‘Mayflower Primary School ensures children learn in a safe, caring and enriching environment. Children are taught how to keep themselves safe, to develop positive and healthy relationships, how to avoid situations where they might be at risk including by being exploited.’

http://mayflower.j2webby.com

Friday 5th April 2019

TERM DATES 2018/19

School closes: Friday 12th April School opens: Monday 29th April

School closes: Friday 3rd May School opens: Tuesday 7th May

School closes: Friday 24th May School opens: Monday 3rd June

School closes: Friday 12th July School opens: Thursday 29th August

School closes: Friday 11th October School opens: Monday 21st October

ATTENDANCE

Mayflower School’s attendance target for the Academic year 2018/19 has been set

once again at 95.2%+. Having received paperwork from the Local Authority, I am

pleased to inform parents’ that we did just meet our target last year, but I am hoping

that we can all work really hard to improve it for this academic year.

At present, our attendance at 28/03/2019 stands at: 96.1%, which includes the

Nursery. If we exclude the Nursery, it stands at 97%. We are still maintaining a good

level of attendance at present, and I hope that you will help us to improve this further

by sending your children to school every day.

Class attendance figures for March 2019 were:

7th March 14th March 21st March 28th March

F1 AM 90% 90.8% 95.4% 90.8%

F1 PM 90.8% 83.8% 92.3% 97.7%

LA 92.3% 94.7% 97.3% 99.3%

AK 93.3% 95.3%% 98% 98%

AB 96% 97.2% 96.6% 97.9%

KM 98.1% 100% 96.1% 97.4%

RMC 97.6% 96.2% 93.8% 94.1%

AJ 96.1% 98.7% 97.1% 99%

PA 94.3% 91.7% 97.7% 98%

LG 99.3% 96.7% 97.7% 96.7%

KW 96.3% 96% 96.7% 96%

CR 99.4% 98.1% 96.1% 99%

PV 96.3% 93.3% 98% 98.3%

SD 95.3% 94.3% 97% 96.6%

RC 99% 97.6% 97.1% 95.2%

CS 100% 98.5% 98% 95.5%

BW 96.7% 99% 100% 98.6%

Our trophy winners for March were:

Foundation Key Stage 1 Lower

Key Stage 2

Upper

Key Stage 2

7th March AK KM CR CS 14th March AK KM CR BW 21st March AK AJ PA/LG BW 28th March LA AJ CR BW

Congratulations to all of these classes for their fantastic achievement of winning the

trophies in March.

SINGING TROPHY

The singing trophy for March is going to our afternoon

Nursery children who are fantastic and join in with

enthusiasm and joy every week. Well done.

COMIC RELIEF

Once again thank you to all our Parent’s, Children and Staff

for a great day, great costumes and great jokes.

You managed to raise a magnificent £305.52.

NURSERY PLACES (F1)

If you have got children at home who turn 3 years old before the end of August 2019, and

you would like them to attend Mayflower Nursery, can you please come into school and put

their name down on our Nursery Waiting List. Many thanks.

LIVING STREETS – WALK TO SCHOOL

Thank you to all our families who are making the effort to walk, scoot or park and stride

into school in order to earn the monthly badges.

Class of the Month: January 3PA February 6RC

If you can’t walk all the way to school, please try and make

the effort to park and stride instead.

This involves parking a few minutes’ walk away from school

and will help make the approach to school much safer and

nicer for everyone travelling in.

Please avoid parking on the pavements, zig-zag lines, over

junctions at which families are trying to cross and away

from the sections of road marked on the map with a red

cross.

WORLD BOOK DAY

We had a wonderful day celebrating reading and enjoying stories from around the world.

Thank you to all our families who put so much effort into the wonderful costumes.

TOY SALE

A huge thank you to our families who supported our fundraising efforts at the Toy Sale.

SCIENCE WEEK

We had a fantastic Science

Week in March looking at

Science Through Stories and

we’ve made a short video

sharing all of the different

activities which the classes

undertook.

Some of our Year 6 children

also demonstrated some

fantastic experiments from

their Science Club.

