Introduction
What a half term we have had, I can't believe that we are fast approaching the end of the year! As usual, there has been a lot going on here at Holme. Our Year 6 children shone last week as they tackled their SATs. They gave each assessment their all and their humour and positivity kept everyone smiling. They embody what we all are at Holme, and are so proud of all they have achieved! The Year 2's are currently working through their SATs tests and know they will just be as determined and do us proud. Please keep on reading to find out what we have been up to and what to expect over the coming weeks.
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September 2023 New Starters
Following on from our April newsletter, both Mr Bond and Miss Wood as the current class teacher, are planning our new starter meeting and transition sessions. We will give further details to new starter parents next week with what to expect over the coming half term and September. We are delighted to have been over subscribed this year and may have further children joining the cohort, beyond our new starter meeting and transition days. Class 1 has received a transformation over the year and we will be excited to share more with you as we approach the end of the school year.
We will also be looking to make visits to new starter children in their current settings. Miss Wood as the current class teacher will be in touch with the relevant settings and arrange a convenient time. In the meantime, Miss Wood is available if any new starter parents would like to contact her regarding their child starting in September.
Staffing
As you are aware, staffing changes were made in January. These will continue into the last half term of the year.
Miss Wood will continue to teach Class 1 with the support of Mrs Cieciala.
Mrs Haley will continue to be the full-time Class 2 teacher with Mrs Guest teaching three days per week on a Wednesday to Friday with a focus on Year 6. Miss Newton will also continue her teaching placement in Class 2 until the 9th June. From next week I will be teaching Year 4 Maths for one morning per week.
If there are any further changes to the staffing structure during the half term, I will update parents and carers through Weduc. I would like to thank you once again for your support with these changes and appreciate your support as we approach the end of the school year.
School Website
As the year progresses, we will be updating our school website. This is the first port of call if you need any information about school. Most recently some parents and carers have asked questions about where they can find information. I thought it would be useful to signpost the most common pages that might be helpful (and to possibly bookmark for the future):
- Calendar - Our calendar will soon be updated on Weduc by Miss Talbot and is already updated on our school website. It can be found here.
- Class Curriculum Information - Teachers update their Class pages at least once a term with important updates as to what children are learning and ways in which parents and carers can support at home. You can access the Class 1 and Class 2 pages. Updates should be made to the class pages by the middle of next week.
- Curriculum Information - We are currently in the process of updating our school curriculum. You can find more information here. Please use the links at the side or the 'Curriculum' drop down menu to see specific pages.
- Policies - We are currently in the process of updating our school policies. If you see a little red page with the Adobe symbol in it, this means the policy has recently been updated. You can find our policies page here. These will continue to be updated as the year progresses.
- E-Safety - During our recent Safeguarding parent survey it was brought to our attention that we may not publicise e-safety sufficiently within school. We have created a dedicated page with information for parents and carers. It can be found here. We have also produced a page with questions and answers that parents and carers may find useful. This can be found here.
- Parent Information - Miss Talbot and Miss Devlin are currently updating our parent information pages. Please keep an eye here as updates will be coming over the Summer Term. Please use the links at the side of the 'Parent Information' drop down menu to see specific pages.
Coffee Morning
We held our half termly coffee session on a morning of last half term, which attracted a few more parents than usual. In light of this, we will be holding our next coffee morning session on Friday 14th July at 9:00am to 9:45am. These are useful sessions where you are able to meet Mr Bond and Mrs Stephenson, Chair of Governors, to discuss positives about the school and also areas where we could potentially improve. Parental feedback is very important to us and we hope you will be able to make this session.
Weduc
We have made a start on using Weduc as part of our parental communication platform. We will be increasingly sending messages, placing notices and letters to complete on here rather than in paper form or by the traditional e-mail, so do urge parents to download the app if you haven't already. If you would like further information or support using Weduc, please contact Miss Talbot in the office who will be more than happy to help.
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 Values' award 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. Here are our April and May award winners, who have shown aspiration, creativity, independence and resilience. Great work! We can't wait to see more children actively showing our Shine Bright Values.
Celebration Assembly
It's been great to see our children continue to be awarded for Honour of Holme, Remarkable Writer, Regal Reader and Maths Mogul. We've also added our Shine Bright Values award and most recently our Spelling Shed award. Here are some of our award winners from April and May.
