Leigh Academy Rainham

July 2021

A Message from the Principal

Virtual Transition Day

Transition Day Parent Feedback:

Transition Parents' Evenings

Transition Evening Parent Feedback

Inclusion / SEND Updates

Oak National Academy

2021 Cucina Restaurant Prices

MACA - Free Dance and Martial Arts Opportunities for Children

A Message from the Principal

On the 11th of July , 31 million of us across the UK came together as a nation to watch our admirable young England team play gallantly against Italy in the Euro Finals. While I know we will have many disappointed children who stayed up to watch the game, this was still a wonderful learning experience for so many of our young people. Losing with dignity and pride, as modelled by our England players, is a key attribute for us all to embrace. Research has shown that the experience of losing games is incredibly helpful for children as it teaches them empathy, humility and reduces the anxiety often associated with the risk of failure.

I have taken the Euros as an opportunity to reflect on how our Leigh Academy Rainham Values and LEIGH Learner Attributes are so integral to life. Dream, Believe and Achieve.... well our England team have certainly lived to these values since childhood.

As a collective they have also consistently modelled:

Leadership - they take responsibility for their failures, lead by example and communicate with each other as a cohesive unit.
Emotional Intelligence - they have shown empathy, not just between team mates, but towards other players they have beaten along the way and passionately fought for us as a country to be open minded and tolerant of the diversity within our team.
Inquisitive - their ongoing desire since childhood to learn more, further better their skills and take time to investigate how they best play together as a team.
Grit - if its one thing this team have shown its resilience, throughout the whole tournament and until the 120th minute in the final when despite being physically exhausted they were risk takers, bravely putting themselves forward for penalties.
Humility - the team have never acted with arrogance or a manner of self-entitlement, they never assumed the cup was theirs to win and they have reflected they have still got room to grow ready for the World Cup!

Moving forwards we can all learn a lot from this team and I look forward to nurturing these qualities in our own students from day one.

Virtual Transition Day

On Saturday the 10th of July we hosted our Virtual Transition Event, led by our 12 teachers and attended by an incredible 200 students! We wanted to take this opportunity to share just how wonderful our new founding cohort are as a collective for giving up their Saturday morning to tune into more remote learning, one student even joined us despite the fact it was their Birthday. We recognise that some students find online learning difficult due to being shy or self conscious on the camera but thank you so much for still joining us despite this. This level of commitment and diligence from all of the students who took the time to join us is commendable - well done year 6!

In addition our thanks go to you all as parents and carers for supporting your children with attending by providing devices and a quiet space for them and of course to our staff who took the time to plan and deliver the sessions alongside their current teaching commitments.

Thank you so much for those who took the time to provide us with feedback about the event, which has been passed on to our teaching team.

Transition Day Parent Feedback:

'With regards to the transition morning my son was filled with trepidation on spending his Saturday morning in virtual lessons but he has come away feeling really enthused and so excited to start in September, even the PE session after his tech lesson he was beaming and PE is not his favourite!'
'My son was really engaged and particularly enjoyed the maths and Spanish lessons. Thank you for organising!'
'Thank you Leigh Academy Rainham the transition morning on Saturday was well organised and I haven't seen my son this engaged with teachers since year 1 and 2. Thank you to the teachers for giving up their Saturday morning to help familiarise the kids with some teachers.'
'Thank you so much, my daughter really enjoyed Art, History and the Maths lesson particularly learning the Egyptian multiplication method with Mr Blinkhorn.'
'Thank you so much Leigh Academy Rainham my daughter feels much more confident after taking part in the transition event & lessons.'

Transition Parents' Evenings

On the 6th and 8th of July ,Mrs Millward hosted Transition Events for parents at St Margaret's Church. These informative evenings provided our parents and carers with the key messages required to ensure our students have a highly successful start from September and a recording of this event can be found below.

Thank you again to the parents who have taken the time to contact us with thanks for hosting the events and for providing feedback on how useful you found the sessions.

Transition Evening Parent Feedback

'I have to be honest I wasn’t sure how much I and my son was going to get from either event but I came away from the parents event feeling informed and actually really proud that my son is going to be part of a school with a clear vision!'

'Thank you for arranging the evenings a lot of questions got answered and I liked the way the information was given directly about what was expected . my son is really looking forward coming to you in September'

'Mrs Millward again has made me feel like we have absolutely made the right choice in school. Praise where praise is due your doing a great job and this fills me with confidence for September'.

Inclusion / SEND Updates

On Monday 16th August our Inclusion team will be meeting with external agencies as part of our transition process to conduct an In School Review of students across all colleges that will be joining us in September. This will include students who either have a diagnosed need, or have been receiving some form of additional support in their primary school e.g. for anxiety. You can read our SEND guide here.

As part of this meeting we will be sharing the wealth of information provided by the primary schools and discussing the notes taken during our visits to ensure that as a team we have agreed and logged the necessary support for each child that is on our SEND register, or that may require additional interventions. While some primary schools set up regular meetings between the SENCO and parents of all children on the SEND register, please understand this is not typical practice in secondary schools and due to the significant number of students who will be raised at this meeting we will not be providing individual feedback to families but instead will focus our time on ensuring we have mapped the necessary support and strategies to support them in moving forwards.

During the transition process we have however identified a small number of students with particularly complex needs, such as those with EHCPs or who have faced significant challenges in their primary settings. We will be contacting these families to meet in person either on Monday 23rd or Tuesday 24th August, to ensure everything is in place for a successful start to term 1. These individual families will receive a letter over the summer to confirm that these meetings will be taking place.

Oak National Academy

As we are unable to host a summer school, like some schools nationally, we invite you to explore the online summer learning support offered by the Oak National Academy.

They have developed summer classrooms with learning activities linked to KS2 and KS3 that may be beneficial for any children who have key gaps in knowledge, having missed learning due to COVID, and those who have a love for learning and get easily bored over the summer break!. Please do take a look at the range of resources available on there using the link below

https://classroom.thenational.academy/summer-learning-support