The Ambler Chronicle

Edition 7. published 25th October 2024

@AmblerSchool

www.ambler.islington.sch.uk

Ambler Community Fund

MESSAGE FROM THE HEADTEACHER

Dear Ambler families,

It’s been another FANTASTIC start to the school year with our children and families returning to school happy and well.

There's been a buzz around the school with children excited about new learning. It’s been great to start with Black History Season at Ambler which included a home school project for children to do with families. Here’s a snapshot of what’s been happening at school:

African theatre company Iroko gave a whole school performance followed by individual class workshops
Bigfoot Drama for Yr 6 focusing on Black Historical Female Figures
Year 4 started whole class violin lessons
Year 3 took part in a Stone Age workshop
Author visit from Kimberley Kinlock for assemblies and class visits
Mr O’Driscoll has started the school choir
Football tournaments for Years 3 & 4 and Years 5 & 6

There is so much to look forward to next half term, including all of years 1-6 visiting Hackney Empire for a pantomime and the start of Artis - performing art sessions for all children over the rest of the school year.

None of the amazing enrichment opportunities would be possible without the support of Friends of Ambler. Thank you for all the hard work they put into fundraising which covers the cost of most trips, workshops and curriculum enrichment.

I’m delighted to announce my new School Captains - welcome Mario, Nafeesah, Roisin and Rudy. They are full of ideas on how they can make an impact at Ambler and have already started supporting me by presenting to prospective parents about why they should send their children to Ambler! They did a fantastic job!

And a final thank you to our amazing community for coming along to listen to the children sing their hearts out and show their dance moves as part of our Black History Season celebrations - it was truly amazing!

There is so much more to be excited about so rest up and enjoy the half term and I look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday 5th November 2024.

Best wishes,

Sandy McNicholl

DATES FOR THE DIARY

Thu 31 Oct - Secondary school application deadline.

Mon 4 Nov - INSET day - School and Children's Centre closed

Tue 5 Nov - First day of Autumn term 2

Wed 6 Nov - Individual and sibling photos

Wed 6 Nov - Y5 trip to Royal Albert Hall

Tue 12 Nov - School Discos for Y1 to Y4 💃🏻🕺🏾

Thu 14 Nov - School Discos for Reception,Y5 & Y6

Thu 14 Nov - Y2 cinema trip, Wood Green

Thu 14 Nov - Reception coffee morning

Mon 18 Nov - Y5, 2 week intensive swimming lessons begin

Tue 19 Nov - Y6 cinema trip, Wood Green

Thu 21 Nov - 6B, The Cartoon Museum

Thu 21 Nov - Y5 & Y6 Literacy and numeracy workshop

Fri 22 Nov - 6G, The Cartoon Museum

Thu 28 Nov - Y4 cinema trip, Wood Green

Thu 28 Nov - SEND Parents Coffee Morning

Tue 3 Dec - Parents' Evening - Reception to Yr 6

3:30 - 6:30pm

Thu 5 Dec - Parents' Evening - Reception to Yr 6

3:30 - 6:30pm

Fri 6 Dec - Festive/Christmas Jumper Stall Give Away after school - donations to be collected a week before ☃️

Mon 9 Dec - Y3 trip to Natural History Museum

Tue 10 Dec - Hackney Empire Panto trip Y1 & Y6

Wed 11 Dec - Hackney Empire Panto trip Y2 & Y5

Thu 12 Dec - Hackney Empire Panto trip Y3 & Y4

Fri 13 Dec - Winter Day of Fun during the school day, just for kids 🎄🧑‍🎄

Fri 13 Dec - EYFS Festive Sing-A-Long, 2:15pm

Fri 13 Dec- Twilight Session. Children's Centre closes at 4pm.

Wed 15 Jan 2025 - Reception 2025 application deadline.

Ambler have been awarded the Travel for Life (TFL) Stars Gold Accreditation for 2023/24. TFL is an accreditation programme supporting the next generation of Londoners to travel towards a brighter, safer and more sustainable future. This award recognises the Ambler's continuous efforts to promote active travel and promote healthy lifestyles.

