December 2018

On behalf of all the staff at Lea Forest, we would like to thank you for all of your kind words, cards and presents. They are much appreciated. On a more personal note, I would like to thank you all for helping me settle into my first term as head teacher. It has been a busy term, but I have loved every minute. In the new year, I will be sharing our new REMARKABLE LIVES vision and values. For now, I would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy new year from all of us at Lea Forest.

Improvements have been shown in attendance. We end the term with 95.06% overall. This is below our 96% target, but better than the 94.19% this time last year. We will be holding another class attendance competition, starting in January 2019. More details will be sent out on our return on TUESDAY 8th JANUARY 2019.

I’m sure you’d agree that we were treated by four wonderful shows this week. Thank you for coming to watch your children. All of the performances were REMARKABLE with singing, acting, dancing and even the odd joke. It always amazes me how confident our children are. It really was a great way to finish the week and end the term.

On Monday this week, I had the pleasure of joining our school councillors on their visit to the Houses of Parliament in London, along with Mr Croxon, Miss Hadfield and Mrs Cowley. We all had such a wonderful day and learnt so much.

I was amazed by the children’s knowledge of politics. I’m sure some of our children would have loved the chance to ask Teresa May a few questions. Although they didn’t get to meet our PM, they were joined by our local MP, Liam Byrne who answered a lot of questions and gave an insight to the work he does.

Thank you so much for your support and generosity at this years Christmas Fayre and daily raffles. We managed to raise a REMARKABLE £1610.28. A special thank you to our staff and to our parent group volunteers who gave so much time and energy to help make our events so successful.

REMINDER: Children return to school on Tuesday 8 January 2019, where breakfast club will be open at 8:00am as usual.

Gates will open at 8:45 for all other children.

It is important that we start the new term with the highest attendance possible.

On behalf of Academies Enterprise Trust, we are consulting on our intention to increase the Pupil Admission Number (PAN) at Lea Forest Primary

Academy. The current number on role is 450 and it is proposed that it is to be increased to 480 by increasing our PAN by 30.

The reason for this change is due to the popularity, recent successes and demand of Lea Forest Primary Academy. The change will be implemented for the 2020-2021 admission year.

If you would like to respond as part of the consultation process on this proposal, then please send your comments to the Head Teacher at:

Lea Forest Primary Academy

Hurstcroft Road

Birmingham

B33 9RD

Alternatively, responses may be sent to the following e-mail address: contactus@leaforestacademy.org and clearly marked Admission Consultation Response.

On Thursday Mr Haw, Miss Shread and Mr Croxon accompanied members of our choir to the Evergreen Care Home in Yardley. The children performed a medley of Christmas songs to the residents and staff, leaving them feeling very festive and cheerful.

Our children from RGH and RBE had a fantastic time at Ash End Farm on Tuesday and got to meet a very special gentleman and a whole farmyard of animals. Our children got to feed some of the animals and met one of Santa’s reindeers too. A HUGE thank you to our volunteer helpers who accompanied them.

So far we’ve awarded 10 Pizza slices this week! Don’t forget that the challenge continues up until next Thursday. Mr Clarke will be awarding Spartacus’ special slices to every class that can achieve 100% attendance on any of our last days of term.

Every class has a special Pizza Poster to collect their 5 slices and any class that manages to collect all 5 slices will have a Pizza treat on the last Thursday of term.

Make sure you’re in school to help your class win.

We received a postcard this week from The Royal British Legion who thanked Lea Forest Primary Academy for raising £203.57. Without such support, the British Legion would not be able to continue their vital welfare and benevolent work.

Thank you to everyone at Lea Forest that supported in our collections.

Unfortunately, it’s been another week of colds and sickness and our attendance has taken a real hammering! I’m really disappointed to announce that our attendance for this week was an all time low of 91.55%. This has obviously lowered our overall attendance to date too, taking it below our 96% target. This means one thing: We all need to try a bit harder next week and when we return to school in January and aim to get our overall figure above 96% again as we were all doing so well. We will continue to award classes with the best attendance and in January we will also be presenting certificates to children who have an overall attendance of 96%+.

Here’s our top 4 classes of the week:

Joint 3rd place - 1HM and 6CF with 95.86% 2nd place - 2MC with 97% 1st place and this week’s winners - 4NN with 97.33%

As always at Lea Forest, it has been a fun-packed and exciting week. We have just one week of school left now before we break up for Christmas, but that is possibly the busiest week of all with performances running every morning from Monday to Thursday. Take a look on page 2 for details of these productions. I am lucky enough to have my office situated next to the main hall and have been host to all of the rehearsals taking place The singing is sounding beautiful and I know that the children are really excited to share their hard work with you. We started our week by hosting more visitors from another school - this time the Headteacher and Phase Leader from Hall Road Primary Academy in Hull. They were extremely impressed by everything at Lea Forest. They were particularly complimentary of the high standard of work produced by all of our children and the wonderful environments in which the staff have created to allow the children to learn.

On Monday, I also took Mr White and Miss Oliver over to Montgomery after school to deliver some training and to share some of the wonderful curriculum work. We left the staff from Montgomery and Percy Shurmer with a real buzz, they can’t wait to approach their curriculum lessons in a similar way to us. It is so advantageous working with so many different schools and sharing ideas to further strengthen the provision for our own children here at Lea Forest.

