Stanmore Post - 11 October 2019
Dear Parents,
As part of our continuing improvement journey, we have made a key appointment to add to our leadership structure. Following a rigorous recruitment process last week, the Governors are delighted to have appointed Mrs Sally Atkins to the role of Assistant Headteacher.
Mrs Atkins is an experienced teacher and school leader, currently teaching In Upper Key Stage 2 at Blackfields Primary School, Southampton. She will join our school in January and we are looking forward to welcoming her to the team.
We would also like to offer our congratulations to Mrs Kempson who is expecting her first baby in the Spring !
Mrs Kempson will start her maternity leave after February half term next year. Although we will all really miss Mrs Kempson for a little while, we are really excited for her and her family.
The addition of Mrs Atkins to the Stanmore staff enables us to continue to strengthen our teaching team. We will be able to provide further details on the staffing arrangements by the end of this half term.
We are pleased to announce that we have filled our Parent Governor Vacancy. Mrs Catherine Valentine, who has children in Year R and Year 2, will be joining the Governing Body and we are looking forward to working with her.
Best wishes
Sharon Taylor
Macarena for NSPCC
Thank you to everyone who supported the performance of the Macarena to raise money for the NSPCC. For a very short performance, (which was great fun!) we raised nearly £50. Thank you to everyone who joined in, or just watched spellbound!
Hello Yellow
On Thursday, the children and staff dressed in yellow to support #HelloYellow - Mental Health Awareness Day. The children shared ideas in assembly about the importance of both physical and mental health and completed activities in their house teams focusing on strategies to keep our minds healthy. £260 was raised, and we would like to say a huge ‘THANK YOU’ to parents for supporting the event. We also need to say ‘thank you’ to Miss Shuff who worked so hard to ensure this day was recognised. Thank you – it is appreciated.
As part of our focus on Mental Health at school, Mrs Mason and Mrs Fenton will be running a session for parents on Thursday 24th October at 2.30pm. This informal session aims to promote an understanding of children's mental health and well-being and to share how we can support children both at home and at school. Please email adminoffice@stanmore.hants.sch.uk to confirm your attendance at the session so enough tea and biscuits can be available. If you would like further information about the session, please contact Mrs Fenton or Mrs Mason.
BencheS
You may have noticed some very colourful additions to the playgrounds! FOS have started a programme of grounds improvement, and this was noticeable this week after the delivery of some brightly coloured benches. These are being placed in the infant and junior playgrounds, and are just the beginning of an exciting plan to improve our school grounds. The benches have already been well used, and are clearly a valuable addition for parents and children who want to have a well-deserved sit down. We are very lucky to have such extensive grounds, and very much appreciate all the help and support being offered to make this resource the best it can be. Thank you.
Catkins search for the King of the Fairies
This week Catkins Class have been very curious about somebody called "Onion - King of the Fairies". Onion lives in our school woods so on Wednesday when we went up to our woods for our Woodland Wednesday session we were expecting to meet him.
Unfortunately he was nowhere to be seen. This lead to lots of excited conversations about where he had gone. Some of us noticed that there was lots of litter in the woods so we decided that that must be why Onion had left the woods.
The next day we received a letter from Onion himself confirming that he had left his beautiful woods because it was so full of rubbish. The children were desperate to help persuade Onion to move back so spent another afternoon in the woods litter picking - we found two whole bin bags full! Other children found a broken house they believed to be Onion's home so spent the afternoon fixing and decorating it while others drew Onion pictures and wrote him letters asking him to come back, explaining what we were doing to help him.
This afternoon Mr Foard our super duper Site Manager came to help us fix the house properly with some real tools. All of the children listened carefully to Mr Foard's safety instructions and made an excellent job of fixing Onion's home! Hopefully he will move back next week so we can finally meet him!
Rowan are checking calculations using the inverse
We have had another very busy week in Year 1 and 2 as usual. The children have impressed us all with their resilience and persistence in their work this week – we are delighted to see such great learning behaviour.
In maths, we have been continuing with our work on addition and subtraction, supporting our calculations with concrete resources to promote understanding. The children have used the bar and part-part-whole models to show prove their calculations, then writing number sentences to go with their pictorial representations. We have started to talk about using the inverse to check calculations, and proving our answers in this way.
We continue with our Read Write Inc programme every morning, but on Thursday and Friday, we enjoyed teaching English to our classes as Mr Read and Mrs Askwith were out on a course. We have been writing about the Great Fire of London, learning to use word banks for spelling and improving our work by included expanded noun phrases.
The children have been learning about making predictions in science, and using this knowledge to predict the outcome of an exciting experiment to be carried out next week. The question was ‘What is the best material for building a house?’. We discussed different possible materials and talked about the benefits and challenges for using them.
In ICT we have continued out work on being safe on line, by discussing the personal information that we can share online, and that which is not safe to share.
History has been our main focus this week – the children have been enthralled with the story of the Great Fire of London and have even been acting it out at playtime! We have learnt about the events of the week of 2nd September 1666 and written our own narrative of what happened.
