Headteachers Message  Dear Parents and Carers,

What a fantastic first week back!

I hope you all had a wonderful summer holiday and enjoyed some special time together as families. It has been lovely to welcome everyone back and to see the children return with such enthusiasm, confidence and keenness to learn. They have made a brilliant start to the new school year, and we are incredibly proud of them.

This week has been particularly special as we welcomed our new Reception children to school. Those first few days of starting a new school are incredibly precious, and we know that it can be an emotional time for both children and parents. It has been wonderful to see how well our new Reception children have settled, and we are delighted to welcome them and their families into our school community.

Kindness Matters

Last Friday, I led our welcome back assemblies focusing on kindness. We talked about what kindness looks and feels like, why it matters, and the difference that small acts of kindness can make to someone else.

Kindness is something we want to be a huge part of our school and our wider community this year. We want our children to understand that being kind is not just about being nice to others; it is about noticing when someone needs help, including others, listening, showing respect and making positive choices.

We will be spending lots of time throughout the year talking about kindness and helping our children understand how they can make a difference to the people around them. We want kindness to be something that is seen, noticed and celebrated every day.

Catching the Good

One of our key focuses this year will be ‘catching the good’ and celebrating the positive things our children do every day.

Hopefully, you will begin to notice some children receiving Golden Messages home. This is something we trialled towards the end of last academic year, and we were really pleased with the response. We can sometimes spend a lot of time communicating when things have gone wrong, but we want to make sure we also take the time to notice and celebrate the things that go right.

Any member of staff can send a Golden Message when they see a child demonstrating something special — whether that is kindness, resilience, honesty, courage, effort, independence or simply making a really positive choice.

Please keep an eye out for these messages. We are going to make a real effort to send as many as we can, alongside our Friday celebration assemblies. Children may receive a Star of the Week, a Track and Values certificate or another form of recognition. We will also continue to encourage our children to be honest, trustworthy and courageous, recognising those who demonstrate these qualities in their everyday actions and choices.

A Few Reminders

Our Summer Fair will take place on Friday 18th September. We were unfortunately unable to hold this at the end of last academic year, so we are particularly excited to finally bring our community together. Preparations are well underway and everyone is welcome!

Please also remember that drop-off and pick-up are very busy times for our teachers. Staff will always be happy to listen and support you, but they may not always be able to have a detailed conversation at these times. If you have a question or concern, please contact the school office or follow our usual communication procedures so that we can make sure your query is dealt with properly.

Please continue to refer to the key dates that have been shared with you. As always, these may occasionally be subject to change, so please keep an eye on our communications for updates.

Our New Website

You may also have noticed that our school website looks slightly different. We transferred to our new website over the summer holidays. Please bear with us while we continue to work on it. There are still a number of things that need to be updated and some issues that we are working hard to resolve.

We know that it is not quite where it needs to be yet, but we are working through this and will let you know once everything is fully up and running.

Finally, thank you to all of our families for such a positive start to the new academic year. It has been wonderful to see the children back, ready to learn and excited about the year ahead.

We are looking forward to a fantastic year together!

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Wilden