May 2019

Now the lovely summer months are here we’ll be making sure that the children have plenty of opportunities to learn outside and enjoy the warm weather. Please make sure that your child has a suitable sun hat and sun glasses and make sure that suitable sun cream is applied before school. We

will make sure that children have plenty to drink during the school day.

Congratulations to Miss Lewis and the Boys football team who have had their most successful season in the Fit4Schools Premier League. They’ve managed to collect 35 points and scored 62 goals over their 16 league games.

We can’t wait to see how the team will perform in the play offs. Good luck to our wonderful team of boys who really push their limits and make us very proud.

We’ve got lots of sports events and competitions taking place in the next few weeks as our children compete against schools from across the West Midlands.

Next week we’ll be taking teams from Year 5 and Year 6 to compete in the Rounders at Ninestiles Academy in Acocks Green and Tag Rugby at Birmingham Exiles in Solihull.

Our girls football team are also in action at Castle Vale Stadium on the 22 May as they play their final games of the season against: Hillstone, Timberley and St Matthews. They require only 4 points from their games to win their league. Parents are welcome to go along and support. Our team games start from 4pm .

In June, we’ll be competing in the Cricket finals in Sheldon, Athletics at Ninestiles Academy and Netball Finals at the Nechells Wellbeing Centre.

Keep an eye out for the latest sports news by checking all of the social media platforms, the school website and our noticeboards in both KS1 and KS2 playgrounds.

Tests, tests and more tests!

It’s been a really busy week for our Year 6 children this week as they have all been sitting their SATS tests. These are National tests which all Year 6 children across England have to sit. They measure the amount of progress individual children make from Key Stage 1 and also help compare Lea Forest’s performance to other similar schools nationally. The tests started on Monday with Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar tests. Tuesday was reading and then Wednesday and Thursday were Mathematic tests.

We are extremely proud with how sensibly and mature the children applied themselves and now nervously await the results which should be with us in July. A HUGE thank you to the Y6 team for preparing the children so well - including extra revision classes and breakfast club. Fingers crossed for our best results ever!

As tests come to an end for our Y6 children, they are just beginning for Year 2. They have started their SATS today and will continue through to next week. Miss Jackson and Miss Collis have done a great job preparing both classes and we are very confident that they’ll be remarkable and of course do their best.

Mrs Law

Mrs Law will be away from school from Friday 24 May until the end of the summer term as she needs to undergo some surgery and time to recover afterwards. In Mrs Law’s absence, Ms Wale (AHT) will oversee any Special Needs concerns whilst continuing with her teaching commitments. Mr Wills and Mrs Tarrant will continue to support children and families as they do currently and advise on any Safeguarding or Child Protection concerns. We wish Mrs Law a speedy recovery and will see her back in school at the beginning of the new term in September.

Thanks for joining us for another absolutely packed week. Join us again next week as we approach half term (Whitsun week) just after 4 weeks back in school. We can then look forward to the long stretch to the end of the year. This last part of the year is the busiest of all with: new classes announced, transition days, reports, sports day and end of year celebrations. Keep an eye out for upcoming events as the calendar is filling up quickly. You can find out information from: Class Dojo, Facebook, Twitter and from our school website. We also advertise information in the noticeboards in the KS1 and KS2 playgrounds.

Congratulations

We are very were pleased to hear that Miss Freeman’s baby boy arrived this week.

We’d like to send our congratulations to Miss Freeman and can’t wait to meet the new addition to her family.

This week

It’s been another incredibly quick week that has passed - blink and you’ve missed it! These Bank Holiday weekends make the school week short, which means we have so many activities and events to fit into 4 days rather than the usual 5 days of school. It’s been a great start to the summer term, excluding the weather - that’s been pretty awful.

I would like to start by saying a huge thanks to the parents/carers than joined myself and Miss Hadfield on Tuesday morning for the RSE (Relationships and Sex Education) consultation. This was an opportunity to share our programme of work with parents/carers and to gather ideas and thoughts. There were some really useful conversations which will help us to move forward, make tweaks and further improvements so that we are able to deliver a relevant RSE curriculum to the children of Lea Forest. I was also pleased with the number of parents that attended - an all time record!

