What a great week it has been in school this week, starting with the wonderful learning that was shared by the children in our sharing assembly. It is always great to hear and see what the children have been up to in their classes and this time around there was a clear preference for the art work that had been created. This demonstrates the importance that we put on all subjects here at Little Heath and long may this continue. Following on from this, I do have a request to make regarding our assemblies and performances that we hold here which is particularly relevant since we have our Middle School performances taking place next week. We encourage all of our families to attend as many of these events as they possibly can and as a parent myself, I appreciate how hard it can be to arrange childcare and we would not exclude younger siblings from attending too. All I ask though, is if while watching an assembly or performance, you have a young child with you who becomes distressed or begins to talk out loud for example, that you step outside with them until they are ready to return. It takes a lot of courage from the children to stand up in front of their parents and the whole school and we want to try to avoid causing distractions for them as much as we can. Thank you in advance for your understanding with this.

As I mentioned in my blog last week, as well as the sharing assembly, we also welcomed some visitors into school this week, starting with two Deputy Lieutenants Marion Brown and Akhtar Zaman who visited Year 6 and spoke about the relevance and role of the monarchy and the part that they play in keeping traditions going. The children were encouraged to think about the values which we all need to adhere to in order to make for a well-run society and the presentations that some of them then carried out demonstrated the well embedded knowledge of British Values that they all have. Our visitors were so impressed with the children, they have asked us if they can return again next year which is always a great sign and, as the headteacher, makes me very proud to hear.

Next up was the visit on Tuesday from some firefighters of Green Watch from our local fire station. The children from across the school got to enjoy an assembly hearing about the endeavours and hazards of being a firefighter before getting to see the fire engine up close. During the assembly, one lucky person actually got to try on the uniform, although unfortunately it was too big for a child to put on so Mr Chanter reluctantly agreed. (As I’m sure you can see from the pictures below, he jumped at the chance really!)

Next week, as mentioned above, we have our Middle School (Years 3-5) Performance, which this year is called, ‘Oh What a Knight!’ and having seen the children all out and about at break time this morning in their amazing costumes, it promises to be a fantastic show.

Wednesday afternoon is then our Open Afternoon, where we invite you all in to look at the books with your child(ren). This begins from 3pm and you are more than welcome to take your child home once you have had a chance to share their work with them.  

Finally, as it is the end of term next week, we will be finishing school at 1:15pm on Friday.

Have a lovely weekend, assuming that this sunshine continues!

I will keep my blog brief this week and I wanted to start by saying how gutted I was to have missed the Year 2 class assembly this morning, but that I heard it was amazing, so well done to all of the children for taking part. From wonderful stories about bears to creative pieces of art inspired by Picasso, it was clear to all that they have learned an awful lot this year and a big thank you needs to go to Mrs Beadle, Miss Russon and Mrs Blatch for this.

Next, I wanted to give a huge thanks to all of you, our parents and children, for your support of Red Nose Day today. We managed to raise yet another £450 from the sale of the noses and this money is going to a very good cause which will help so many people living tough lives both in the UK and around the world. For those of you watching the Comic Relief show tonight, I’m sure there will be lots of laughs along with the harder hitting clips showing where the money will be spent.

Next week, we have a couple of notable events beginning on Monday when we will be having a visit in Year 6 from Marion Brown, Deputy Lieutenant. There will then no doubt be lots of excitement in school on Tuesday afternoon, when there will be a visit from a watch of firefighters from our local station.

In the meantime, the sun is due to shine this weekend so do enjoy getting outside and we will see you all on Monday.

I want to start by saying how fantastic it was to see all of the children in their wonderful costumes today celebrating World Book Day. The day started off with an assembly from the author Camilla Chester who was equally as impressed with the costumes as we were and then she spent the rest of the day leading workshops with the children that I hope that they were inspired by. As well as this, the writing activities that the children completed across the day and the character scavenger hunt that took place during break and lunchtime really seemed to engage the children which was great to see and lots of fun was had!

