June 2019

On Tuesday the Key Stage 2 Hall was filled with the rhythmic sound of thirty Djembe drums as our children from Years 3, 4 and 5 took part in an African drumming workshop.

Our children learnt how to play the Djembe and learnt how they are traditionally made.

“It was very loud and funny” Ruby

You can watch some of our practice sessions on Lea Forest : TV

Next week Mr Clarke, Mr Taylor, Mrs McCarthy, Mr Croxon , Mrs Shread and a team of our amazing children will be taking a very special journey to a #Remarkable event at the Derngate Theatre in Northampton.

We will be celebrating the Academies Enterprise Trust’s #RemarkableLives project and sharing some of our own amazing achievements with schools from across the country. Make sure that you follow the event on twitter, class dojo and Facebook.

We were delighted to learn that our Year 3 and Year 4 athletics team have qualified for the Birmingham School Games finals on the 28th of June at Birmingham Universities Selly Oak Sports Ground. They will also be joined by our Y5 and Y6 Kwik Cricket Team too.

Have you registered to support us through easyfundraising yet?

It’s a really simple way to raise money for us through your everyday online shopping with over 3,600 big name retailers including Amazon, Argos, John Lewis and ASOS, and it’s completely free!

Please ask family and friends to support us by clicking the link: https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/leaforestprimaryacademy/

Busy, Busy, Busy...

I would like to start by apologising if you haven’t seen me out and about on the gates this week, but I have been really busy welcoming a number of visitors into school all week. The days really do speed by at Lea Forest, but I guess it is true what they say and “Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself.”

We started the week with a maths activity workshop for our Year 3 children led by Mrs Green and Miss Ward. It is great to see so many adults attending these mornings and supporting the children’s learning. For anyone unable to attend these workshops, we have added all of the slides used on our parents section of the website. Click here to view: https://sites.google.com/aetinet.org/lea-forest-primary-academy/parents/workshops. Throughout the rest of the week we have welcomed teachers from other schools who have visited to see our outstanding quality of education, Firehorse Productions and Governors. Also this week, Miss Jones took her EAL group to the park and they had the best day!

We did it! - Unicef Right Respecting Award

I set Miss Hadfield and the Rights Respecting Schools working group a task at the start of this academic year to achieve the SILVER award. This was a tall order, but in true Lea Forest style, the whole school have worked together and really driven children’s rights. We were joined by an external assessor on Tuesday and she agreed that we had worked considerably hard and therefore awarded us the SILVER award. I would like to say a huge congratulations for a wonderful team effort. Never standing still, we now want GOLD, so will be working hard to achieve this over the next two years. You will soon see a lovely new banner appear outside of school to celebrate our achievement.

Governors Visit

We were joined by our Governors on Wednesday and they were absolutely blown away by the remarkable children and staff at Lea Forest. They carried out discussions with senior and middle leaders, book looks, learning walks, looked at data, listened to children read, spoke with some of the children about their learning and even talked to Victo-ria Shread about the wonderful work of our PCAB. These days are always thorough, but are necessary to ensure we continue to build on strengths and drive standards forward. I am delighted to tell you that Governors agreed with my judgement that our school is OUTSTANDING. We just need Ofsted to visit now to confirm this too. As always, Gov-ernors were highly complimentary of our children - they really are REMARKABLE.

We are off to London

We’ve had some amazing news that some of our Year 4 children (with the help of Mrs Newbold) have won a national poetry competition. The photograph shows their reaction when we told them that they were the winners.

Their prize is to attend a poetry event at The National Theatre in London. They are so excited for this event and I’m sure you’ll join me in congratulating them.

Please check page 2 for more information about events from this week and planned events. This is the final bit of the year now when it all gets very busy as we race to the finish line. Next week I will be writing to you all about transition and explaining the process this year. It’s nearly time to find out classes and teachers for next year! In the meantime, I have 500 reports to write, so on that note - have a great weekend. See you all again next week.

FIND YOUR REMARKABLE

The team from Fire Horse theatre company were back at Lea Forest this week helping us to learn the importance of being safe when using technology.

We’ve also got an exciting e-safety project in partnership with the National Online Safety centre coming to Lea Forest in September that we hope will help parents and carers build their own knowledge of e-safety and help keep our children safe when using their devices.

After such a successful Family Fun Day event last year, we will be holding another one this year on Friday 12 July 2019 from 2pm to 5pm

In preparation for this, we will be holding a number of non-uniform days in order to collect different items. On Friday 28 June we are asking children to bring in Toiletries (Shower gel, Bubble Baths, Soaps and perfumes) to help support our stalls.

Are you a magnificent magician, a soulful singer, a remarkable rapper?

It’s time to find your remarkable and show your amazing talents to the world. The auditions for Lea Forest’s Got Talent will be happening in the next few weeks and the final will be held on Thursday 18 July.

We can’t wait to see our children’s remarkable talents! Look out for more information next week.

On Wednesday Miss Lewis and Mr Carlton took a group of athletes from Year 3 and Year 4 to compete in the district finals at Ninestiles Academy in Acocks Green. The children took part in a range of different athletic challenges, including: sprinting, hurdles, javelin and long jumps.

Miss Lewis was very impressed with their sporting skills and team spirit!

On Thursday Mrs Terry and our amazing gardening club visited the Gardeners World show at the NEC. The children have been busy creating a truly remarkable Greece themed wheel barrow for the #TravelBarrow competition.

The children also got to watch the Gardeners Live show and explore the floral marquee and chat with expert gardeners about our vegetable allotments.

On Thursday evening Miss Lewis and our Yr5 and Yr6 footballers travelled to Castle Vale stadium to participate in the Erdington and Saltley league finals.

Our players played very well this season and we’re very pleased that we finished in 4th place out of all of the district schools that participate in our league.

We hope to be on the podium next season!

Finals Results:

Lea Forest 1 vs Hillstone 4

Lea Forest 1 vs Mapledeane 4

We are looking forward to welcoming the assessor for the Silver level of the UNICEF Rights Respecting Award next week. Miss Hadfield and our school council will be sharing some of the activities, lessons and events.

Watch out for updates about our award progress in the next newsletter and check out the Rights Respecting section of our website for updates about all of the amazing activities we do at Lea Forest.

It was nail-biting evening on the field last night when the football team played in the semi-finals play offs to reach the finals next week.

After a 0-0 first half score, Lea Forest managed to secure a goal in the second half, winning the match and securing a sport in next week’s final.

Look out for more information about the finals next week! Good luck!

Please help us to keep the traffic moving around the school and ensure that our children are safe by parking legally.

We are reminding all of our parents that they must not park on the yellow zig zag lines on Hurstcroft Road and Eddish Road or obstruct our neighbours driveways

Our friends from Shard End Police Station will be patrolling the local area in the coming weeks and monitoring the situation.