FOOTBALL TOURNAMENTS

Congratulations to both our boys and girls football teams, who took part in the annual PESSPA Islington Schools Football tournaments at Whittington Park recently. As always, every member of the team demonstrated their DREAMS qualities to do their best and represent Ambler superbly. The Year 5 & 6 boys were unlucky to progress to the knock-out stages- narrowly missing out on goal difference. Whereas the Year 5 & 6 girls did amazingly well, winning their first game 5-0. Unfortunately, their efforts weren't quite enough to progress this time in a very competitive field. Additionally a big shout out to our Year 3 & 4 boys team, who played brilliantly in their group, winning two games. A great effort from everyone involved!

We are delighted to announce that Ambler have been awarded the Gold School Games Mark for 2023/24. The award recognises our commitment and engagement in ensuring our children are provided with the very best opportunities in active play and competitive sport.

Looking for free activities for families during half-term? Come to the Family Learning Festival to inspire your child's curiosity! Find out more and how to book here.

IN THE KNOW WASTE AUDIT

This year Ambler has teamed up with North London Waste Authority to improve our waste management as a school. As part of this they ran assemblies for KS1 and KS2 about reducing, reusing and recycling. The school council members then sorted, recorded and weighed the school waste to see how we can improve. Stay tuned for the results!

🎵 AMBLER CHOIR 🎶

Well done to the children who attended choir this term. There has been lots of enthusiasm, energy and brilliant singing already.

A reminder that the Year 5 & 6 group is on Tuesdays between 12.30 and 13.00. The Year 4 & 5 group are on Wednesdays between 12.30 and 13.00.

PERFECT PRESENTATION

We are celebrating the work of children who are working hard to improve the presentation of their writing across the school. Work is displayed outside Mrs McNicholl’s office, sent home and shared in our celebration assembly!! Keep up the good work!

It is your responsibility

If a child is registered at a school, they must by law attend that school regularly and punctually.

Children should only miss school if they are ill or unable to attend for some other unavoidable reason. Parents/carers must:

Notify the school if their child cannot attend for any reason (every day of absence)
Explain the reasons for their child’s absence
Ensure their child is not absent where this can be avoided (e.g. minor illnesses).

There are 175 non-school days for holidays, family time etc. We do not expect parents/carers to take children out of school for a holiday or other term-time leave.

If after these considerations, you feel it is unavoidable to request term-time leave:

You must apply for leave in advance (request forms are available from the school office)
Submit your application at least 4 weeks in advance of the proposed leave dates
Apply before booking your travel.

If you withdraw your child during term time and the absence has not been agreed by the Headteacher, it is unauthorised leave, which may lead to a fine of up to £120 per parent, per child and/or court proceedings.

We understand that every family’s circumstances are different and subject to change. Please email the school office to arrange a meeting with Mrs McNicholl if you have any concerns you would like to discuss.

BLACK HISTORY SEASON

We’re moving away from Black History Month with the aim of establishing a fully inclusive curriculum all year round. But this is work in process, so we’re running an extended Black History ‘Season’ to make sure we don’t lose our important focus on Black histories and cultures.

Once again, a big thank you to parents and carers who’ve come in to share experiences of their cultures and countries, read stories and support our learning. It’s so important for our children to see Black role models from our own Ambler community.

Thanks also to Friends of Ambler for funding performances and class workshops by the fabulous Iroko Theatre Company. We explored West African cultures through dance, singing and storytelling.

Talking of role models, we were delighted to welcome children’s author Kimberley Kinloch to Ambler. She gave assemblies and visited our Year 3 and Reception classes to tell us about her new book, Me and My Hair, a lovely celebration of all the wonderful diversity of hair types and styles with a special focus on afro hair.

Every year group has studied an important figure in Black history as well as our DREAMS hero for this half term: Asquith Xavier. He fought against the racist colour bar at British Railways to become the first ever Black train guard at Euston station.

What a brilliant example of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things! Children have produced some fabulous homework projects celebrating his life and achievements.

