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The Link Newsletter #46

Friday 17th March 2023

Dear Parents and Carers,

I was pleased with the responses from parents following my last newsletter where I shared age restrictions for social media apps and urged parents to monitor the use of their child's mobile phone, tablets and devices. We understand that there is considerable peer pressure  which encourages children to participate in WhatsApp groups. However, we need to recognise that not all children are able to use these tools safely or appropriately.

Since the last newsletter, we have been exceptionally busy with a multitude of events.

Firstly, a HUGE thank you to every parent who made an appointment to meet with their child's class teacher. We hope that the meeting was useful and gave you a greater insight into the progress that your child is making and the areas for further development. It is only through working together that we can achieve strong outcomes for the children. I cannot emphasise enough the important contribution that you make when hearing your child read regularly and when setting expectations for completing weekly homework. It is often very evident to us how your involvement impacts on the children's learning.

Our World Book Day was once again an enormous success. The children looked wonderful in their costumes which were carefully planned. We noted the home-made elements during the parades that took place that morning. Well done parents!

You can take a look at all the children who took part in World Book Day as they walked or danced past the camera after their parade in the church.

https://vimeo.com/user110932192/wbd-2023

This year we gave awards to two children in each year group who used creativity and flair in their costume designs. The winners are pictured below.

 
Later in the day, much fun was had as the children built reading dens for themselves and their classmates to settle down to their reading books. A prize of books was given to Year 5 who constructed two superb dens in Hawk and Falcon classrooms. Good job team!

The Travelling Book Fair was very well supported this year and it seemed busier than ever each day. Your support and generosity led to generating £796.94 commission which is directly available to St John's to spend on additional reading books for our library and class book corners. This amount is a huge achievement given the fair only ran for 4 days instead of the usual 5 days.

Finally, a big thank you to Mrs Bage who led our World Book Day experience this year and who orchestrated the reading den activity and chose the whole school book, The Midnight Fair, of which the children continue to use as a stimulus for their writing over the last two weeks. 

SPORTSHALL ATHLETICS

I am delighted to see St John's children representing our school in the indoor Sportshall Athletics competitions. Children in the Year 5/6 team did exceptionally well to progress to the area finals. However, they missed out by just four points which meant they missed our on going to the regional finals in Southend.

Layla in Year 1 exclaimed...

This is the best day ever!

As is usual for St John's, the children in Year 1 and Year 5/6 represented the school brilliantly. Well done children and thank you Miss Lee, Mrs Wilkinson, Mr Perez and Mrs Watkins.

CROSS COUNTRY

Children from Year 3 to Year 6 participated in this Cross Country event at Ashton Playing Fields in Chigwell. The heavy rain before the event and on the day made conditions really challenging for the children. It takes great resilience to work through it, beat the weather and still be successful. I'm delighted that all the runners gave it their all, some achieving medal positions. Congratulations team!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RED NOSE DAY

Today has been a tremendous success, raising £960.37 for the Comic Relief through donations for not wearing uniform, for entering the 'design your own red nose' competition and for Pie'ing a teacher or Prefect. This has to be our best year yet. So much fun was had by all. Well done to the School Council for coming up with these fabulous ideas and thank you Mr Whale for coordinating a fun-filled day.

       

and some of our Red Nose winners include:

                            

TRAUMA PERCEPTIVE PRACTICE (TPP)

Over the past two years, the staff team at St John's have been trained in a relatively new strategy called Trauma Perceptive Practice. All staff, including teachers, learning support assistants, middays and the administrative team have all received this training. 18 months ago I spoke about this at a Head Teacher's presentation evening and I thought I would give an update on what it is and what this means for you and your child.

In its most simplest forms, trauma perceptive practice refers to all staff having an understanding that all children have had unique experiences as they have grown up, starting from the moment they were born. It would be a rare occurrence for a child not to have experienced a trauma at some point in their lives. In this situation, we are referring to a trauma that has impacted their ability to regulate their emotions and responses to any given situation, particularly if current or future situations remind them of how they felt during that difficult time in their lives. As a staff team, we have learnt that this response or reaction to a situation can initiated a very natural human response of Fight, Flight or Freeze. You may be familiar with some of these responses when your child has reacted to a particular situation. 

We know that some of our children have lived through some traumatic experiences, such as dealing with the death of a family pet, parental separation, Covid lockdown, long-term illness that they have experienced themselves or an illness within their family or friend network or managing the loss of a family or friend. Many of these lived experiences are unavoidable and preparing our children with skills and strategies for managing their emotions and feelings is an important aspect what you do as parents and the work that we can do in school. We know that life events in the past can impact on a child's ability to engage socially with others, manage feelings and emotions, and impact on their academic development.

The TPP values that guides our overall approach are:

Compassion and kindness instead of blame and shame.

Hope instead of hopelessness

Connection and belonging rather than disconnection

Fundamentally, our current behaviour and attitudes policy references the importance of building relationships with all our children.

In the next newsletter, I will explain a bit more about the strategies we use to support our children to regulate, we call this 'co-regulation' because it's as much about what we do as adults that can impact on how well a child is able to reduce their stresses and anxiety.

EASTER ACTIVITIES 2023

The Easter holidays will soon be upon us and as always Active Essex will be providing holiday activities for children. Please look at the Essex Active website for details of the activities that you can enrol your children in. (There is also a link to this and some further information Under the parents and carers tab on our website.)

Active Essex

FOODBANK DONATIONS

Epping Forest Foodbank is supporting local families this spring.

Over 90% of the food distributed by foodbanks in The Trussell Trust network is donated by the public – that’s why food donations are absolutely vital to their efforts in giving everyone referred to them a balanced and nutritious three-day supply of food.

St John's CE Primary School will collect for Epping Forest Foodbank from now the Easter Break.  Donations can be brought to school, for information on what is currently needed please see the website: https://eppingforest.foodbank.org.uk/give-help/donate-food/

SWEETS AND DRINKS

Just a reminder to everyone that sweets are not permitted in school at any point. We have noticed that some children have brought packets of sweets into school in their lunchboxes. The same is true for cans of fizzy drinks. These are not permitted either.

 

SCITT (SCHOOL CENTRED INITIAL TEACHER TRAINING)

Are you considering a teaching career?

St John's is the lead school for the (Ofsted Outstanding) West Essex SCITT programme. As you may know we usually have four or five trainees working with experienced class teachers and leaders at St John's. It is an excellent model of on-the-job training, working four days in the classroom and a fifth day learning pedagogical theory and practice. 

If you are interested in teaching, please see the flyer and visit the West Essex SCITT website.

If you would like further details, please email vsmullen@efspt.org

CROSSING PATROL ADVERT

We have been blessed to have Sarah join us as our new Crossing Patrol Officer and she is very much enjoying the role. Given how busy the High Road is in the mornings, we do have two crossing patrols allocated to the school site. Essex Education are currently recruiting to this second post. If you are interested, or know someone who might be, please pass on these details and apply. Crossing Patrol Officer job advert (for some reason we are listed under Loughton.)

NURTURING PROGRAMME

Starting on Tuesday 25th April, the Trust are running a Nurturing Programme aimed at 'how to get the most out of family life.' Families have really benefitted from this 10 week programme, running between 10am and 12pm in the church hall here at St John's. Please see further details and contact information to book your place.

 ...AND FINALLY...

Our school priorities are available on our website. Please take a note of what we are doing to improve the outcomes of all children at St John's. 

 


Jonathan Furness
Head Teacher