Please remember to keep those pictures of what your child is up to outside of school coming in for our Shine Bright Board. It doesn't have to be a sport, it can be anything they're proud of achieving. We do ask that you send these to shinebright@holmejischool.co.uk. If pictures are sent to Mr Bond or the Office e-mail, there is no guarantee they will make it to the board. When we receive them, they will be printed and placed onto our board, being celebrated in the next Celebration Assembly.
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.
Attendance Matters
At Holme Junior & Infant School, we fully recognise the impact of good attendance and punctuality on the success and development of young people both socially and academically.
Research has proved that any young person with attendance under 95% is at risk of achieving a grade lower in every subject by the time they leave school. We expect all children to attend school regularly.
We do understand that children become ill and there are guidelines around how long a child should be absent for. We do take these guidelines onboard. We do ask that parents consider the period of absence beyond the guidelines as this may have a negative impact on the child missing further learning.
We take attendance seriously at Holme and follow our school procedure in-line with our policy that has been ratified by the governing body and also follows national guidelines. You can take a look at our policy here for further information and clarification. If you are ever unsure, please contact the school office in the first instance who will happily support and advise.
I would like to thank parents and carers for taking these messages onboard as our persistent absentee percentage has not been this low for a long while!
April Attendance Figures
Whole School Attendance: 96.6%
- Class 1: 99.2%
- Class 2: 95%
Our target as a whole school is 97% and we were extremely close. Well done to Class 1 who managed to attend above our target.
Miss Talbot's Reminders
- Thank you for all the completed forms we have received via Weduc for trips, feedback & consents. We are still awaiting some to come back so please can I ask that these are completed as soon as possible so that we can plan accordingly. If you would rather have this in paper form then just let me know and I can have one sent home instead.
- We have Mini Professors club finishes next Wednesday 24th May. The children seem to have really enjoyed it For those who have put their child's name down for this club, please can this be paid for on Parentpay as soon as possible.
- After- school clubs after the half term break will be Tennis on a Monday and Athletics on a Wednesday. There is no charge for these clubs and although I have a list of those wanting to attend, there is still time to add more.
- Lego Club - unfortunately Mr Pullan who hosts Lego club has had to defer the club until the Autumn term.
- We have lots of lost property items from Class 1 cloakroom that haven't been claimed yet. I will be setting up a little table one morning with these items on so please can you take a look to see if any of the items belong to your child.
- LUNCH PAYMENTS - Unfortunately I am having to send many emails to remind families about keeping on top of lunch payments. We are finding large deficits most weeks for lunches that have gone into arrears of over £20+. To keep a smooth running of the schools finances please can we ask that you look at payments so ensure lunch payments are up to date.
- Musica - If any Parents/Carers are interested in enquiring about vocal/instrumental tuition in our School then please visit Musica. https://www.musicakirklees.org/music-tuition/application-form
- The Strictly Pennine Dance DVD's arrived this week and were put in bags to bring home. We hope you have received them and enjoy watching the children's fantastic performance.
As you will have noticed the celebration of our school through Facebook shows just how committed we are at Holme to show the rounded education our children experience. Teachers will be updating our community at least once per week as to what is going on in their class and we will celebrate achievements from our week celebration assembly. I will also be updating Facebook with any further posts that I feel will support our school community. Give us a follow and a like and share with your friends far and wide!
Class 1 Lambing
Class 1 had the chance to visit Sarah Noble's farm in the village. They got to hold the lambs, ask questions about the lambing process and experience farm life. Both Mrs Haley and Miss Talbot were very impressed with the children's knowledge and positive behaviour, which exudes our new shine bright values here at Holme. We would like to thank Sarah for the opportunity and look forward to other children at Holme having the experience in the future.
Northorpe Hall Resilience Parents Workshop
We would like to thank parents and carers who attended the Resilience workshop we hosted by Dawn Kershaw from Northorpe Hall. Staff had a similar session as part of their staff meeting afterwards and all found it very informative. We would recommend these sessions as it's a great opportunity to get together with other parents and carers and learn more about what challenges can be faced with young children. Mrs Guest is currently our Wellbeing Lead and I know is keen to organise more workshops in the future. If there is anything specific you feel might be helpful as a parent, please do get in touch with Mrs Guest and we can explore these opportunities.
Open Book Evening
We would like to remind parents and carers about our last Open Book Evening of the year. This will be on Wednesday 24th May from 3:15pm - 4:30pm. Parents and carers can attend at any point during these times, with the opportunity to look through exercise books and speak to class teachers on an informal basis. Children are also welcome to attend and talk through the work they have been completing. Take the chance to see your child's fantastic work!