VISITORS

International Visitors

We have had many visitors from many different countries in school during February and

March. We have had teachers from Panama who were studying at the University of

Leicester visit us for one day.

Three lovely teachers from Guadalajara in Spain have been in school on an Erasmus Plus

KA1 Job Shadowing week. We have been listening to and learning with each other all week,

and are all working hard to be the most effective teachers we can be.

Also, our old friend Sandrine Rose from France visited us for a KA1 Job Shadowing week

where she was particularly interested in looking at how we have developed our yoga and

mindfulness provision in school.

Leicester City of Sanctuary

Year 6 invited Tess Newman, who works with Leicester

City of Sanctuary, and Jaffor, a user of the services they

provide, in to speak to the pupils about refugees and the

asylum process.

This was to support the learning the children were doing

in response to a book they were studying in English - “A

Story Like the Wind” by Gill Lewis.

The children showed real respect, understanding and

compassion and were a real credit to the school.

Rev. Dr. Tom Wilson – Living Well Together Project

Year 5 are once again this year engaging with this fantastic project to help us develop our

skills and understanding around living successfully in a multi-cultural, multi-faith

environment. The Rev. Dr. Tom Wilson came into school to launch the project and to start

getting the children to consider the issues we would be thinking about.

Creative Learning Services - Wild Things Workshop

Year 4 had a whole load of fun exploring the natural world with some exciting activities.

Cricket Coach from Leicestershire Country Cricket Club

We have had a lively assembly, some great

cricket sessions and a very popular after-

school cricket club with Sam, our LCCC

coach.

He has shared some really important life

messages, as well as cricketing skills:

#WinWellLooseWell

#PlayAsATeam

#HaveAGo

#RespectOthers

#PlayHardButPlayFair

Alexander Whitley Dance Company

Year 5 thoroughly enjoyed their Dance and Space

Workshop delivered by professional dancers from the

Alexander Whitley Dance Company and linking to their

science topic of Space.

Our visitors were hugely impressed by our children’s

science knowledge and loved how the children threw

themselves into creating their orbital dances.

John Rolfe CBE, British Council

Huge thanks to Mr Rolfe from the British Council for coming all the way from London to

help us celebrate being awarded our Second International School Award. For once, it was

the teachers’ turn to receive certificates for all their hard work!

Do please enjoy this video which explains the activities the school had to undertake in

order to achieve the award: https://youtu.be/X4jpvt1aoP4

Claire Williamson – Stained Glass Window Artist

We are planning some exciting projects with Claire as part of the 800th anniversary

celebrations of St Denys Church in Evington! Watch this space!

Creative Learning Services – The Gift of the Gods (Egypt)

Thank you to CLS for their fascinating morning in Year 3 exploring all things Egyptian!

Creative Learning Services – Dinosaur Discover workshop

Another amazing workshop for our younger children who thoroughly enjoyed discovering

dinosaurs!

Our Local PCSO Phil visited Reception

SCHOOL VISITS

Year 4 - Author Week

What a wonderful opportunity to be inspired by authors to get reading!

Year 3 – Local History and Evington House walk

Huge thanks to Ismail Dale from Historic England whose knowledge and enthusiasm about

local history cannot help but rub off on our children and staff!

Year 5 – National Holocaust Centre

On 21st and 22nd March, 180 pupils in year five from three Leicester schools visited the

National Holocaust Centre. The visits were part of the Living Well Together project

funded by the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Leicestershire Police.

Pupils learnt from the experiences of a ten year old German Jewish boy and heard the

testimony of a Holocaust Survivor. It was a memorable and moving day that enabled

pupils continue learning how to live well together.

https://www.stphilipscentre.co.uk/news/visits-to-the-national-holocaust-centre

INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITY

Erasmus Plus KA2 – Thinking Allowed

Miss Brown and Mrs Boydon travelled to Finland during February half term for our termly

project meeting where plans were made for the next phase of our work together.

Staff CPD

We were delighted to be able to send four members of staff to Oulu in Finland for a KA1

Course – Do Joy. As more teachers and teaching assistants travel to visit schools in other

countries, we can develop our own practice taking the best of what we see and embedding

it into our teaching at Mayflower.