To support this topic, the children have started to construct their houses from cardboard boxes. We are looking forward to completing them over the next few weeks, reading for the big finale before the end of the half term!
Stanmore Post - 4 October 2019
Dear Parents,
We are proud of the improvements that we are making in line with our school values BEST: Belonging, excellence, support and trust.
In the new OFSTED framework, schools are judged on ‘The Quality of the Education.’ Schools are expected to prioritise the teaching of phonics and early reading, as well as encouraging older pupils to read widely and deeply. Our new topics provide the framework for our school’s curriculum, which is the substance of what is taught with a specific plan of what pupils need to know in total and in each subject. You can see some of the work the children have been enjoying in our news section of our website.
The quality of the education at Stanmore Primary School is continually improving. We know this because we have regular visits from the local authority who check that we are on track with our school improvement plan. We also know this because there was a considerable improvement in outcomes for children at the end of Year 6 in July 2019.
These outcomes are the strongest that the school has seen over the last three years. We are pleased that the improvements that Governors, leaders and teachers began to implement in 2018 have had impact. This tells us that more children at Stanmore were ready for their next steps in education than seen in recent years, in terms of education, personal development, behaviour and attitude. We are working hard to secure further significant improvements in outcomes this year across the school, but particularly in phonics and early reading. Find out more about how we are continuing to work towards achieving this by attending our School Improvement meeting on 15.10.19 at 6:30pm.
You can help us by ensuring that your child attends school every day and they arrive on time. Research, and our own findings from last year’s outcomes, tells us that children who are in school receiving an education every day are more likely to be ready for the next steps in their education.
Best wishes
Sharon Taylor
Macarena for NSPCC
On Tuesday at 8.40am in the rear junior playground children will be performing the Macarena and parents are invited to join in! Mrs Horkan and Miss Norris will be leading the dance and there will be a bucket collection to raise funds for the NSPCC. We have seen a preview, and can assure you it is well worth watching!
My School CD
Earlier in the year, Miss Hurley led the school in a project to make a CD. On the CD there is one song sung by the whole school, a song sung by each year group, and 2 songs sung by the choir. We have 100 CD’s available for sale at £8 each. If you would like to purchase one, please pop into the office (they will make great Christmas presents!). Thank you.
Fitfest!
On Thursday 26th September, 9 pupils ventured out to Fitfest in Eastleigh, an event run by CAMHS to raise awareness of mental health and wellbeing. The children had an amazing day enjoying activities such as octopus pottery, cyber kindness, being bodywise and writing and singing their own sea shanty! We learnt lots of valuable facts about taking care of our mental and physical health that we have brought back to share with the rest of the school. I was very proud to be accompanying our children as they were polite and respectful to everyone we came across. Thank you to Mrs Riches for all of her help to make our day out successful. I look forward to this event again next year!
Miss Shuff
Hello Yellow
On Thursday 10th October, we are taking part in a national event in order to raise money for the mental health charity Young Minds. The children will be having an introductory assembly about mental health in an age appropriate way, followed by a lesson in class talking about feelings and how we can support our friends if we notice they are not 'ok'. In the afternoon, we are using this event as an opportunity to take part in activities in our house teams, which we know will be fun and exciting!
In order for us to raise money, we are going to hold a 'Yellow bake sale'. Everybody is invited to bring in cakes/biscuits decorated in yellow, which will be for sale after school on Thursday. Please bring them into the hall on Thursday morning.
We are also inviting everyone to come into school dressed in yellow for a donation of £1!
Whether you choose a subtle splash of colour or dress like sunshine from head-to-toe (like I will be!!), together we can show young people they’re not alone with their mental health.
We really hope everyone can pull together so we can raise as much as possible for this very relevant and fantastic cause.
Photos
Everyone should have received the photos of their children this week. We were really pleased with them and thoroughly enjoyed looking at all the smiling faces. Please ensure all orders are returned to the office ready for collection by Cardwell and Simons on 15th October 2019.
Cardwell and Simons have offered us the opportunity to hold a weekend family session to take family portraits in the Spring Term. We would be interested to know if parents would be interested in attending one of these sessions. Please let the office know to allow us to gauge interest. Thank you.
Reception Photo
The Hampshire Chronicle will be sending a photographer into school on Wednesday 9th October 2019 to take a photo of our reception class. This will be printed in the newspaper at a date to be advised nearer the time. ONLY CHILDREN WHOSE PARENTS HAVE CONSENTED TO THEIR CHILD APPEARING IN THE MEDIA WILL BE IN THE PHOTO
Sycamore have been writing the news
Sycamore Class have had a really enjoyable few weeks.
We have written really high quality newspaper articles – I am sure that the Editor for The Times will be tracking down our excellent reporters in the years to come!
A news report by Ed
A news report by Evie
We have made some silly skeletons in order to help inform Phil Neville and the Lionesses about how to stay fit and healthy.