🌿GROW AMBLER 🌿

Grow Ambler organised the first Gardening Day of the academic year on Sunday 6th October. Families enjoyed the Harvest Festival theme and songs from wandering minstrel, Vito.

Volunteers worked hard pulling plants and preparing beds and pots for next spring. Children had fun pot painting and leaf rubbing, and could join a mini scavenger hunt through the wilder parts of Ambler’s grounds.

Thank you to everyone who came for all their hard work!

THE BRITISH MUSEUM

Year 4 enjoyed a trip to the British Museum where they explored artefacts from the Roman Britain Era and made connections to what they had learned about in their history lessons.

STONE AGE WORKSHOP

Year 3 looked the part for the launch of their topic and a brilliant workshop on life in the Stone Age!

YEAR 6 PGL TRIP

Year 6 had an amazing residential trip to PGL in September. It is a fantastic bonding experience for the children as they spend their last year at Ambler and prepare for SATs and secondary school.

We're sure your children have told you ALL about the trip. Above are a few images, more can be found on Ambler's X/Twitter feed: @AmblerSchool

EQUALITY & ANTI-RACISM

This half term has been packed with learning about equality and anti-racism.

Children were introduced to the new Ambler Equalities Charter. We discussed the words diversity, equality and inclusion and explored what they mean in everyday life at Ambler.

We also learned about how to be an ‘upstander’ - someone who stands up for themselves and others when something unfair or hurtful happens - rather than a ‘bystander’.

We know that being an upstander is an important part of being anti-racist. We showed our anti-racist colours on Wear Red Day too, raising a whopping £436 for anti-racism education charity Show Racism the Red Card. Thank you so much for all your donations!

www.justgiving.com/ambler-srtrc

Do ask your children about their equality, anti-racism and Black history learning - we’ve been so impressed by how confidently they can talk about these issues and people!

STAFF UPDATE

Congratulations to Ms Marcou on the birth of Baby Leo born of Thursday 29th August at 1:46am weighing 3.6kg.

We're also excited to shared that Mrs Brent is expecting! She will be going on maternity leave at the end of autumn term. We are finalising cover and will share details with parents/carers of 1G children soon.

A warm welcome to Saheja Miah, who joins the school admin team as our senior admin officer.

Finally, thank you and farewell to Rahima Miah, who has been covering maternity leave in nursery . We wish her all the best for the future.

Thank you to Friends of Ambler (FoA) for their continued support and funding for projects and enrichment opportunities.

Among the items that FoA funds paid for recently are the sensory trail, stone age workshop for year 3 and upcoming panto for all children from years 1-6. Funds raised also help to keep the cost of trips low or free!

FoA also organise 'just for fun' events for Ambler children, including the upcoming discos (please remember to give consent via Abror) and the Winter Fun Day.

The fabulous Silent Auction will be going live from 24 November to 1 December. This year FoA are fundraising to support the conversion of the attic space into a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths) focussed area for the school children. More information will be sent in the coming weeks.

DIGITAL @MBLER

Firstly thank you to all the parents/carers who responded to the smartphone-free childhood survey in July. The responses have given us a way forward in terms of what we can offer our children and our wider community. This includes parent/carer workshops on the risks of children using smartphones, and how we can educate children in school. Our message continues to be that it is not necessary, or appropriate, for primary-aged children to have their own smartphone, but it is something that the school cannot control. We need support from our whole community. More information will be shared next half term.

Congratulations to the 10 Digital Leaders selected this year! The applications were AMAZING and it was so hard to choose. Everyone who submitted an application received an ambition sticker. We encourage children to keep applying for roles and responsibilities, even if they were unsuccessful - we try our best to ensure all children who would like to do an additional responsibility get one.

This year we hope to repay the Digital Leaders' hard work with a trip to another Islington school to use try coding robotics equipment, as well as online meetings with other Digital Leaders in Islington and the tech-based trip later in the year.

Lastly, in other tech-related news, the deadline for the BBC's 500 word challenge writing competition is the 8th November and all the information is here://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/live-lessons/

It tells you how to type and submit the story if any budding authors would like to try it out!

