October 2019

Our attendance just keeps getting better and better! Thank you to everyone for making such a tremendous effort! This week’s attendance was: 96.43% Our year to date total stands at: 95.87% Here’s our top classes of the week:

1st - 4RW with 99.17% 2nd - 4ST with 99.05% 3rd - 4WH with 98.33% 4th - RCF with 97.67%

It’s been a great week at our amazing school and I am so proud of all that we achieve here at Lea Forest. The week started with a whole school assembly delivered by Mr White to introduce Black History Month. This was a great start to the week which sparked some interesting and relevant conversations. We are a very diverse school and this is a real strength. Throughout the month of October, classes will explore Black History in a little bit more detail and will be creating a double-paged spread in their theme books. It’s been a week of sports too and I was lucky enough to join our two basketball teams for their competition at Nechell’s Sports Centre on Monday. As always, our children represented our school remarkably and I was pleased to be able to cheer them on throughout the event. We managed to win our group, but unfortunately lost out in a close game in the finals against local rivals, Hillstone.

I have spent some of my week at conferences and Four Dwellings. The conference I attended was really insightful and I had the chance to share some of the wonderful work we are doing at Lea Forest. This sparked lots of interest and left lots of other teachers from other schools, far and wide, wanting to visit. We ended the week with a REMARKABLE celebration assembly, celebrating the successes of the week. This is always one of my favourite events in school each week. I’ve also received some lovely messages from parents via ClassDojo which have really put a smile on my face. As always, thank you for your continued support and dedication!

Please let the school office know if you change your contact details, home address or emergency contacts so that we can contact you quickly in the event of an emergency.

From Wednesday 9 October we will be opening our library to parents from 9am - 9:30am. -Come along and meet Mrs Clarke our school librarian -Get tips on choosing, sharing books and reading stories aloud with your child -Explore the range of picture books and story-telling resources we have in the library -Experience the joys of listening to a story

Parents of our current Year 6 children can apply online using the links below: Birmingham Residents: https://eadmissions.birmingham.gov.uk/prefs.php Solihull Residents: https://eservices.solihull.gov.uk/Enrol/

We are running weekly sessions on Monday at 9am in the library with Mr Croxon for any parents that need assistance completing their form.

I would like to start by saying WELL DONE! This week has been our best week in over 4 years for attendance. This week’s attendance for the whole school is a REMARKABLE: 97.67%

We had no classes below 95% in Y1-Y6. This is just amazing and I am so proud of your efforts. We are very close to reaching our 96% target and have caught up well after such a shaky start.

Our year to date total stands at: 95.76%

Here’s our top classes of the week:

1st - 3SH with 98.89% (winning golden time)

2nd - 5BP with 98.68%

3rd - RCF, 1HM and 6NW with 98.67%

4th - 4WH with 98.67%

Following another remarkable year at Lea Forest, our Trust (Academies Enterprise Trust) have asked us to support another primary school in Birmingham. The Lea Forest team have led significant improvements and we will now have the opportunity to share our expertise and experience beyond Lea Forest. I want to assure parents that I am not leaving Lea Forest, but I will be taking on the new role of Executive Headteacher across two schools, Lea Forest Primary Academy and Four Dwellings Primary Academy with effect from Friday 4 October 2019. I am sure you’ll share my pride in what we have collectively achieved at Lea Forest, that this has been recognised and that we are now able to support another school. We have built so much at Lea Forest and I am not prepared to risk any of this and will ensure any support we provide will not impact provision at Lea Forest. My weeks will now be spent working across both schools. However, please be assured that I will still be around. Mr Taylor will be taking a bigger lead at Lea Forest during my times at Four Dwellings.

As always, it has been a remarkable week at Lea Forest with lots of exciting activities taking place. A lot of this week has been themed around poetry due to the National Poetry Day which we celebrated. You must also check out our Youtube channel where you will find our children performing at their very best. I had the opportunity to visit English lessons with Miss Francois this week and we were both thrilled with the engagement of children in their lessons. Our children really take pride in their learning and we witnessed some beautiful handwriting and carefully written work. The engagement in reading across classes is also very apparent. Reading will be a major focus this year and it all starts with reading daily at home.