We are really looking forward to a brilliant history workshop coming up in a few weeks too – look out for a letter about this soon!
Also, a great big thank you to parents who have helped to remind their children to do regular reading and bring in their reading diaries every day!! We really appreciate it!
Miss Evers
Skeletons made by Ed, Xavier and Zayn
Oak are being musical
In music this term we have been studying ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ by Edvard Grieg. We started off by learning the rhythm of the first few bars using picture notation; apple and pear. We applied our knowledge of one beat and two beat counts matching to the pictures. We then created our own pattern of apple and pear beats and performed our compositions to the class.
Also we learned how to accurately write musical notation on manuscript paper. We learned to follow the first two bars of ‘In the Hall of The Mountain King’ using glockenspiels and performed to each other with percussion accompaniment.
We are looking forward to composing our own tunes and performing using tuned and un-tuned instruments next week.
Maple imagining London in 1666
This week as part of our history, we looked at some pictures of how London was back in 1666. The children discussed what jobs people might have had, what the houses were like, what the streets might have felt like to walk in and how people lived. We then decided to create our own London streets with children taking on different roles. We had bakers, a fishmonger, some beggars and some shoe shiners. We even had others sweeping the streets and some farmers delivering hay on their horse and cart! The classroom was buzzing and the children were very animated whilst acting out their roles – this made writing about the differences between the streets of London in 1666 and the present day more interesting.
Stanmore Post - 27th September 2019
Dear Parents,
This week we have appointed our new House Captains for our four houses. Congratulations!
The House Captains were appointed after an application process. As part of the application process, children in Year 6 were asked to explain what our Keys for Success and the school values: Belonging Excellence Support and Trust mean to them and how they demonstrate them in their daily life at school.
Belonging to a house team, striving for excellence through various competitions, supporting your house team and trusting your team members to do their best for the house is a very real way of bringing our school values to life. The vast majority of our children demonstrate the school values and the keys for success on a daily basis, which made selecting only 8 house captains quite challenging, as you can imagine. Thank you to all of Year 6 who applied and were unsuccessful, there will be other opportunities.
We are continuing to work on our school improvement plan. There is an opportunity for parents to find out more about the key areas for improvement at a meeting on 15.10.19. This event is on the School Calendar. https://www.stanmore.hants.sch.uk/our-school-calendar
One area that we have started to improve is the school building and grounds. Find out more about this at https:// www.stanmore.hants.sch.uk/news/2019/9/27/improving-our-environment-inside-and-out
Best wishes
Sharon Taylor
Birch decide who the body belongs to
Year 3 / 4 have had another exciting week. The children concluded that Raedwald, the ruler of the East Angles, was the person who was buried with the ship at Sutton Hoo, from the clues they had investigated.
In music we are continuing to enjoy working on the Hall of the Mountain King and have started to compose our own pieces using a variety of instruments.
In science, the children enjoyed learning about bones and have made some amazing skeletons.
After watching a short film, Rukus, the children have loved writing newspaper reports about two outlaws, Frank and Jesse, who steal a ruby from a speeding train in the Arizona Desert.
Improving our environment - inside and out
We are lucky to have a school with so much space both inside and out. Recently we started our project to make the most of this asset for everyone - making the building and grounds the BEST that they can be.
Just before the summer holidays Hampshire County Council completed the sale of the old dining room land (just outside the school grounds near the railway line). We are working with Hampshire on how we can use the proceeds from that sale to help make some significant improvements to the school building. We will share more information as these plans start to come together, but it will take a little bit of time before things start to move on this.
In the meantime, we are not hanging around. With the help of the Friends of Stanmore, Mr Foard our new site manager and many others we are making a difference. Here are some of the things we have been doing or are in our plan.
We have cleared the outdoor classroom area and we now have four raised beds ready to be adopted by each of our school Houses. They will compete in a Stanmore in Bloom competition later in the year.
If you are able to help your child’s House become the clear winner, then we need your green fingers, your expert advice, imagination and a bit of time. The Friends of Stanmore will be in touch with more details in the coming weeks.
Moving onto the field. In this area we will be installing three Willow Tee Pees paid for by the Friends of Stanmore. This will give a lovely place for the children to play and explore.
Talking of the back field, we have been using this great space for both playtime and lunchtime since the beginning of term.
We’re currently working through how we enable the children to use the field in through the winter. We are thinking about wellies and wet weather trousers at the moment, but we’ll communicate more on this shortly.
We’ve repaired the fencing and the steps around the play equipment and the children are now enjoying the use of the this during their playtime and lunchtimes. There is plenty of scope to help them use up some excess energy.
The area around the pond has been cleared and the children have been studying some of the wildlife we share our environment with in lessons recently.
We have engaged a contractor to come to site during the October half term to give the greenery a good haircut and help us to get some the bushes around the school back under control.
We haven’t stopped with the outside though. During the summer we moved the Stanmore Library and the Ready to Learn inside the main school building. The old library space in the quad is now an outside classroom which is being used daily for intervention.