READING ROAD MAP CHALLENGE

The Reading Road Map (RRM) challenge is back again this year! Officially launching at the start of Autumn 2, your child will be given a map with a list of books featured in this year’s challenge.

There are three different maps: one for Years 1 & 2, one for Years 3 & 4, and another for Years 5 & 6.

How you can help your child use their map:

The front shows a map with coloured roads, each representing a different genre of book: Classics, Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Adventure, Humour, Poetry, and Sci-Fi (just to name a few). The author and title of each book in each genre are listed along each appropriate road.

On the back of the map are the sections listing the books relating to each genre.

To the left of each book title is a coloured circle – we used a traffic light system for identifying less challenging, challenging and more challenging books.

To the right of the title, we have a small blank circle, which can be ticked when the book has been read.

Signposting for other authors

At the bottom of the map is a section to help children and parents identify similar authors.

We love reading for pleasure at Ambler and by participating in the Reading Road Map challenge, children gain access to a wider range of books and develop their confidence in reading. As part of the challenge, children will receive a golden ticket for every RRM book read. Winning tickets will be drawn at the end of every term with a host of prizes to be won! Children will also be awarded bronze, silver, gold and platinum certificates for the number of RRM books read.

We cannot wait for the children to get stuck into the new RRM books from the start of Autumn 2.

The N4 library is running the nationwide Chatterbooks reading club that takes place every Friday between 3:45 - 4:30 pm. Chatterbooks help encourage children to have a lot of fun with their reading. While there, children have the opportunity to talk about the books they have been reading, get new reading ideas and take part in fun activities inspired by the books, including crafts, quizzes and games. Chatterbooks is suitable for children aged 7 to11 years and it is absolutely free! A lot of our Ambler children already take part in it, so if you’re interested, just head down to the N4 library to find out more.

BRIGHT FUTURES

Bright Futures is back at Ambler, offering a drop in service (in the Studio), with Toni every other Tuesday, 2:45pm - 4:15pm starting from 15t October.

Bright Futures offers help to struggling families with children aged 5-19, providing them with support, advice, and services.

To help them get the most out of family life, this includes support with:

parenting
employment
strengthening family relationships
addressing barriers to education
connecting families with the community

The service works with up to 1,000 families per year on a one-to-one basis to assess needs, reduce stress, and build resilience.

www.islington.gov.uk/bright-futures

MENTAL HEALTH & WELLBEING

We’ve been working hard this half term to get off to a strong start in supporting mental health and wellbeing at Ambler.

Here are a few of the things we have been up to:

iMARS Audit with Islington Council: We are collaborating with Islington Council to explore an iMARS audit, which will help us develop our parent support and feedback systems. This will enhance our communication and involvement with parents regarding mental health and wellbeing initiatives.

Coffee Morning: We recently hosted a coffee morning where we shared how we support mental health and wellbeing at Ambler. This open discussion provided valuable feedback. See below for information on our next one!

Mental Health Policy: We have now completed our Mental Health and Wellbeing Policy. The final version is available on our website for everyone to review.

Calm Corners: We continue to use Calm Corners offering a space for children to self-regulate. This supports children's wellbeing at Ambler which then helps children to focus on learning.

Place2Be Partnership: We have met with Place2Be, a leading children’s mental health charity, to arrange their visits for Children’s Mental Health Week in February 2025. We are excited about this partnership and the support it will bring to our students.

Thank you for your continued involvement and support in our efforts to foster a healthy, supportive school environment.

Upcoming wellbeing date: 9th January 2025 - Coffee Morning - Food and Family Eating with Sophie Smith Tong. Lodge. 9-10am.

There are a large number of local and national support services available for families of children with additional needs. The local authority Local Offer is a great starting point for any parents or carers wanting to learn more about what support they can access for their child. (https://findyour.islington.gov.uk/kb5/islington/directory/localoffer.page?)localofferchannelnew=0) One key, independent support service is SENDIASS

PARENTING WORKSHOPS

Islington offers a wide variety of support services for families, including a range of parenting support workshops for families that might be experiencing difficulties, such as behaviour that challenges. Fore more information visit here.

