Useful Diary Dates

3rd-14th April Easter holidays (school closed).

17th April Easter Monday (school closed).

18th April School reopens.

20th April Family film night

1st May May bank holiday (school closed)

8th-12th May Year 6 SAT’s week

8th-10th May Year 5 residential Marle Hall

10th-12th May Year 4 residential Marle Hall

29th May -2nd June Half term (school closed)

5th June Staff INSET day (school closed)

7th-8th June Year 3 residential to Beeston

12th June Tempest Photography class pictures

13th June Curriculum evening – Punctuation and Grammar 18.45-20:00

21st – 23rd June Year 6 residential to Conwy

26th-30th June Health week

29th June Race for Life

19th July Year 6 production provisional date

Christleton Primary School Quarry Lane Christleton Chester CH3 7AY

01244 981189

www.christletonprimaryschool.co.uk head@christletonprimary.cheshire.sch.uk

@christletonpri

Friday 31st March 2017

Spring Term Newsletter : Six

Dear Parents / Carers

Half Term

Firstly thank you for all your support this half term. The term has flown by with many events taking place. The staff and I wish you all a pleasant Easter break and look forward to welcoming you back on Tuesday 18th of April for what we have planned to be an exciting Summer Term.

Highlights from the Spring Term (not an exclusive list by any means!)

Visitor’s to enhance the curriculum including, Sophia Hatfield, Richard O’Neill, The fire service, Image Musical Theatre and The Happy Puzzle Co.

Class trips which have included Young Voices, Chester Zoo, Winsford Recycling Centre, Knowsley Safari Park and The Storybarn at Calderstones.

Whole school events such as: Red Nose Day and World Book Day.

The choir attending the Young Voices Concerts

Year 4’s Music for Life Concert

Various sports competitions including football, basketball and netball.

A mathematics themed week.

What to look forward to in the summer term

PTA events including Family Film Night, Christleton’s Got Talent (formally strawberry and wine) Family Festival (formally Family Fun)

Residential trips for years 3 (Beeston), 4 (Marle Hall), 5 (Marle Hall) and 6 (Conway).

Health Week (including Sports Day and Race 4 Life)

The Year 6 production.

Tea with the Headteacher

Over the last fortnight I have enjoyed meeting several Year 6 and Year 2 children for head teacher’s tea. During these meetings it was lovely to hear the children speak about their learning, challenges that they had overcome and the work they were proud of and enjoyed.

Curriculum Evening

Thank you to all those who voted in the Twitter survey, carried out in February, for the next curriculum workshop. With 43% ‘Spelling and Grammar’ was voted as the most desired evening. I have therefore organized an information evening which will provide up-to-date information about this area of the curriculum and how you can support your child / children at home. This event will be run by the ‘Literacy Company’ and will take place between 18:45-20:00 on June 13th. The evening will focus primarily on the grammar and punctuation aspects of English. While this may be most useful for parents of children from year 2 upwards, all parents are welcome as the content will be useful for everyone and will inform parents of younger pupils what is likely to come up. We look forward to seeing you there.

Midday Supervisors

Do you know anyone who would be interested in a midday supervisor role? We are currently looking to recruit staff for this position. If you have any interest or know anyone who would be interested please contact the school office.

Site Maintenance Officer

As some of you may already be aware Geraint, our site maintenance officer, was taken ill a couple of weeks ago. It is anticipated that he will absent for a significant period of time. Since he fell ill the school staff have worked together to cover his role until we have got more substantive measures in place. We have tried to continue to run the school as smoothly as possible during this and have appreciated your understanding. I am sure that you would join us in wishing Geraint a speedy recovery.

School meals

Thank you to all of you who completed the school meals survey. It provided some very valuable feedback which has enabled informative and productive conversations to take place between the school and Edsential (our catering provider). The main finding of the survey was that a significant number of the respondents would like a larger choice with the jacket potato option appearing less frequently on the weekly menus. With this in mind, I have worked with Diane, the school cook, to consider a new menu which will be in place during the Summer Term (please see attachment). We hope that this menu provides a wider range of meal choices for the children. It is the intention to review this change at the end of the term. Any feedback at this point would be greatly appreciated as it helps us to ensure we are providing the best menu possible to the children.