Miss Evans, our reading lead in school, organised a Roald Dahl day on Tuesday. All children in Nursery to Year 5 all explored a different story written by Roald Dahl, carrying out a number of activities such as: drama, art and even cookery! Check out the wonderful displays created by Y1 and Y2 in our KS1 hall. This is all part of our on going mission to expose the children to as many different authors as we can, which will hopefully allow children to be able to select their favourite authors and choose a range of books written by that author from our fabulous library. We will be selecting a different author each month and next up is Julia Donaldson.

On Wednesday morning I met with our REMARKABLE PCAB. The majority of the meeting was spent discussing the upcoming SUMMER FAMILY FUN DAY. This will take place on FRIDAY 12th JULY, so save the date! So far this year, we have managed to raise over £5,000 - AMAZING!

There’s LOTS more information on page 2 about events from this week, but I would like to give a special mention to Y5. I always get to hear about how well behaved our children are on school trips and on Thursday, I was lucky enough to accompany Y5 on their trip to Stratford Upon Avon and got to witness first-hand just how exemplary our children are. They all made me so proud!

Next week

Next week is our Y6 SATs week...

Our children have worked exceptionally hard in the run up to these tests and we know they will all do their best.

I’m sure you’ll all join me in wishing our Yr6 ‘GOOD LUCK’.

Mr Clarke

Mon 13 May Y6 SATS Week Starts

Thu 16 May Spartacus’ Burger Bar themed lunch

Fri 17 May Y2 SATs Start

Mental health parent workshop (9am)

Y6 B’ham Airport afternoon (at school)

Mon 20 May Y2 SATs continue (All Week)

Fri 24 May Pupil of the half term awards (2:15pm)

Remarkable lives launch (KS2 - 9am)

Break up for Half Term Holiday

Mon 27 May Half Term Holiday - School Closed

Mon 3 Jun School Re-opens (from 8am)

Mon 3 Jun Chill and Chat morning for parents

Y1 Maths activity workshop

Our shipmates in Y2 had a great day on Wednesday 8 May when Pirate Ron arrived in school for a day of Pirate themed fun, drama and crafts.

Our children from 2MC and 2SJ had the opportunity to learn all about Pirates, participate in a Pirate puppet show and create their own Pirate puppet as well!

“Pirate Ron was really funny and I really enjoyed making my Pirate Puppet. It was a REMARKABLE day.”

We are very proud of the effort being made by our Year 6 pupils as they prepare for their SATs papers and we would like to thank you for the support that you are giving your child with their homework and ensuring they are in school for every lesson.

As you know, SATs week begins on Monday 13 May. We have included details below. It is imperative that children are in school every day for these tests.

Monday 13 May - English grammar, punctuation and spelling test

Tuesday 14 May - English reading test

Wednesday 15 May - Mathematics Arithmetic and

Mathematics Reasoning test

Thursday 16 May - Mathematics Reasoning test

To enable the children to come into school and feel relaxed, we will be running a SATs Breakfast Club

each morning from 8:30am. This will include food and a warm-up session to relax the children.

As part of our Mode Shift Stars award, we participated in a transport

survey this week that asks all of our children how they travel to school. Our aim over the next 12 months is to make Lea Forest ‘greener’ by reducing the number of car journeys our community makes to help reduce pollution and improve road safety around our site.

We will publish the results in next weeks newsletter.

We will be taking part in National Numeracy Day on Wednesday 15 May. All Year Groups (apart from Year 6) can come into school wearing clothes which have numbers on to promote National Numeracy Day. The children will be participating in different maths activities with a focus on maths in everyday lives.

A huge congratulations to Keeley and Millie who represented their football team (SBJ) in Bognor Regis for the ESF tournament last weekend. They came 3rd in the league overall on top of an already highly successful season.