City AcademyWhitehawk

Mr Church’s Newsletter

16thMarch 2018

Year 4’s Enormous Crocodile!

Last week, there was a very useful forum between the school and the community called Parent Voice. These happen termly and are opportunities for any parent/carer to attend and ask questions to either Mrs Singh or myself about the school. We don’t discuss individual children, the focus is more on whole school matters. It was really helpful for both the school and the parents/carers that attended. Here is a summary of some of the discussions and what the school will do about it.

  • Issues with the disabled access to the main door not always working – Mr Church will speak to Mr Hill.
  • Discussion over school lunches and wrist bands – the school wil be reviewing several practices and monitoring school dinners over the next few weeks.
  • Discussion over attendance and rewards – Mrs Storey outlined the expectations that the school faces from the government, local authority and Aurora. As a school we need to do all we can to improve our attendance as it is currently lower than it should be.
  • Some parents/carers did not know the school had an email address. Here it is:

is address is checked daily!

If you would like to attend the next Parent Voice, please speak to Mrs Storey or Dave Bailey (Parent Governor) for further details.

INSET Dates

Please note the remaining dates that school is shut this year. The final day of the Summer Term for children is Friday 20th July 2018.

Friday 15th June

Monday 23rd July

Tuesday 24th July

Paragon Events – Spring 2nd Half Term

It’s that time of term again! Paragon events begin next week as follows:

Y1: Thursday 22nd March

Y2: Wednesday 21st March

Y3: Tuesday 20th March

Y4: Tuesday 27th March

Y5: Monday 26th March

Y6: Wednesday 28th March

The Enormous Crocodile comes to CAW: World Book Day – Mrs Spence

On Thursday 8th March we had a wonderful day celebrating World Book Day. If you had happened to walk down the corridors that morning you would have had the pleasure of bumping into Matilda, Miss Honey, Sophie, The BFG, Mr Wonka and a host of other characters from the wonderful worlds created by Roald Dahl.

Throughout the day children visited Platform 9 ¾ (our school library) to be read To and created some incredible poetry inspired by our focus book for the day – “The Enormous Crocodile”. The children in Reception made potions like George from “George’s Marvellous Medicine”, Year One visited Year Six who taught them how to make crocodile hats, Years Three and Five painted watercolours inspired by Roald Dahl illustrator Quintin Blake, and Year 4 performed their poem while dressed as The Enormous Crocodile as you can see in the picture above. At break time and lunch time storytelling sessions were run by different teachers in classrooms, the playground and in the school library.

It was truly brilliant to see the fantastic work created by the children throughout the day and to see so many people enjoying the books of Roald Dahl. World Book Day will be celebrated on 7th March in 2019 and we can’t wait for another special day!

Attendance and Punctuality Update – Mrs Storey

Our whole school attendance target is 95.5% - this means that all children are expected to have that level of attendance. If your child’s attendance is under around 93% then you will probably receive a letter to let you know that we are keeping an eye on it.

We are delighted to report that last week our whole school attendance was the best in some time, so to recognise this we are giving a prize to every pupil who is in school every day from Monday 12th March until the Easter holidays!

HOLIDAYS during term time

It’s that time of year again when families might be thinking about booking holidays – please pleaseplease remember that we cannot authorise ANY absences from school due to holidays. Please use the 175 non-school days that we have every year.

LATENESS!

During the half term January to February pupils arriving late to school meant that a total of 4364 minutes (that’s more than 72 hours!) of potential learning time was lost. Lateness is an area that we need to improve as a school so it is going to be monitored closely.

You may have noticed that senior staff are closing the playground gates promptly at 8.45am and Mrs Storey is recording details of children arriving late via the office. We have already noticed an improvement so thanks very much to all parents and carers who are ensuring that children arrive on time every day.

UNEXPLAINED ABSENCES

If your child is not at school and we have not heard from you we will send a text message around 9.30am and this will often be followed up by a phonecall. If we cannot get through or we do not get a response with a reason for the absence within 2 weeks then the mark will be automatically changed to an unauthorised absence. Please remember to make contact with school each day that your child is off to explain the absence. This is very important.

Please contact Mrs Storey if you would like to discuss anything around attendance or absences.

Congratulations to Heron Class from Year 5 and Goldfinches from Year 2 who won the attendance prize for last week!