We were also able to send two teachers on a KA1 Stress Management course in Spain and

they will be sharing their learning with the staff to promote well-being for all at Mayflower.

eTwinning – Hands of the World

Mayflower has a number of ongoing eTwinning projects

running throughout the year. One of them, Hands of the

World, started in January and is bringing lots of joy to

lots of people in lots and lots of different countries.

Each month a song is released and schools from around

the world are assigned a line. Each school learns the

Makaton sing language for the line of the song and videos

their children signing it. This short video clip is send to

the project co-ordinator and she knits all the videos

together to make one video that includes many hands

from around the world. Our song for March was “I’d Like

to Teach the World to Sing”. We hope you enjoy it.

PE

Gymnastics Competition

Gymnastics Final

Year 2 Festival

KS2 Cross Country Running

Year 3 and 4 Tag Rugby

Year 5 and 6 QuickSticks Hockey

Year 5 7-a-side Football

Year 5 and 6 Hi 5 Netball League

Year 5 and 6 Hi 5 Netball League

Year 3 and 4 7-a-side Football

Year 3 and 4 7-a-side Football

COMMUNICATION WITH PARENTS

From the 1st April we will be sending out most of our correspondence to parents via email.

If you have not let us have your email address yet, please come into school and complete

a permission form.

SCHOOL DINNERS

From 29th April you will be able to pay for your children’s lunches online and this will work

in the same way as paying for school visits. You should have already received a letter

informing you of this via email, and we will also be sending hard copies. If you have any

questions please do not hesitate to call the school office

Our primary intention is to make this process easier for you and bring school lunches into

line with the rest of our financial procedures. Needless to say, if this does create any

difficulties for you, please let us know, because we would like to ensure that as many

children as possible have hot meals at school.

AND FINALLY…

School does seem to be very busy at the moment and I always see this as a very good

thing. When we step-back and look at the range of different opportunities that have

been created for our children, it makes me feel very proud indeed. I hope that our

newsletter gives some real insight as to what does happen in school and that your

children provide you with plenty of positive feedback, as a result.

This month, I would like to make my primary focus governors. As many of you will know,

all schools have a Governing Body, and they will have a very close involvement with what is

known as the strategic management of the school. I am a governor, and so is Mrs.

Boydon, but we also have other people who fulfil this role, including parents, Local

Authority nominated governors and people that have been co-opted into their roles. Few

schools make good progress without challenge and support from their governors and I am

indebted to the governors at our school, who have worked so hard on our behalf.

As with the leadership team of the school, there is also a structure across our Governing

Body. They are led by a Chair, supported by a Vice-Chair, with committees that look at

lots of different aspects of our work. The main purpose of my commentary is to inform

you that new governors have been elected to these important roles, as follows:

Chair of the Governing Body: Mrs. Yasmin Nana

Vice Chair of the Governing Body: Mr. Imtiaz Patel

Over the coming weeks, months, terms and years, I shall look forward to working closely

with all of our governors as we continue to make Mayflower School the very best that it

can be for all of our pupils. In the meantime, I would like to congratulate Mrs. Nana and

Mr. Patel on their appointments at this exciting time in our very special school’s

development.

To finish, I would like to thank you all for the care and sensitivity with which you have

broached the very challenging subject of RSE. I certainly seem to have received some

positive feedback from you regarding our school’s consultative process and a number of

you have already committed to our open evening, which will take place in the summer

term. As with the letter I published earlier this week, I wish to offer my assurance that

we will be working closely with you to develop provision that is right for our children, our

communities, and that is supportive of the Unique British Values that all state schools

have a duty to uphold. By working together in this way, I feel confident that we will be

able to achieve a successful outcome, and to this I shall look forward. All that now

remains is for me to wish you all, on behalf of the children, staff and governors, a very

restful Easter. Please remember that school closes at 3.15 on 12.04.19, and reopens to

pupils at 8.35 on 29.04.19.

Mr. L. Whitney – Head Teacher