Holme Junior & Infant School January 2023 Newsletter

You may have noticed just before Christmas and at the start of this term the provision for Class 1 has been different to usual. We have changed the classroom environment quite radically, ensuring the children have the experiences they may have missed due to COVID. Our school is unique compared to many as we have a class with children from Reception to Year 2 and this has to be managed skilfully in order for all the children to achieve the expectations they require at the end of each year. Miss Wood and Mrs Cieciala have introduced more focussed Continuous Provision into the classroom to support all the children with their learning. At this point as the changes take effect, I thought it would be useful to let parents know what this is and how it benefits our children.

What is continuous provision and how does it work?

Holme Junior & Infant School puts the wellbeing of the child at the forefront of everything we do. We understand that providing a stimulating environment in which children have the space and time to explore their own interests is essential to producing happy and engaged learners.

Children in Class 1, and in fact all through the school, have a natural desire to learn. They want to be active, autonomous and unique learners. They love to explore, take risks and problem solve as much as possible. The best way for children to to do this is through playing - they play to learn! As they learn new things through their play, synapses form in the brain and this is how a child makes progress.

Continuous Provision is the term we use to describe the opportunities within the classroom for play. These could be construction areas, roleplay areas, the outdoor area, areas for creativity, including junk modelling, or simply a space for quiet time. It is important that these areas remain the same so that if a child is thinking about creating a space ship for their Lego character to travel in they know where they can find the things they need. The areas will be enhanced based on current topics or interests of the class at that time. These enhancements ensure that the provision does not stagnate which can ultimately lead to disengagement.

A well managed and implemented Continuous Provision provides children with the opportunity to lead their own learning based upon their own interests. The adult's job is to observe these 'teachable moments' and enhance this learning by moving it forward in partnership with the child. At times, the children will be left to explore the Continuous Provision environment without an adult so it is always set up in a way which provides the child with the autonomy they crave.

Miss Wood and Mrs Cieciala have attended training delivered by experts in the arena to develop their own understanding of the benefits and effective management of Continuous Provision.

Miss Wood will be updating parents about the learning of each child in Class 1 through Seesaw. She sent out QR codes this week in order for parents to access their child's learning area from home. If you have any questions about the Class 1 provision and how it is changing to support your child, please do not hesitate to get in touch with her.

Curriculum

Our new website will start to feature what the children at Holme will be learning throughout their school journey. We have started to update subjects under the curriculum tab and also added key documents to the class pages. Our curriculum is in its infancy and at the moment we are focussing on this academic year. As it evolves we will add information for future years, currently following a 2 year curriculum cycle for Class 1 and a 4 year curriculum cycle for Class 2. This will ensure that the breadth of the curriculum is covered following the National Curriculum aims and objectives. We are making our curriculum broad and balanced with key drivers that we feel our children would benefit from in order to succeed. These focus on the environment, community, diversity, creativity and aspiration. You can find more information about these on the curriculum page on our new website, where we thread these drivers into our curriculum where possible. We are currently working on making our curriculum ambitious for all of our children in order for them to achieve the best they can.

Internal assessment systems and procedures in school are being adapted in order to make them more robust in order for every child to be tracked regularly to stay on track for their ability and where possible adding value above this to challenge them even further.

Our class pages under the class information section of the new website will host information as to what your child will be learning this term, how you can help and will include information around homework and expectations. We ask that you refer to this page in the first instance if there is anything you would like to query regarding the class before contacting school.

Shine Bright Values

From this term we are introducing our Shine Bright Values. Our shine bright values encompass what we believe our children should foster during their time with us to become well-rounded citizens in our community and the wider world. We cultivate our children to be independent, resilient, respectful, creative, adventurous and aspirational for their future. These will be featuring more regularly within school both through being rewarded as part of Class Dojo and having a 'Shine Bright Star' of the week. This will be one child in the entire school each week who has been recommended by all the staff in school, achieving one of our Shine Bright Values really well. We would like to encourage parents and our local community to support us with these values outside of school to ensure that the children understand the language and are able to show these life skills in order to thrive, not just now, but in the future.

Parents Coffee Afternoon

We wanted to remind parents of this half terms coffee afternoon. As part of our new safeguarding procedures, the outer gate is now locked at all times from 9:10am to 3:00pm. Please don't let this put you off... ring the buzzer to join us! Our next coffee session will be at 1:45pm on Friday 3rd February (subject to change) before our celebration assembly and community assembly with Reverend Nick Heaton. We hope you can join us!

Celebration Assembly

It's been great to see what the children have been up to during the Christmas break and into the New Year and our Shine Bright board has had a lot of additions during this time. Our first assembly of the year starts on Friday 13th January, with following dates in the key dates section at the end of this newsletter.

From the 20th January we will be adding three new awards to our current offering. I have been working closely with the staff in creating our Shine Bright Values and we will be rewarding one lucky young person with this award each week. We are also introducing the more consistent use of TT Rockstars and Spelling Shed at school and at home. We will be introducing rewards for the use of these platforms. More information will follow in celebration assemblies and the next newsletter.

FOHS will be supplying refreshments each week and we kindly ask that you make a donation as all funds go back to the children. All of our community are welcome to attend the assemblies outlined on the Key Dates section at the end of each newsletter.