 days of school lost a year. Please bring your child for 8.45am when they door is open and the classroom has a learning activity ready for them.
Dates in the diary… bottom of the front page…
https://georgehamceps.wpengine.com/
Dinner Menu…
https://georgehamceps.wpengine.com/dinner-menu/
Our school’s Designated Safeguarding Lead is Julian Thomas
You can contact us on dsl@georgeham-primary.devon.sch.uk
If you have any concerns that you’d like to discuss, please call through to Lottie and ask for an appointment. You may also find some useful or helpful information on our Safeguarding webpage… https://georgehamceps.wpengine.com/staying-safe/
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