Head Teacher's Blog 27.03.23
26th March 2023
Welcome to our last week of the spring term - a very special week as we prepare to say goodbye to Mrs Smith and thank her for her incredible service to our school over such a long career. The children, staff and governors have some special treats for Mrs Smith this week and we will be sending her off to retirement in style. Mrs Smith is in work Tuesday to Thursday this week and will be on the yard each morning - I know many of you will want to give your own thanks and appreciation.
Last week was another busy week.
Firstly, let’s take a look at our attendance which is still sitting at 94.9% with lots of pesky germs lingering on. Hopefully we can get up to 95% + after the Easter holiday. Please remember that we cannot authorise family holidays during term time. Chestnut Class are our champions from last week with 99% attendance - excellent job!
A huge thank you to Ash Class for their fabulous assembly on Thursday. Everyone performed so confidently and it was great to hear about the learning that goes on every day. I know Mrs Smith really appreciated the poem and the words that you all wrote for her.
Our KS1 children had the opportunity to experience farm life first hand this week as part of their topic work and I think it’s safe to say that everyone enjoyed the visits to Broxfield Farm. The children and staff met Mr Thompson the farmer. He showed them around the farm on a trailer ride, they saw the cows and a few calves, and had fun making scarecrows and milling grain to make flour. These experiences will be invaluable as the children continue their learning back at school.
Some of our KS2 children competed against other schools across England in a Sumdog Maths competition last week. There were over 25,000 children involved, well done to Team Swansfield! A special mention must go to Elliot Chapman and Thomas Lee who both managed to answer all 1000 questions in the competition and made it onto the winners leaderboard, a fantastic achievement!
On Friday, LKS2 enjoyed Richie Newbegin singing The Lambton Worm to each class. The children in Willow, Chestnut and Maple Classes have been thoroughly enjoying their English work based upon this poem and hearing it set to music was a great enhancement to their study. A big ‘thankyou’ to Richie for coming into school to entertain us!
As we look forward to the week ahead, we begin with the EYFS sponsored Tiddly Triathlon Colour Run on Monday to raise money to enhance our outdoor learning environments. We are all looking forward to this event and can we remind parents that children should come to school wearing brightly coloured clothes suitable for sporty activity and a little bit of mud and paint! Thank you to everyone who has already brought in sponsor money. It would be great if any further sponsorship could come in by the end of the week.
We will be holding our Spring Assemblies on Thursday this week with our infants celebrating together at 10.15am and our Juniors having their assembly later in the day at 2.00pm. We look forward to sharing successes from the term as we give out Gold Certificates and our Progress Cup. In addition, we have some lovely spring themed songs to sing together and choir will entertain us with a song that they have been working hard to perfect over the last few weeks. Due to limited space, we are sorry that we cannot invite all parents and carers in for this event but invitations have been sent to the families of prize winners and choir.
Please note that there will be no NUF PE on Thursday next week due to our Spring Assemblies and so children should come to school in their normal school uniform.
To finish the term off in style, our Friends of Swansfield would like to invite everyone to come to school in their pyjamas on Friday for a small donation - this can be anything from 20p - £1! Our Friends have been doing a wonderful job of financially supporting the experiences that we have been offering our children this year and we want to be able to keep this up into the summer term.
As always, we had some stand out stars last week. A huge well done to Eddie Hoy, Alice-Rose Turnbull, Ella Dodd, Eryn Allen, Oliver Hames, Georgia Lott, Cooper Catlow, Jack Frater and Sofia Bonnett. Certificates will be winging their way to you all.
So, it only remains for me to say on behalf of our whole school community - thank you Mrs Smith for your service to us all! Thank you for leading us, thank you for encouraging us and thank you for giving so much of yourself to benefit us. Have a very happy retirement! We know it’s a bit early for this one but it’s been used for generations to send our leavers on their way. So while the rest of us have a while to wait for our summer holiday, Mrs Smith - enjoy the summer in your garden!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xddl8fpf2uA
Have a happy Easter holiday everyone and we’ll look forward to seeing you back at school on Monday 17th April. Look out for our first blog of the summer term on Sunday 16th April.
See you in the week,Mrs G