School Snack

From the summer term we will be selling school snacks Monday to Friday at break time to the year 5’s as well as the year 6’s (previously this option had only been available to the year 6’s). The snacks available will be priced as follows during the summer term.

Item Cost Days available

Toast 20p Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday

Half a bagel 25p Tuesday

Cuplet (Fruit drink) 30p All week

Ten Million Minute Reading Challenge

A huge thank you and well done to all the children who participated in this challenge! With all the data collected and collated from over 231 schools across the country I am pleased to say that we finished in 45th position.

Fortnightly Attendance

Well done to the children in year 6 with the highest percentage attendance of 98.5%.

Difference from last

fortnights figure

1st Place Year 6 98.5%

2nd Place Year 2 98.3%

3rd Place Year 3 97.8%

4th Place Year 4 97.1%

5th Place Reception 96.7%

Year 1 96.7%

6th Place Year 5 95.6%

School average 97.2%

Thank you for all your support with this as the whole school figure of 97.2% is our highest yet!

Red Nose Day

Thank you for all your support and kind donations. The school raised £407.50 on the day for Comic Relief which is a fantastic acheivement!

Travelling Book Fair

Thank you for all your support with the book fair. We earned commission of £237.03 which will be used by the school to further develop our reading resources.

Sports News

Basketball County Final - Our basketball team gave another super performance at the Cheshire and Warrington Schools final on 17th March, they got through to the semi-finals ending up fourth. Fourth place County Finalists is something to be very proud of, well done to: Aidan, Thomas D, Noah, George, Toby, Aaron and Lewis.

Netball match - We played our second league netball match against Tarvin on Monday 20th with a very impressive 0-11 win. Some excellent team-work and passing was on show, well done to: Charlotte, Toby, Molly, Bethany, Lola, Isabelle H, Christina, Phoebe and Sally.

Football Matches - We played Newton (at home on 21st March) winning 2-0 and Farndon (away 27th March) losing 0-2. Both teams were well matched and as always our football team really tried their best.

We also played in the Danny Jones Memorial Tournament held at Goals on Tuesday morning where the team came second in their group with three wins and three draws. Well done to: Lewis, Noah, Aidan, Aaron, Jack, Toby, Thomas D, Tom, Junior, Niall, Mathew and Harry.

Summer Term Clubs

Letters and details about the summer term clubs have been sent out with the children, please ensure that you sign up as soon as possible if you would like your child/children to take part. The clubs start week beginning 24th April and finish week beginning 17th July.

Daily Mile

There is significant evidence that physical activity makes children healthier, happier, perform better at school and in life. On Friday 21st April, after the Easter break, we will launch our Daily Mile (to start the week commencing 24th April). By incorporating this daily activity into the children’s day we hope to increase the opportunity for all children to be active.

Fund Raiser

Aaron (Year 6 pupil) spoke to the whole school today in our celebration assembly. On Wednesday 19th April Aaron will be holding a penalty shoot-out event on the school field after lunch. He is holding this event to raise money for Poppy Smith a young girl who is very close to

his family and has been struck down with a serious illness (Enterovirus) which has destroyed or damaged many of her nerves and hospitalized her for the past 6 months. Aaron is looking to raise money through the penalty shoot-out which will help Poppy’s parents adapt their home for when Poppy returns. Aaron is charging 20p per go, 50p for 3 go’s and £1 for 6.

There is also a just giving page which can be reached by following the link http://www.treeofhope.org.uk/team-poppy/

Any support would obviously be appreciated by Aaron and his family.

Pizza Idol

A huge well done to Jessica Angrave who won the Ring O’ Bells Pizza Idol competition this year! Her pizza will be on the menu shortly!