NEWS FROM EARLY YEARS

Welcome to this half term’s edition of our newsletter! We're excited to share the wonderful activities and learning experiences that have been happening in our early years classrooms. It has been a busy start to the year as the existing babies, toddlers and nursery children settled back in and we welcomed many new children and families to our community.

All of our new children, including those who joined Reception, have settled in extremely well. It is a joy to see the children coming in each day with such energy and enthusiasm, and already displaying the DREAMS qualities in abundance.

The children have had the opportunity to engage in a range of wonderful learning experiences over the last 7 weeks.

We introduced Forest School sessions in partnership with The Garden Classroom which have been a huge hit with the children! The children have connected with nature, developed their social skills, and learned through hands-on experiences.
The children put on a wonderful concert to celebrate Black History Month. It was great to be joined by so many parents and carers. I hope everyone enjoyed the performance, delicious snacks and the chance to socialise with other families.
We were visited by Laura Henry-Allain MBE, an award-winning international producer and storyteller, and creator of the well-loved JoJo and Gran Gran series.
The nursery class resumed their weekly library trips.

A special thank you to Friends of Ambler for providing funding to enable us to organise all of our Black History celebrations!

Congratulations to Faith in Reception on achieving 100% in the phonics assessment and receiving the first Headteacher’s Award! Keep up the amazing work!

As always, thank you for your continued support and feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Best wishes,

Cíara Rush

Well done to Faith who received the first Headteacher award this term!

IMPORTANT REMINDERS

Dress for the weather - As the weather changes, please ensure your child is dressed appropriately for outdoor play.
Learning Journals contributions - Please share your own observations or photos of learning at home on our online platform.

RECEPTION

Towards the end of this half term, we prepared for our Carnival celebration as part of Black History Season, the children have been busy tie-dying fabric and decorating the space with their colourful creations.

We have also been exploring the book My Skin, Your Skin by Laura Henry-Allain, learning about the beauty of our diverse skin tones. The children enjoyed matching their skin color to paint, sparking great conversations about individuality and identity. We also took inspiration from Van Gogh’s self-portraits, focusing on how he expressed himself through art. It's been a fantastic first term - everyone has settled in well and made lots of new and exciting connections!

NURSERY

Our nursery class has been very busy this half term. One of the highlights has been our weekly Forest School adventure! The children quickly became fully immersed in their explorations of nature – discovering pond life, making fires, sorting leaves, crossing the rope bridge, and of course the best thing of all sharing hot chocolate and a biscuit at the end of the session. These experiences have fostered their curiosity and given our children the time to notice what is happening in the natural world all around them!

In addition to our outdoor adventures, the children have been busy creating vibrant carnival costumes to mark our Black History Season celebrations. Making the costumes has been so much fun. The children have tie dyed fabric - noticing the amazing colours made when the different coloured dyes merge and have practised their fine motor skills as they covered their costumes with gems and sequins.

The children have enjoyed their first trips to the library, and are really impressing us with their listening skills and careful handling of the books they chose.

Finally, we’re delighted to see how well the children have settled into their new routines and we look forward to more wonderful play and learning next half term!

TODDLER ROOM

This half term, we have been very busy. We have been cooking lots of different foods such as samosas and chin-chin biscuits. We have also been making our own sandwiches.

We have been celebrating black history, singing songs, reading stories, having a dancing session, making carnival outfits and making steel pans to create our own music.

Toddlers have also started forest school where we have been exploring mud, clay and all of the different minibeasts that we can find in our forest. We have been learning about the seasons and looking at the different shapes and colours of the leaves that have been falling off the trees in autumn.

BABY ROOM

We've had a really busy half term in baby room with so many new learning experiences. Our children have started weekly forest school sessions, the children have responded to these really well. Week by week we have seen their confidence and curiosity grow.

We have been celebrating Black History Season with author visits, dance sessions, food tasting, books and costume decorating.

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