As mentioned in my blog last week, to get the children all enthused for Science Week, Wednesday and Thursday saw the children taking part in Science workshops related to electricity. I sat in on the Year 3 workshop and even I was amazed with what the children got to explore and investigate and once again, watching how much fun the children were having, it was clear that this really brought the learning to life and I am sure that they all got a lot out of the workshops.

The fun continues on Monday of next week, as the children will be kicking off Science Week with a Planetarium workshop which will no doubt cause a lot of excitement and once again, I am sure will also lead to some high quality learning. The children will continue to complete science activities in class throughout the week also, further enriching their scientific skills and knowledge, so there is plenty for the children to look forward to next week as well.

In the meantime, let’s hope that the sun continues to shine outside as it really does put a spring in the step -have a good weekend!

 

Well, where did that week just go? Whilst the half term break already feels like it was ages ago, at the same time, I cannot believe how quickly the week has flown by.

There have been a few things that have happened in school this week worth mentioning, starting with a number of events that happened on Tuesday. First of all, the children in Year 1 went off to Christ Church for a visit related to their RE topic and Year 2 enjoyed their Great Fire of London day related to their history topic. Although I was not there to see the workshop, I know from the excitement that the children had on Wednesday still, that they all had an amazing learning experience that was brought to life by the drama of the day.

In addition to the above, we also had a K’NEX challenge workshop in Years 5 & 6 on Tuesday and by all accounts this was a huge success also. The children got to design and make fairground rides and there were some fantastic creations at the end. Some photos of these will be going up on the respective class blogs.

We have also been able to welcome our Nursery and Reception parents into school this week, for their consultations with the class teachers. I hope that for those of you who were in for this, you got a chance to hear about the positive start that your child has had with us so far and all of the wonderful things that they have been up to since the start of the year.

For the rest of the school, today was the day that the children will have brought home their annual school reports. I know that other schools often send their reports out later in the year, but we like to send them out earlier on so that the children can work on the targets set by their current teachers, within the rest of this academic year. I have had the pleasure of reading over every single one of them over the last week and I am very impressed with the excellent, positive comments that have been made about the children and I trust that they will now work hard on their next steps in order to improve further. As a result of these reports going out now, we do not hold an official parents’ meeting for the whole school in this term, but if you wish to discuss anything from your child’s report, you may contact their class teacher to make an appointment to do so.

We have some equally as exciting events happening in school next week! First of all, as a precursor to British Science Week the following week, we have 2 days of Science Workshops taking place next Wednesday and Thursday. Over these 2 days, the children of all classes will get to enjoy some practical hands-on experiments and investigations that will no doubt spark the children’s enthusiasm and imagination!

We will then be ending the week with our World Book Day Celebrations. As was mentioned in the letter that went out, we have moved this back a day here at Little Heath, so will be celebrating on Friday 7^th March and we will be having an author visit from Camilla Chester, author of the award winning book, Call Me Lion. The children will also be able to come in dressed up as a character from their favourite book. My staff and I will also all be dressed up as well so do look out for our costumes and try and guess the character/book.

In the meantime, it has been great to look out of the window today and see the sun shining which I believe is due to continue for the next couple of days, so as I often say here, do get outside as much as you can and have a great weekend.

So here we are at the much-needed half-term break. It has been a very busy term so far, topped off by a very busy week this last week, but it’s been great to see the children enjoying their learning and having fun in the extra events that have gone on this week.

I am very pleased to start by sharing the fantastic success of our Valentine's Disco from Wednesday! Thanks to the hard work of the PTA as well as the incredible support from you, our parents, we raised a staggering £570 for our school. A huge thank you to everyone who helped make the disco such a memorable event! It’s your support that makes these events such a success, and we are truly grateful for the sense of community that we have here at Little Heath.

Moving on to today, it was great to see the children taking part in our Crazy Hair Day and there really were some amazing creations! A further £141 was raised for the PTA from this and please do watch this space for further details about how the funds are going to be used to make things even better for the children in the school.

