Loading

Newsletter 1st April 2022

What a busy penultimate week of this term it has been in school. We've had sun, snow and an Easter service amongst some wonderful events in school.

We started the week by continuing our theme of leadership and discussing the importance of caring and nurturing everyone as we lead and make choices in our day to day life. Our choices can have an impact on so many people, we may be leading one day, but the next someone else may be leading and we would want to be treated fairly. There were some wonderful insightful conversations on this. We shared the story of Louis I, King of Sheep. Louis's increasingly elaborate fantasy of what comes with being a supreme ruler: the pleasures, the responsibilities, the capriciousness. "What's good for me is good for my people," thinks King Louis in this clever fable about the randomness and absurdity of power, but also its abuses, and the hidden dangers in a society built on conformity. We also discussed how the book showed bullying and the power games of the playground and what we should do to ensure we care and look after one another.

This week in our Smart Council discussion, after our value assembly, we posed this question:

And this is how we voted:

I met with the school council to discuss the results and they are already coming up with ideas of activities that we can build into the Summer term. Looking forward to seeing what their final choices are next week.

School life

What a week!

This week we started the week off by welcoming Ben and his Orchestra of Objects into school. He brought a vast array of in instruments. Orchestra Of Objects was a creative mix of fun music making and sculpture building. He brought his colourful, tuneful and visually exciting instruments for the children to explore and make music with. He will be back next week so the children can explore and create their own instruments. The children will then be tasked with creating their own designs to give to Ben as we have an instrument made for the school field to enhance our lunch and playtimes, designed by the children themselves!

The service in church on Tuesday was beautiful. the children sang amazingly well, filling the church with song. Thank you to all who came to support, it was wonderful to see so many of you there.

This week Reception have been talking about signs of spring, we had not included snow! The children have been painting and drawing daffodils and the class tadpoles have now hatched out and are swimming round the tank. We have been exploring 3d shapes and talking about their properties. The children have been making their own trolls and writing about the Three Billy Goats Gruff story.

Year 6 have been exploring portraiture in art this half term, looking closely at the work of LS Lowry and Picasso. Today they created some fantastic sculptures. We can’t wait to see them painted and finalised next week.

Phonics Session

What a joy to see so many of you in for a fantastic Phonics Session today. You got to see what a phonics session looked like, as well as take part in some training to support your child(ren) at home. Thank you for all those that came along today.

We will be holding a second session that Miss Rees will lead. Thank you for all your feedback from today.

Mrs Jennings

Where do I start with Mrs Jennings. Yesterday was her last day at Galley Hill as she retires from school to move on to her next adventure.

She has been there for so many of you, some of whom went to school as children here with Mrs Jennings and now your children are in school with her.

She has played such a large part of the life and history of Galley Hill.

She will be greatly missed and on behalf of all the staff at Galley Hill, we wish her all the very best for the future. We know she wont be a stranger and we hope to see her around whenever she isn't on holiday, pottering in the garden, spending some quality time with family and grandson, going for day trips, having lunch, being in a garden shop...

Thank you for all you have done and good luck for the next adventures!

Mrs Jennings also left a message to say, Thank you from the bottom of her heart!

STar/mathematician/writer/ Reader of the week

lets localise

We have a couple of Cardboard construction kits left which can be bought here:

https://www.letslocalise.co.uk/school-shop-details-view?eventId=10480

We will also be having our Silent disco on the last day of term. We are raising fund for our Now Press Play Headsets by holding a silent disco.

It will be for all children in school from Nursery to Year 6 during the school day.

Everyone will be able to take part, the tickets are donations which can be purchased here:

https://www.letslocalise.co.uk/school-shop-details-view?eventId=10490

We will end every term with a silent disco party. Now Press Play enriches the curriculum with immersive audio resources, further engaging the children in the curriculum through sound, story and movement.

We've only sold a few tickets, it would be great to sell a few more to support school.

Parents' evening

Parents Evening slots have been sent out and are almost all booked up. Links for these, which will be held via Teams, will be sent out on Monday morning. End of Term reports will also be sent out on 6th April

Thursday 7th April

We are looking forward to welcoming you into school on 7th April.

The session will start at 1:15pm, where you will be able to go to your child(ren)'s class and work along side them. You will have the opportunity to see what they have been up to so far this year and be in school.

At 2:50 the session will end, where we would like to invite you to the hall for a Parent E-Safety talk. This is something we would like to share further with you as there are more and more discussions in school around incidents of name calling and not kind words being used on devices at home, whether it be XBox live or apps on devices.

School Dinners

opal

golden welly awards

Pieces of wood - any lengths or sheet wood (or even old wooden tables!) would be greatly received.

Thank you for supporting us on our Play Journey.

covid

There is a change of guidance with regards to self isolation periods starting from today 1st April 2022

Isolation for those under 18 is 3 days, if testing positive and 5 days for over 18's

Further information can be found on the .gov website here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-sets-out-next-steps-for-living-with-covid

What's coming up in the school calendar

FOGH

The FoGH Easter Disco will take place on Thursday 7 April and Members of the FoGH team will be selling tickets at the school gate next week before and after school. Tickets are £3.

Key Stage 1 4.15-5.15pm

Key Stage 2 5 30-6.30pm

No need for parents to stay children will be supervised by Galley Hill and FoGH staff.

Ticket includes a drink and a biscuit, there will be a stall selling various glow sticks and Easter things prices around £2-3 per item.

E-safety and local news

Neurodevelopmental Pathway Survey 6 month review - Parents and Carers

The health team would like to hear from parents and carers whose children have been referred to the neurodevelopment pathway.

They would be grateful if you could complete the survey via the following link -

https://necs.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/neurodevelopment-pathway-service-6-month-review-parents

Finally

I am pleased to announce some new starters for after the Easter Holiday's.

Mr Forster, a Teaching Assistant and Ms Harwood, who will work part time as the school Business manager. We look forward to welcoming them into the Team when we start Summer term.

Friday 8th April we have Rock Kidz in. We will be rocking out all day and having some TTRockstar competitions as well. To celebrate the last day of term, it would be great to have everyone dress up as little rockers! We look forward to seeing you all rocked out next Friday!

Have a fantastic weekend and look forward to seeing you all for the final week of Spring term.

Mr Anthony McGeeney