Week 21 04.03.22

Putin's War: Thinking Principles

I believe a principal's main role is to develop principled individuals - children, staff and communities trying their best to achieve their very best and do their best. I aspire to support and be part of a whole community of principled learners. This week, I was prompted by a thoughtful parent to reflect and share a few more thoughts around the 'Putin Invasion' and also offer the theory underlying these thoughts - for anyone that fancies a bit of thinking and learning!

The thought is this:

We must be careful not to think of this as a 'Russian invasion'. Grouping people under one flag - 'Nationalism' - can often cause greater harm and a dehumanisation of individuals. Many Russians are disgusted and embarrassed by their Leader's actions but have very little power and a significant amount of fear and threat for even voicing their concern. This is a 'Putin' Invasion.

If Putin went to Little Green, we would think two things:

1. Behaviour Communicates. What does this behaviour say about how Putin is feeling - he looks very lonely and isolated in his publicised governmental meetings.

2. Experiences shape the brain: What sort of life and upbringing has Putin experienced to act in this way....what happened to him? What can we do about it to support him? But...most importantly...

3. Everyone has the right to feel safe and learn: As much as we want to support Putin, everyone has the right to feel safe and learn. We must ensure strong boundaries are in place to support children to be kind and safe in school and protect everyone from unkindness and danger. As a school, we take this careful supportive approach to behaviour - (please continue to always make sure concerns and incidents are reported so that we are able to investigate and increase our support as required (funnily enough, we use to call these sanctions!))

The theory is this:

The Milgram study has consistently shown that most people, in certain situations, will act in unthinkable ways. In the original research, 65% of participants did something awful because they were told to do so by 'an authority figure.' I would suggest, as a community, our greatest aim is to ensure that this percentage (and the conditions in place to cause that percentage) is/are reduced; that we raise a community of principled learners who practice what they preach! Here is the link to a useful summary of the Milgram study if you are interested...go on - do it!

https://www.thoughtco.com/milgram-experiment-4176401

Community

Message from Magda:

Dear All,

It’s hard to believe what an incredible tragedy we are witnessing. I would have never imagined that such cruelty could come back to modern Europe EVER!

In the light of this terrible humanitarian crisis, all we can do, is support our brothers and sisters of Ukraine as much as we can. I have been working alongside the Polish army of volunteers- Club “Szaniec”, and Polish shop “Groszek”, whose shipping company has kindly offered to take the goods back to Poland, and directly to the frontline in Ukraine.

I’m truly moved by your generosity, your mobilisation in such short notice. It has showed me that Croxley Green is the best place to live, and our community is purely amazing! I’m so lucky to be a part of it and have you around.

I’d like to thank both Malvern Way and Little Green schools for organising collection points, but also for teaching our children true values and principles

Thank you all so much again!!!

Together we stand against Putin and his barbaric actions.

Magda

I am very proud to be part of the Little Green Community supporting our European friends and neighbours in the Ukraine.

We all pray for a swift end to this senseless tragedy. Thank you to everyone for your donations and for Magda for organising and arranging this quick donation turn around. Our donations will be on a lorry heading to the Ukraine tomorrow!

World Book Day

It was a delight to see the enthusiasm of many of the children during world books day's bring your own book. The children were able share their books with friends and buddies which also allowed them to deepen their relationships with their buddies and also learn about other books they may wish to read. We look forward to children accessing the Book Fair today and next week!

Learning Teachers

Mr Hyde and Miss Marriot, our English Leads, joined some training on reading fluency on Thursday. Even though we have a range of exciting Reading and Writing developments running across the school, we are always striving to know the latest research and best practice. Developments planned include increasing our Book Spine to have greater non-fiction texts to further increase children's love of reading.

Driving a love of READING - Travelling Bookshop!

We are delighted to welcome the travelling books shop to schools - the excitement has already begun! Children will all be given slots to peruse before we open the shop in the coming days - see the letter sent out by Mr Hyde, Miss Marriot and Miss Sedgwick.

Fund Raising Success

A huge thank you to everyone who supported the Festive Fundraiser. We raised a substantial £310.99 to support the Children's Cancer and Leukemia Group. #Making a difference

Writing Competition Entries

We recently shared Gagan Mohindra's (M.P.) short story writing competition and have had a few outstanding entries shared with us which we have the pleasure to share with you below. I am delighted to share that Emily B was one of the eventual runners up - you can read her story below also!

Well done Emily B, Emily Z and Sanaya and anyone else that took the risk. If you want to share your stories, do let us know and I will add them to next week's Newsweb!

Here's Emily B's

The ashes of hope (1)

Sanaya's story:

Chloe's Adventure.docx

And Emily Z's narration:

Destiny and the River of Light.docx

Growing the

Little Green Team

I am delighted to share the faces of our newer staff members recruited over last few months to increase our ability to support all of our children in school and at Breakfast and after School Club. They join our amazing team of talented and caring staff, meeting the changing needs of our community through Covid and beyond!