Wishing you all a good half-term break -I hope you all have the chance to enjoy some well-deserved rest and quality time with your families over the break and I look forward to seeing the children all well-rested and ready for the rest of the term.

I want to start by apologising for not updating my blog for the last couple of weeks, but I’m pleased to be writing this again to share some of the things that have been going on in school.

The week started off with the latest one of our sharing assemblies. It is always pleasing to see the range of subjects and topics that the children choose to share with the school and their parents and this week was no exception, with a great variety of work shared by those children who took part. It continues to be clear that good learning is taking place in all classes and it is wonderful to hear this from the children themselves as they share the work that they’re particularly proud of.

On Wednesday, Mrs Robinson and Mrs Lawrence took a group of children to the o2 to perform in the annual Young Voices event, ably assisted by Mr Mills. I was due to attend with them and I was really looking forward to it but unfortunately I had to swap at the last minute with Mr Mills which I was very disappointed about. I know from speaking to the children who attended though, as well as the teachers, that it was an amazing day and we had quite a few hoarse voices yesterday so they were clearly singing loudly among the thousands of other children who were there. The fact that we were allocated a space right at the front this year was extra special and there are some awesome pictures to be shared on my blog next week. I also hear on the grapevine that there was a picture of Mr Mills on the big screen that somebody managed to snap so I’m hoping to get a copy of that to share here too. I want to thank all of the teachers who took the children, because without them, we could not attend, but also I want to thank the children who went for taking part and representing our school.  

We are into the last week of the half term already next week and there is quite a lot going on. This week was officially Children’s Mental Health week, but due to timetabling here, we decided to mark this in school next week instead. Tuesday is Safer Internet Day so the children will be carrying out activities related to this. The same day, Year 3 are off on a visit to Celtic Harmony and Year 2 are off to Christchurch for a visit related to their RE lessons. On Wednesday, we have our Open Afternoon for parents to come and see and share the work that your children have been doing and we have Friendship Groups taking place on Thursday morning. Finally, on Friday we have ‘Crazy Hair Day’ so we look forward to seeing the wacky creations that the children decide upon!

Have a lovely weekend and see you all again on Monday.

 

I am so pleased to be writing my blog this week going into the weekend with a noticeable rise in temperature from this time last week. It certainly makes it easier to get out and about at the weekend when we’re not faced with sub-zero temperatures!

The week has passed by as quickly as ever and as I mentioned last week was to be the case, we did not have too much going on out of the ordinary this week. We did have some of our ex-pupils in school today doing their Year 7 work experience and it is always a pleasure to welcome them back and nice to know that they had such a positive experience when they were here that they want to return when given an opportunity. It was equally nice to see those who had come to watch their younger siblings in their class assembly before going off to work in their respective workplaces.

The main notable event of the week happened this morning and that was our Year 4 class assembly alluded to above. The children shared lots of learning that they have done so far this year and they presented it in a very humorous and entertaining way! From the work that the children had completed on The Iron Man in English to the Pablo Picasso-inspired portraits that they had created in their art lessons, it was clear to see how much the children have learned during their time in school so far this year. The times tables rock metal song that they sang –acapella I might add –had the audience joining in and highlighted how we try to provide as many opportunities as possible across the school for the children to learn in different ways.

Earlier on this afternoon, I had the pleasure of seeing some of the children from the other end of the school –our Foundation Stage –whizzing around the main playground on their balance bikes and trikes. The wonderful learning that takes place in Key Stage 1 and 2 all starts with the basics being mastered in Nursery and Reception and seeing how confident the children were on 2 or 3 wheels shows how well they have started and shows great potential for the future.

One thing I forgot to mention in my blog last week that was happening this week was the Year 5 and 6 boys’ football matches that took place yesterday. Unfortunately, we lost one game and drew the other one but it is the taking part that counts and I want to thank the boys who turned up to play for their dedication. Next week, we have a girls’ football tournament taking place on Thursday morning and a netball match taking place later that afternoon so I want to wish all of those taking part in these, the very best of luck!

Have a good weekend everyone.