As I sit here looking out of my office window at the beautiful autumn crisp afternoon with the sun low in the sky casting shadows across the playground and field, it is unbelievable to think how different it looks to just a couple of days ago when once again we were battered by the torrential rain that hit. Such is the changeable nature of our weather right now, it seems almost impossible to predict what it will be like over the course of the day. Fortunately, however, apart from one ‘wet play’, the children have been able to get out and about still at break and lunchtime which is always a bonus at this time of the year and I hope that this continues next week.

As many of you may have seen last night (or at least got to view through your phone camera lens), the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, made another appearance last night and this morning I received an amazing picture of the school that was taken by one of our Co-Chairs of Governors, Michelle Corneby. The photo is attached below, and I am sure you will all agree how stunning the sky looked behind the trees at the back of the Foundation block.

I mentioned last week how successful the Harvest Festival coffee morning had been and I am very pleased to say that now the money has been totalled up, I can tell you that £554.79 will be headed off to support Cancer Research which is a huge amount of money. Thank you once again to all those involved –from those who baked/brought in the goodies to those of you who bought them and especially to those who gave up their time to ensure that the whole thing was such a success.

Next week is yet another week where I will not be around much. I am out from Tuesday until Thursday on STEPs training and whilst this means yet more days offsite, I can assure you all that I will still be keeping a close eye on the day-to-day running of the school in my absence, even though I am extremely confident that Mr Chanter and Mrs Robinson have everything under control. If you do need to contact anyone on those days though, please do direct your questions/queries their way.

Have a good weekend and we will see you all on Monday.

 Dear all,

Whilst I wasn’t around a lot this week, I was delighted to hear that in my absence, plenty of good learning took place and the school all ran smoothly under the watchful eyes of Mr Chanter and Mrs Robinson. Having just returned from the Hertfordshire Headteacher’s Conference, I am pleased to say that I have brought back lots of ideas for ways to further develop and improve our offer to all of our pupils and I cannot wait to feed this back to all of my teaching staff over the coming weeks which will then be seen in our classroom practice.

As I mentioned in my blog last week, the one thing that I was the most disappointed about being out today was the fact that I missed the Harvest Coffee morning. This is always such a lovely event for everyone involved and I am told that this morning’s gathering was no exception to that, with the children in fine voice and lots of parents in attendance. I want to thank all of the parents who sent in donations of cakes and biscuits as well as all of you who then bought these to raise money for charity. I also want to thank all of the parents who volunteered their time to sell the sweet treats. I do not know how much has been raised yet, but I do know that a significant amount will be going to a good cause. I do apologise for not advertising the chosen charity sooner, but as I had spoken to the children in assembly on Monday, I had left it up to them to make suggestions and the majority of them involved donating to cancer charities of one form or another, so we are going to donate the money to Cancer Research. We have donated to this charity before but as cancer affects 1 in 2 of us over our lifetimes then I’m sure you will agree this is a very worthwhile cause in order to try to reduce this awful statistic.

Our Book Fair has been a resounding success so far, with many of our children exploring new reads and there will be lots of new books coming into the school soon as a result of all of the books sold. The Book Fair will continue on Monday and Tuesday next week, providing even more opportunities for our children to find their next favourite book.

Monday will also see our first Sharing Assembly of the year. If your child is taking part in this assembly, you will have been notified already and if you have not attended this assembly before then it is an opportunity for your child to share the learning that they are proud of in any area of the curriculum that they choose; the breadth of subjects/topics that the children choose to share is always very diverse and I can’t wait for you to see the creativity and hard work they will share!

Thank you to everyone for making this week so special.