Gray's Farm Primary Academy
Lock down Weekly Newsletter
29th January 2021
http://www.graysfarm-tkat.org/ admin@graysfarm-tkat.org
BELIEVE, ACHIEVE, SUCCEED
Gray's Farm Primary Academy has a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. This responsibility necessitates a child protection policy and procedures which are available to view on the website as are all our policies, or a copy can be requested from the School Office. Our designated Child Protection Officers are Mrs Morley and Mrs Marsh. Information may need to be shared with other agencies when there are concerns about a child’s welfare.
Gray's Farm Primary Academy is committed to gender, racial, religion and disability equality in every part of school life.
A message from Mrs Gold
The end of this week marks a month of online learning! What can I say except THANK YOU. The support, patience, understanding and sheer dedication that so many of you have shown to getting your children learning has been amazing. It’s certainly not always easy, but trying is winning and we hope you recognise that you’re doing a great job. People always comment that Gray’s Farm is a phenomenal community and the last 4 weeks have proved just that.
As some of you may know, I’m in charge of overseeing the online learning platforms and reviewing what we offer to our children to try to make learning from home the best it can be! Thank you so much to all of you who have already taken the time to complete our parent voice questionnaire about Gray’s Farm’s Remote Learning Offer. Your voice truly helps us to adapt and improve what we do (like the timetable changes) to try to make the remote learning experience as good as it can be. If you haven’t had the chance yet and would like to share your thoughts, click on the link below.
Click here for the Parent Voice Survey.
Once again, thank you and remember; you are doing great!
School Notices and Reminders
Absence Reporting
Please remember that if your child is unwell for any reason and won't be able to participate with online learning that day, then please call the office and leave a message on the absence line as you usually would.
COVID-19 Symptoms
Colds, flu and Covid-19 are caused by different viruses, but can have similar symptoms. It can be hard to judge which one you may have.
Most people who feel ill with coronavirus will have at least one of the key symptoms:
a high temperature
a new, continuous cough
a loss or change to their sense of smell or taste
If you child or a family member has one of these symptoms, you should self isolate and take a test. If you have a negative result you may stop isolating.
Friday 5th February is DT Day
If we were in school we would have our usual DT week, so we want to keep this going and have organised for Friday 5th February to be a whole DT day for you to complete at home.
As part of the Cooking and Nutrition unit we will be holding a Great Gray's Farm Bake Off. The day will involve you designing, baking and evaluating your chosen delicacy whilst completing some activities in relation to your baking Show Stopper!
The day is all about having fun in the kitchen with your family and getting creative whilst developing your culinary skills. More information will be shared next week in your classes but we wanted to give you time to start planning your culinary treat and deciding on your necessary ingredients.
We are very excited to see what you choose to bake and look forward to seeing your tasty Show Stoppers!
On this day, the children will still be required to log on at 9am to register. From 9:30am, there will not be any live learning - your time will be spent on your DT project. Remember to upload photos and any supporting work to your Google Classroom.
Children who attend the key worker group, will have a no screen DT day at school, with activities planned and resourced for them. Due to Covid Safety restrictions, this wont involve baking but it will still be just as fun and get them doing enriching activities off of the screen. If your child does attend the key worker group and you want to get involved with the Bake-off at home, at a time that works for you and your family, we would love for them to upload a photo of their Show Stopper to our Facebook page so that we can all enjoy their creations.
PE @ HOME during the School closure
There are lots of fun activities that Mr Morris has put together to keep us all active during the School Closure.
Have a look on our school website for more information.
Don't forget to do the daily challenges - you can find them all here!
Don't forget to take photos and send them into us so we can see all the fabulous active learning you are doing whilst you are at home.
Next Weeks Daily Challenges can be found below. Why don't you give them a go?
Remote Learning Celebration
Nursery
Cody
For his work with recognition and learning new sounds and using supportive resources to reinforce and scaffold his learning.
Reception
Adam
For working so hard across all areas of learning and producing some fantastic pieces of work/art as a result! Well done Adam!