On Tuesday I was at an AET conference in London with Mrs Newbold and we were working with the English team to develop more effective ways of teaching writing. Whilst I was away from school, so were the children from RBE and RGH. Both classes visited Ash End Farm. There are more details and photographs about this trip on page 2, but it looked like they had a magical time. These experiences are so important for our children and really add value to their learning. Wednesday was Christmas Dinner day and the children really enjoyed their lunchtime.

The end of the week has been super busy with our EYFS Christmas activity evening. The parents and children had a wonderful time, producing some decorative Christmas crafts. It is so lovely to see so many of our parents engaging in these activities. A big thank you to those of you that attended and a huge thanks to the Early Years team and other members of staff that stayed being and helped organise this. We end this week with our Christmas Fayre which I’m sure will be a success!

Thank you to the PCAB and Parent Group in preparation for this. Look out on our website, twitter and Facebook for updates on how much we’ve raised.

We are thrilled with our girls football team and their fantastic start to the season. On Monday, they won the East Birmingham FA 5-a-Side shield with three dramatic wins at Sedgemere Road , Yardley. On Wednesday, the girls and Miss Lewis travelled to Castle Vale Stadium to earn 9 points in the Erdington and Saltley Schools FA League.

Results Girls 5-A-side:

LFP 6 vs Lyndon Green 0

LFP 6 vs St Bernadette 2

LFP 9 vs Timberley 0

ESDFA League:

LFP 4 vs Erdington Hall 0

LFP 0 vs Short Heath 1

LFP 2 vs Harper Bell 0

LFP 1 vs Brookfield 0

IMPORTANT REMINDER: Please let the office staff know when you have changed your mobile phone number or any other contact information so that we can contact you quickly in the event of an emergency.

Please ensure that you contact the school absence line on 0121 675 3984 which is manned from 8am to 4pm on the day of absence. Parents can also leave a message on the answerphone or send a text with your child’s name and the reason for absence to 07860041834. Please note: Failure to provide a reason will result in your child receiving an unauthorised absence mark.

We’re holding a competition for every class! Mr Clarke will be awarding Spartacus’ special slices to every class that can achieve 100% attendance on any of our last 9 days of term. Every class has been given a special Pizza Poster to collect their 5 slices and any class that manages to collect all 5 slices will have a Pizza treat on the last Thursday of term. Make sure you’re in school to help your class win.

We’ve completed our attendance focus fortnight and are thrilled to reveal that 299 children have managed to achieve our 100% target and have been entered into our prize draw. Ms Wale will be drawing the winners in Monday’s assembly!

Congratulations to our Christmas card competition winners in Yr3 and Yr4. Our judges selected: Zak (4WH). In Yr5 and Yr6 our judges chose: Hassnain’s (6NO) Tree-Rex design and Joshua’s (5MW) Silhouette design. Our final winner from Yr1 and Yr2 was Tyler (2SJ) with his fantastic festive scene.

We’d like to thank all of our parents and community members that have sent in donations for our Christmas Fayre. We’ve been overwhelmed with the generosity of our community and our PCAB members have worked incredibly hard over the last few weeks to sort out and create our hampers and tombola items.

Thank you for your continued support.

Mr Croxon will be supporting our Nursery parents with online applications this half term. Our next workshop will be on: Tuesday 11 December 2018 at 9:10am

Our whole school overall attendance this week was a DISAPPOINTING 93.10%. Please remember that our target is 96%. I do understand that there has been lots of sickness bugs going around (even for staff).

A huge congratulations to Millie and Keeley who had the wonderful opportunity to represent Erdington and Saltley Primary Schools’ FA District Football Team as flag bearers at Villa Park last week in the AVFC match against Nottingham Forest. As part of the Rainbow Laces Campaign. The girls have continued to have great success in football, both for the school team and at district level.

This week started the best possible way for me as I spent the morning teaching. I was in 1RW for the morning and it was great to see how much the children have already progressed in Year 1 since leaving Reception. The children are so independent and take so much pride in all they do. I also had the chance to join 1RW on their visit to our library where Mrs Clarke conducted such a wonderful storytelling session based around ’The Gruffalo’ by Julia Donaldson. The children had the opportunity to dress-up and act out the story. Mrs Clarke was also asking those important questions (who, what, where, when and why) about the story to check on the children’s understanding.

I also went along to support the girls’ football team in their finals night on Monday and couldn’t be more proud of their achievements! They were truly remarkable and managed to claim another shield for our trophy cabinet.

We have held two very successful non-uniform days this week and have been overwhelmed by the generous donations from everyone for our Christmas Fayre. Again, another BIG thank you to our PCAB members for sorting through all of the donations. Remember to save the date of the Christmas Fayre in your diaries: Friday 14 December. There will be posters and information shared throughout next week. I spent two days out of school this week, one day at a conference with Mr Taylor and another visiting and supporting another AET school. I really miss days spent away from Lea Forest and I’m always glad to get back. Mr Taylor and I have some interesting items from the conference that we will share with teachers and children when we return to school in January.

We are always looking for further ways to improve and provide the most remarkable experiences for the children during their time at Lea Forest. There has been lots of preparations for the last few weeks of school and everyone is getting into the Christmas spirit. Dates of our Christmas performances and other events on the run-up to Christmas can be found on page 2 of this newsletter. Attendance Our whole school overall attendance this week was a DISAPPOINTING 93.10%. Please remember that our target is 96%. I do understand that there has been lots of sickness bugs going around (even for staff).