Newsletter

13th September 2024

Attendance

National: Our Target: 95%

Our whole school attendance this week:

Infant School: 93.23%

Junior School: 95.03%

Our School Winners are Reception with 94.55% and 5S with 98.03%

Well done to the children and parents in these classes!

Attendance

Our whole school attendance this week:

Dear Parents/Carers,

We have had a great start to the new year and it was wonderful welcoming the children back last week. They were all smartly dressed, ready to learn and very settled. Thank you for your support.

Thanks to those who attended the Meet The Teacher and Leader events this week. The team worked hard to ensure that you were all well informed about your child’s learning, our whole school expectations and vision. We feel fortunate to have such supportive and engaged parents in our school community.

St. Joseph's have a vast amount of enrichment activities and opportunities for children. We have been working hard to extend this further. Next week information about clubs for the term will be shared. All club bookings will be done via the Arbor App. Clubs will start wb/23rd September.

We sent out a letter last March, stating that Arbor will be used for all our parent communication from April. From this year, it will be how you can make payments too. If you had a positive parent pay account the funds will be returned to you. Weduc, St. Joseph's App and ParentPay are no longer in use. If you need support with Arbor please contact the school office and they will be able to help you.

Congratulations to Mrs Tope (NPQSL), Mrs Steen-Plomer (NPQSL) and Mrs Langford-Jackson (NASENCO) who all successfully completed Leadership qualifications last year. The high level of expertise in our team is something we are all very proud of. Our commitment to remaining research-based and innovative enables us to provide your children with a high level of education. We encourage all team members to undertake training. I myself completed an Executive Level Apprenticeship in Leadership and Management and became a member of the Charted Management Institute.

This year, we will be having Coffee Mornings in the Garden Hall, 9.15am-10.15am every Friday. All parents and carers are welcome! An overview of each week's focus will be shared with you next week. On Tuesdays from 9.15am-11am, we also have our 0-5 Parent Baby group in the Garden Hall.

Over the summer, many of you would have heard about the loss suffered by the community in Southport and the devastating effects the fallout had on our country and our communities. We know that this would have affected many of you, just like it did us. As a staff team, we did a reflection and prayer for the lives lost and for peace in our communities. We are even more determined in our mission to develop great people as well as great students. The events of the summer have not been discussed with your children. This is a sensitive issue which is traumatic for many of us. But we reminded them to love their neighbour as themselves and the children were able to share many ways that they could do this.

Unfortunately, Mr Abubaka, Mr McEvoy and Ms Kelleher are unwell. Please join us in wishing them a speedy recovery.

If you have anything you would like to discuss about your child’s education or development, please speak to your child’s class teacher in the first instance or contact them via the school office. As a team, we do all we can to support your child and are in constant collaboration for their development.

Next week Thursday, there will be a like new uniform sale after school. Coats £5 and everything else £1! Come and stock up. The funds raised will be used to support with the cost of trips.

We hope you have a fantastic weekend,

Mrs Ashley and The St. Joseph's Team

Inclusion

Wellbeing

It is always exciting when we begin a new school year but for some, it can also be challenging. Some children might find new classes, new friends or new ways of learning a bit scary at times and might feel unsettled. It is always good to talk to your child and ask them about their day, be encouraging and help them to be positive and build up their resilience. There is very good advice from the Anna Freud Institute and their Patron, Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales who supported the 'You're never too young to talk' mental health campaign, stating the campaign's resources, "demonstrate how we can help children express their feelings, respond appropriately, and prevent small problems from snowballing into bigger ones." Please click on the link below to access this.

Early Years

This week has been the Reception children's first full week in school. There has been lots of exciting learning happening inside and outside of the classroom. The children have had the opportunity to use wax crayons during there art lesson to create marks, draw pictures and create patterns by rubbing a variety of objects. Some children created patterns by rubbing the classroom chairs and even a tree outside. We noticed the paper became bumping from the uneven surface.

Key Stage 1

It has been an exciting first full week at School for Year 2. We have began the academic year positively. Excitedly, the children used charcoal to create different marks. Each child chose different adjectives and using charcoal they created marks to reflect its meaning. It was a lot of fun but a bit messy! In Maths, we reviewed numbers to 20 and counting in tens. Every child loved using the manipulatives to create numbers and are eagerly waiting for our next lesson. We also began reading The Friendship Bench by Wendy Meddour. The children created Story Maps to be able to retell the story using key vocabulary.

Lower Key Stage 2

Year 3 have settled well back to school. They are really happy with their class and teachers. It is such a pleasure to see them get back to their learning with such enthusiasm and showing pride in their work. We have been proud with their behaviour and general maturity as they are now in the Juniors. In reading, the children have been practising reading with prosody and they are showing real confidence in reading with expression. We are all very proud of their achievement this term. Well done Year 3.

Upper Key Stage 2

We are very proud of all the children settling into Upper Key Stage 2 this year. All children have shown great focus in their learning and excellent learning behaviour.

Year 6 have started the year strong and produced fantastic writing in English, based on the story They Journey, and showing great knowledge of number in Maths.

In Art, we have been looking at the work of Bisa Butler, a South African artist, and created beautiful self-portraits inspired by her work. This will lead into our History project on South Africa and Nelson Mandela.

In Science, we have started learning about Classification and classifying living things. RE has had a focus on the Kingdom of God, where we learned about the meaning behind the story of the Mustard Seed.

Happy Birthday!

Everyone at St. Joseph's wishes you the happiest of birthdays.

Year 5: Aisha, Bella R, Hallee

Year 3: Eva Maria Year1: Shaina, Diana Sofia

Reception: Yamelis Nursery: Daniela

Staff: Mrs Lopeman and Mrs Kelleher

We hope you and your family have a wonderful weekend

The St. Joseph's Team

Page updated

Report abuse