Year 1
Lily
For the video she created and uploaded of her maths comparison work. She arranged household equipment and her toys in terms of X is shorter than Y, taller than etc, then narrated it. It was really lovely and her maths was very accurate.
Year 2
Jason
For his interesting use of description when writing about Wombat from our class book. He managed to use his past tense verbs and some great expanded noun phrases to rewrite the story so far.
Year 3
Gia
For her geography research on Spain when comparing it to the UK. She researched it really well and said that she told her Dad about it too which is great to share her research with her family.
Year 4
Lucy
For the fantastic effort she put into her writing across the whole of our Wishgranter unit. Lucy empathised brilliantly with the main character and expressed such emotions throughout her writing. Well done Lucy!
Year 5
Khiya
For producing an amazing factual leaflet on Canada. During geography topic 'Where would you rather live?' Khiya has learnt about countries in North America and produced this amazing travel brochure full of interesting facts.
Year 6
Skye
For her amazing 'Art Attack' Summer Scene piece. Year 6 were asked to create their own 'big art' Art attack. They were tasked with using a range of items at home to help them create their project. e.g. towels, sweets wrappers and toilet roll. This was Skye's masterpiece.
School Life
The school continues to remain open for those children of key workers and children who are deemed to be vulnerable.
Please can we remind parents that children should be in full school uniform each day.
Fruit is being provided daily for the children.
Our EYFS and KS1 bubble wanted to share:
Year 2 have enjoyed working collaboratively this week exploring absorption of materials whilst supporting each other during their fraction work in maths. Year 1 have also enjoyed maths this week measuring objects using non-standard units.
While our KS2 bubble wanted to share that:
We've had another really busy week in KS2 at school. We have had some fun doing P.E this week and of course have been dedicated to trying our best with our online learning. Mrs Adam has been amazing, as usual, in helping us. We are having lots of fun with our learning.
Staying Safe and Well
We are so pleased to hear that lots of families are going on a daily walk for exercise, in line with government guidance. We just wanted to take this opportunity to give you some recommendations on keeping safe while daylight hours continue to be short. According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), 40% of collisions occur in the dark, despite most road activity being during daylight hours.
Be Bright, Be Seen - wear bright and reflective clothing
Choose well lit routes
Stay together
Carry a torch
Keep pets on a lead
COMMUNITY FRIDGE
This week we have been able to support this excellent cause by donating any 'left over' fruit the school has received so that more members of our community can benefit during the pandemic.
If you have any fresh food or grocery items that you would like to donate please follow the contact details on the flyer.
Alternatively if you feel you would benefit from visiting the Community Fridge - please do! It is a fabulous resource which is available to all our families - no questions asked!
SEND SUPPORT FOR PARENTS
This week I have been mindful of the additional difficulties faced by our children with a diagnosis of ADHD and wanted to take this opportunity to recommend regular movement breaks.
Taking short and active breaks throughout the day can make all the difference to energy levels and focused attention. Please see this link for ideas for movement breaks that last just 30, 45 or 60 seconds.
Please keep an eye out for this section of the newsletter for more ideas about supporting your child/ren with special educational needs while home learning.
As always, I am available for any questions and/or a chat! Just speak to the school office,
Ella Morley (SENCO)
TKAT News
TKAT Parent Support page
A new TKAT Parent Support page has been created for schools to share with parents. This currently includes Google support for parents and students and includes TKAT videos and slides on how to access the Google classroom, how to hand in documents, how to access via an Xbox, PS4, SmartTV amongst other things. This is a working site so additional information will be added along the way including FAQ's.
https://sites.google.com/tkat.org/parent-info-tkat/google-classroom
This course explores some simple strategies for promoting your wellbeing during the Coronavirus pandemic. These are challenging times for all of us, so this course walks you through simple, easy to implement, strategies to give you a boost and protect your wellbeing. All of the ideas are suitable for use by adults or children and many work best when embraced collectively as a class or family.
This course has been developed by Dr Pooky Knightsmith, an internationally recognised mental health expert and author.