Ms McMillan - Teaching Assistant and After School Club

Ms Bhandari - Teaching Assistant

Mr Batchelor - Apprentice Breakfast and After School Club and Teaching Assistant

Ms Brown - Teaching Assistant

SPORTS SUCCESSES:

A lot of sports events have been reaching their usual culmination so we have a range of sports news to share. Amazingly, the Little Green Representatives are continuing some outstanding successes in a range of sports so there will be some more finals and tournaments to report on in the coming weeks and months. Well done to the whole community for driving a positive message of participation and trying your best in lessons and the opportunity for all to experience competitive competition. Inspirational!

Winning the District Finals!

On Tuesday, the Little Green Girls Football team spent the entire day at Watford FC's training ground in London Colney to take part in the Premier League Primary Stars Regional Tournament. There were 32 schools competing with the winner being given the chance to represent Watford FC at Vicarage Road in a National Tournament in May.

The girls ending up the eventual winners out of so many schools and a 1-0 win in the final was such a brilliant way to book their place in the National Finals in May. We are so unbelievably proud of the girls and their fantastic achievement goes to show how much working together as a team can help bring the best out of each other. Every single girl played their part and they have now got such an exciting day to look forward to against 19 other Premier League teams in May. Full match report: https://www.littlegreen.herts.sch.uk/

Rugby Success

Last Thursday, Little Green took a team of mixed Year 5 & 6 Boys and Girls to St Joan of Arc School for a Tag-Rugby festival run by the School Sports Partnership and professional rugby club, Saracens.

Little Green were placed in a group with 3 other schools and played all of them twice. Little Green had an extremely successful day, winning 5 out of their seven games. Some fantastic Rugby was played by Little Green and the icing on the cake was that everybody on the team managed to score at least 1 try!

Basketball Success

Last half term, the whole school competed in basketball skills competitions within their year groups to decide the winners of the sports trophies for this half term. The children had a practice lesson in their first lesson of the week, before completing 4 skill based activities in their second lesson, trying to score as many points in each activity as possible.

The Year 3 competition was a massive success, all of the children showing their best behaviour when taking part in the activities and then showing real maturity in scoring each other accurately and fairly. The winners of the tournament were... 3H!!! (Miss Tuthill's class)

In Year 4, the winners were decided by only 10 points, coming down to the class completing the activities on the last day of term to decide the winners. The winners were... 4H!!! (Miss Crawford & Mr Flint's class)

The competition with the highest scoring class from the entire school was in Year 5, with the winning class scoring over 2000 points as a whole and some individuals scoring over 100 points individually! The runaway winners were... 5R!!! (Mrs Mac's class)

Year 6's competition was taken extremely seriously and all three classes scored incredibly well. The points difference was very close but the eventual winners were... 6H!!! (Mr Hyde's class)

Well done to all of the children who took part! Winners from 4H pictured above with their year group trophy.

Through to the district finals!

On Friday, the Little Green football team played their final league match against Harvey Road School and needed a win to secure their place in the District finals in May. The game ended and Little Green ended up deserved 4-2 winners. Congratulations to outstanding player of the match - Jack N. Full match report: https://www.littlegreen.herts.sch.uk/

Covid Update

Do report your children's positive cases here:

https://forms.gle/6SZyf4bg5ENVegBMA .

As we continue the transition to living with Covid, I am pleased to report that our Covid numbers have remained low since the beginning of term with 5 children isolating.

We continue to follow the latest Government guidance and this can be accessed here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-stay-at-home-guidance/stay-at-home-guidance-for-households-with-possible-coronavirus-covid-19-infection

Here is our recently shared Risk Assessment for Living with Covid:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1suRfJ2ziNUAPX_OFcKqr0kkZdszoD0-Wz1-nvyFzpKE/edit?usp=sharing

Save the date:

School Fair 26th June 2022.

FOLG Treasurer opportunity - are you interested? Let us know!

NEXT FOLG MEETING: 26.4.22 Coach and Horses

Second Hand Uniform Sale - At School: Friday 11th March 2:45 - 3:30

School Disco save the date 24th March: See below:

Tickets will go on sale on Monday.

Any volunteers will be gratefully received! Please contact FOLG@littlegreen.herts.sch.uk

IMG-20220226-WA0005.jpg

Key Dates:

Monday 7th March - Book Fair 3E, 3R, 3H, 4R
Tuesday 8th March - Book Fair 4E, 4H, 5H, 5R
Wednesday 9th March - Book Fair 5E, 6H, 6R, 6E
Thursday 10th March - a chance for any children who were either absent or didn’t have money on the day of the class slot, to purchase books.
Just a reminder that there is no swimming for Yr. 6 - final lesson completed

NOTES:

Little Request: We are developing our display of 'motivation' to show faces of people working hard and feeling challenged but getting on with 'Doing it!' Please do try and capture some of the struggles of motivation so we can drive the realities of working hard with the whole school community - #attitude to learning!

CAR PARK REMINDER

Just a polite reminder that parents should not be driving into the car park for any reason. Only Blue Badge holders should be accessing the car park. Thank you.

Continuing on Fridays: 1700-2100 - in the carpark!

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