CPSA 100 Club Recent Draws

Congratulations to…

January

First prize winner Jan Barrack (number 40)

£100 Second prize winner

Jenny Brown (number 95)

£30

February

First prize winner Graham Hughes (number 73)

£100 Second prize winner

Clare Joyce (number 1)

£30

March

First prize winner Caroline Marrison Gill (number 16)

£100 Second prize winner

Lindsay Lancaster (number 11)

£30

There are still some numbers spare. Anyone wishing to know more about the 100 Club or wanting to join,

please contact Caroline Gill (Jude - Year 5) caznroo@aol.com

PTA

Diary dates for upcoming events

Event Date Family Film Night April 20

th

Christleton’ s Got Talent (formally Strawberry’s and wine) July 5th

(Provisional date)

Family Festival July 14th

(Provisional date)

Parent Text services (ParentPay)

A quick reminder to return the data collection sheet provided as soon as possible. The school will then start to collate the information and update the school systems which will feed into ParentPay. When all of these systems are updated with the correct information the school will be in a position to move forward and use the system to accept payments over the internet. Within school the teachers will be using the SIMS system to start taking the registers after the half term and moving over to the ParentPay system to record the children’s meal choices.

CCTV

The school has a duty to inform you that for security purposes, we have CCTV cameras installed on the front elevation of the building. These cameras monitor the main entrance and car park of the school.

School Governors

Thank you to all of those people who registered an interest for the two co-opted governor positions. I am pleased to inform you that Simon Rhead and Lucy Davis have been successful in this process.

Silver Award Winners.

Congratulations to

Last week’s winners (24.03.17)

Ethan (Year 1), Elsie (Year 5) and Alice J (Year 5)

This week’s winners (31.03.17)

Noah (Year 6), Bethany (Year 6), Henry (Year 6), Aiden (Year 6), Christina (Year 6) and Phoebe (Year 6)

Kind Regards

Oliver Mitchell (Headteacher)

School Funding

As you may be aware the Government are planning to introduce a new way of funding schools (NFF – New Funding Formula) over the next few years. As a collective group of schools in Cheshire West and Chester we are concerned that ultimately, in our opinion, these proposed changes will have a negative impact on the standards and quality of education delivered across all schools.

If the NFF is introduced, it is likely to result in:

Staff reductions

A narrowing of the curriculum taught in schools

A reduction in the number, and range, of extra-curriculum activities.

“Schools, across the country face significant real terms cuts” Institute for Fiscal Studies

“Cheshire West is one of the biggest losers under this new funding formula” Nicole Meardon Cabinet Member

CWaC Council

“Many schools will have to scrap courses to make ends meet” NAHT

“These cuts will strike at the heart of our local schools and will have a profound impact on the education that our children receive” Justin Madders, MP

“98% of schools will be worse off by 2020” National Union of Teachers

“The proposed funding formula will not deliver the money needed by schools to deliver the best possible education” Institute for Fiscal Studies

“Fewer staff will mean less individual attention and larger classes” NASUWT

“In the future, our decisions will be about cutting and reducing, not improving and progressing” A CWaC Headteacher

Individually and collectively we have written to MP’s and urged our concerns to be raised with the Government. Obviously if as a parent you are concerned about this issue we would encourage you to do the same to ensure that this proposal continues to have a high profile.

You can also help by: ‘Following’, ‘Tweeting’, ‘Retweeting’, ‘Spreading the word to parents / carers and members of the school community.

Twitter: @stopschoolcuts @fairfundschools

Facebook: Stop School Cuts in Cheshire West Fair Funding For All Schools

Find out how much Christleton Primary School could lose at

www.schoolcuts.org.uk

As you will appreciate the school is working very hard to ensure that any decisions made are in the best interests of the children and focus on maintaining teaching and learning standards and the quality

curriculum which we provide.

Filled Omelette with

Chips and Beans.

Vegetarian Sausage

and Chips with Peas

or Beans