Headteacher weekly blog week beginning 9th September 2017

Date: 14th Oct 2017 @ 10:37am

Well this week was dominated with the start of the major works on the building. Obviously, losing the front entrance for several weeks provides us all with certain challenges, but the end result will of course make it all worth while. The new path and gated entrance at the back seems to be working well and the office staff will certainly be far fitter by the end of the 8 weeks!! Throughout the process I meet with the site manager every week where we review the progress of the work and risk assess the site and the school. Several people have asked what is happening in the Year 4 cloakroom area. It is being turned into temporary boys toilets as the other boys toilets are soon to be ripped out to make the meeting  / cookery room. At the very end of the build, theytemporary toilets will then be turned into a caretaker store. 

We now have 3 sports clubs after school and they are very well attended. As they are for certain year groups, some parents have asked if the club days could be rotated to allow for pupils to attend who might have other commitments on certain days. I have spoken with Premier Sports and that is something that we can do. 

I was in Nursery this week to see their work on the text "Naughty Bus". It is a book for reading together with young children; designed to encourage conversation, visual literacy and imaginative play. The bus has a multitude of adventures, including speeding through a plate of beans and falling into the garden pond. This is part of an overhaul of the Literacy curriculum in Nursery. We are continuing with our book as a hook to the topic planning. The book is brought to life through narrative immersion and talk for writing. Our new admissions policy is really helping with the planning and delivery of this. Next up, we are looking to launch Write Dance which is a kinaesthetic approach for early writing. 

I enjoyed teaching the Year 6 pupils on Friday. We did some hockey to help prepare some of our pupils for the next sporting competition. The Deeside Ramblers hockey tournament clashes with the Broxton hockey tournament. Mr Bond said no problem. He is going to one in the afternoon and then racing to the Heber afterwards to compete in both! He aims to win them both!

We waved goodbye to Mrs Higley and Mrs Pimparel on Friday. They have jetted off to France for their week off working in a French school and learning the French language to support their teaching of a modern foreign language within school. They have planned some exciting work centred around the text Dear Zoo. Mrs Higley's class has written letters to the French pupils and Mrs Pimparel's pupils have been making puppets for re-telling the story. They aim to keep us up to date on their trip to France on the website so look out for pictures. 

And of course we said goodbye to both Mrs Bayley and Mrs Hartwell Jones who have now left for their maternity leave. The staff had a buffet lunch and played some baby games. Apparently, there were baby pictures and they had to guess who they were. Staff thought one baby picture was me - it turned out to be Brad Pitt!!! I have always said that we could pass as brothers!