1. Teamwork makes the Dreamwork!

2. Rowan's adventures...

3. Hazel's exploits...

4. Oak's endeavours...

5. Active Assembly

6. October Half Term Sports Clubs

7. Early Help Club (Breakfast and After School)

8. Pre-school Forest School sessions

9. Free School Meals

10. Risk Assessment Addition

11. Raring To Go

12. Help Active Suffolk shape their Children & Young People offer!

13. Playground Covid-19 etiquette

14. Flu vaccination - all pupils

15. School Improvement Activity

16. Safeguarding

Good afternoon everyone,

It feels as if my fingers have just left my keyboard (from the last time)...oh how time flies when you're having fun!

It's been a very active week this week. Rowan and Mr Hurkett have been extremely busy developing their team working skills by exploring and maintaining the forest school's area. As each week passes, new ideas and new learning arise in the forest. It's exciting to see it evolve in front of our eyes...literally! Check out our new forest friends!

Oak Class have also been contributing towards the evolution of outdoor learning by designing ideas for an outdoor learning provision. The 'Green Room' has thus been born as we look to convert the outdoor portacabin. Watch this space!!!

Please do enjoy perusing through this week's snapshot activities.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Mr Francksen

What a group of team-working heroes! Rowan show their pride in cleaning up the entire forest school area on their own. Absolutely amazing. They are now ready to help take our forest to another level.

The children have completed some lovely work this week and they’ve been very creative! After reading some autumn poems the children then had a go at writing and rehearsing their own for our music lesson. In Art, we are studying Van Gogh and after spending the last few weeks researching the artist and exploring the different types of lines and colours he uses we finally had a go at recreating The Starry Night using oil pastels. In PSHE we are looking at our learning behaviour cog ‘Aspirational’ and decided upon 3 goals for the year. We discussed what we will need to do in order to achieve these and we will have to see how we get on with these at the end of the academic year. After lots of hard work on Little Red Riding Hood the children will begin planning their independent write next week. I can’t wait to read these and see them apply all the techniques of writing that we have explored recently!

This week in Oak we have read Neil Gaiman's adaptation of Hansel and Gretel. The pupils have been using drama to explore the thoughts and feelings of the characters in this atmospheric story. In maths, the class have been practicing their addition and subtraction skills and learning about how to use inverse operations to solve mathematical problems. We have also set up a wildlife camera in the forest schools area. In science, we have looked through the results to find out more about the behaviour of our local wildlife.

I am pleased to confirm a FREE half-term sports provision, which will last for 3 days, numbers permitting. These clubs will be funded by the school, however, WE DO NEED YOU TO COMMIT to the club if you confirm. If your child is booked in and they don't turn up, we will have to charge you, for which the cost of a half-day is £7 and £12.50 for a full day. By completing this form you are accepting the terms described.

Club activities will include target games (archery, tri-golf), games (dodgeball, capture the flag, football), and striking and fielding (handball, rounders).

Please complete all the sections so we can ensure your child's place is guaranteed. Unless we contact you further, please take the completion of this form as having secured a place.

Please complete the Google Form at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf_PNJ5CvxpSou1HyeNnu3uJyqTOJZVQUnKXNefPsyo7u1Z3A/viewform?usp=sf_link

We will be putting the next half term’s Early Help Club sessions onto Arbor in the next few days and these will then go live for you to book from 9am on Saturday 24th October. We’ve found that Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays have been particularly popular so if you need a place on those days we’d advise you to book as soon as you can. If you then find that you don’t need a place, please let the office staff know at the earliest opportunity.

As always, please ensure your child has a healthy snack.

Please note that Mondays will now be Target Games and Tuesdays will be Basketball.

Thank you to all who’ve booked so far. We will be in touch with you soon by email to confirm the session you have been allocated and to give further details. We’ve been in touch with local preschools and nurseries but please do promote these sessions via your own social media if you can.

Autumn term 2020 taster

We’d like to remind all families that you may be eligible for Free School Meals. We actively encourage you to apply for income-based Free School Meals (FSM) if you think you are eligible, even if your child is in YR/Y1/Y2 and in receipt of Universal Infant Free School Meals. This is because the school will benefit from a Pupil Premium payment and you will continue to receive Free School Meals until they leave primary school. To check if your child is eligible, see Suffolk County Council guidance and apply online (https://bit.ly/SuffFSM) for an immediate response, or call 0345 606 6067 for advice.

Your child will get free school meals if you receive any of the following:

• Income Support

• Income-based Job Seeker's Allowance

• Income-related Employment and Support Allowance

• Guarantee element of State Pension Credit

• Child Tax Credit but no element of Working Tax Credit and have an annual income (as assessed by HM Revenues & Customs) that does not exceed £16,190

• If you are supported under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999

• Working Tax Credit during the four-week period immediately after your employment finishes or after you start to work fewer hours per week

• Universal Credit (provided you have an annual net earned income of no more than £7,400 (£616.67 per month), as assessed by earnings from up to three of your most recent assessment periods).

We have added the following to Section 17 of our Risk Assessment, in order that we can allow prospective families to safely visit the school prior to them applying for their child’s place in Reception for September 2021.

• Where possible, visitors (e.g. prospective families) will be asked to visit after 3pm. Visits/meetings will take place outdoors as far as possible. Where visitors need to come into school they will be asked to follow our hygiene protocol and to wear a face covering. Staff will offer to wear a face covering when meeting visitors indoors. If toilets are used by any contractor/visitor, cleaning will take place before any members of our school community use them again.

Please follow the link (below) for the Raring2go! Autumn / Winter Magazine.

The magazine is full of ideas for the half term holidays, featuring holiday camps, days outs and Autumn activities.

Active Suffolk have been in touch asking us to promote a survey they are asking all young people in Suffolk (or their parents/carers) to take part in.

“At Active Suffolk we are currently working to revise our offer to Children and Young People across the county by revising our five year plan. As part of this work, we have teamed up with Healthwatch Suffolk to carry out some research. Rather than making the decisions ourselves, we are working with Healthwatch Suffolk to gather insight from children and young people from school years, year 1 – 11.

The survey which has been created as part of this project is to be completed by parents/ carers of children from year 1 – 2 and pupils in year 3 – 11 in Suffolk or the young people themselves. The survey will take 5-10 minutes to complete and all responses are anonymous and not linked to an individual’s contact details or name in any way.

We’d like to remind you that our Risk Assessment (Section 22) states:

• One parent to do drop off;

• A one-way system will be put in place for parents, laminated card on gates; enter via small pedestrian gate, leave via the larger gate;

• Parents should drop off at the school gate;

• Parents/carers are to maintain a 2m distance (where possible) between them and others, using a common-sense approach, at pick-up time.

If you missed the deadline to register for a flu vaccination at school, please contact the School Immunisation Team on 0300 555 5055 or email ccs-tr.suffolkimmsteam@nhs.net for further information about how to access a flu vaccination.

1. To implement high-quality numeracy across the school - I am delighted to announce that we are beginning the first year of a 4-year journey with the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM) to develop the vital skills and practices to build a sustainable, mastery approach to mathematics teaching and learning.

We told you last week about the Speak Out Stay Safe programme. The NSPCC kindly offers this programme free-of-charge to schools but they welcome donations for their work. If you are able and willing to contribute, please make a donation to the NSPCC here.