Flash Friday's
During the second half of the summer term, we will be trialling our 'Flash Friday's'. This is an opportunity for parents and carers to come into school on a Friday at drop off time between 8:45am and 9:00am to explore the classroom and see what their child has been up to during the week and discuss their work. This will be optional and dependent on it's success will determine how we conduct either Open Book Evening's or Flash Friday type events next year.
Music Update
Our musical talents continue to grow here at Holme. Some of our children attended and performed in the Holmfirth Folk Festival and we're proud that our Key Stage 2 children who have weekly violin lessons have been selected as Music for Youth finalists to perform in July at Birmingham Symphony Hall. Keep an eye out on future newsletters to see how we performed!
Enterprise Challenge
We were lucky to have a visit from Paul at the Primary School Enterprise Challenge on Tuesday 16th May. He worked throughout the day with children from Year 2 to Year 6 who had the task of creating a brand new outdoor learning environment. The children had to inspire and engage other children in school to have as much fun as possible creating, learning and playing. They had timber tokens to spend and had to design an enchanted forest area with four key areas which included: den building, a messy area, create comforts and a tree house. All the children worked extremely hard, but there could only be one winner. We would like to congratulate the Muddy Monkeys who pitched to perfection with their judges: Mr Bond, Miss Wood and Miss Talbot. We also managed to sneak another team into the final and would also like to congratulate the Squirrel Explorers. These teams will attend the final against other schools on 21st June at the Metrodome in Barnsley to hopefully have an area created for the children in our school grounds.
We would also like to thank Friends of Holme School for funding this project and encouraging aspiring entrepreneurs of the future.
King Charles III Coronation
You may have noticed that we had some bunting and our own little celebration for King Charles III's Coronation. The weather wasn't good to us, but still managed to celebrate inside with an afternoon tea style lunch. Shirley from The Fleece also supplied each child with a goody bag for the celebration. We would like to thank everybody involved in supporting us to celebrate this special occasion and we hope it's another memorable piece of the Holme School journey.
Outdoor Learning
The children have enjoyed their Forest School sessions with Miss Wood this half term, especially in the nicer weather. Unfortunately, the session for Class 2 on 25th May has been cancelled. Miss Wood has promised to make it up to the Class 2 children next half term!
There will be no Forest School sessions next half term as we have a lot of other exciting things happening, but they will return in the autumn.
Amazon Wishlist
We are in the process of creating an Amazon Wishlist. As a small school we do value donations and support with resources for our children. Please take a look at our list and see if there is anything you would like to purchase for the school. There is no obligation, and if you would like to be anonymous, we're also fine with that! We guarantee that everything on the list will support with the children's education directly in school.
Here is the link if you'd like to have a nosey. We will start adding items this half term. Please feel free to check regularly as we will be adding items at regular intervals: https://amzn.eu/4YvautA
Cost of Living Crisis
As we are living through these very difficult times with the cost of everything rising at an alarming rate, if you need any support either financially or practically, please do speak to a member of staff, as there are many agencies and charities that have a range of offers to support families through these times and we can confidently signpost you to the most appropriate.
Dates for the Diary
As always, if you wish to speak to us about your child, please do not hesitate to talk to Miss Wood in Class 1 and Mrs Guest or Mrs Haley in Class 2 in the first instance. We will endeavour to help in any way we can.
Safeguarding
Holme Junior & Infant School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and expects all staff, volunteers and parents to share this commitment.
We have safeguarding policies and procedures in place that contribute to our safeguarding commitment, including our child protection and safeguarding policy which can be viewed in the policies section of our school website. Our safeguarding policies and procedures seek to ensure that every child, regardless of their age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation, has a right to equal protection from harm.
Sometimes we may need to share information and work in partnership with other agencies when there are concerns about a child’s welfare. We will ensure that our concerns about a pupil are discussed with the child’s parents/carers first, unless we have reason to believe that such a move would be contrary to the child’s welfare.
We actively support the Government’s Prevent Agenda: to challenge ideology that supports terrorism and those who promote it, protect vulnerable individuals from being drawn into terrorism, and raise awareness of radicalisation risk.
Our Acting Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) is Mr D Bond (Headteacher).
Our Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead (DDSL) is Miss B Wood (Acting Assistant Headteacher).
Our Safeguarding Governor is Mrs M Thomas.
If you have any safeguarding concerns at all, please do not hesitate to get in touch with either Mr Bond or Miss Wood.
Our school website also has further information around safeguarding and e-safety, which will be updated at regular intervals.