Royal Russell Junior School Newsletter 25 February 22

Senior School Newsletter 25 February 2022 Dear Parents and Carers, Although it may take a little time for adults to get up and running following the half-term break, our children need no warm up and have leapt into the usual busy week of amazing opportunities. Both Lower and Upper Junior Celebration assemblies were packed with the amazing achievements of so many children from across the whole range of subjects and co-curricular areas. You will see that sport has played a huge part this week and that Book Week kicks off in earnest next week.

During assembly this morning I reminded all Upper Junior children to be neatly dressed for school on Monday morning as we look forward to welcoming prospective families to our Open Morning.

Charity Work The Junior School continues to work carefully and have an impact in a number of selected charity areas. Some of our Year 6 pupils are busy preparing ideas for presentation to colleagues about which charities they would like to support and how we can help them. I look forward to hearing their ideas and working alongside our Pupil Parliament. Other charity initiatives taking place this half term include: Book Drive – Thank you for all of your contributions. The Children’s Book Project are coming to collect the books on Monday.

We will be collecting donations for the Marie Curie Great Daffodil Appeal from Tuesday next week.

We are planning an exciting day of events in the Junior School at the end of this term in support of the BDA (British Dyslexia Association). I look forward to sharing more details with you in the coming weeks.

Covid Response My thanks, as ever, for your continued support with our response to Covid. On Monday 21 February, the Prime Minister announced the ‘Living with Covid-19’ plan.

There are two significant changes for schools:

1. Changes to testing in education and childcare settings and children’s social care services From Monday 21 February, the Government is removing the guidance for staff and students in most education and childcare settings to undertake twice-weekly asymptomatic testing.

2. Changes to self-isolation and daily testing of close contacts From Thursday 24 February, the Government will remove the legal requirement to selfisolate following a positive test. Adults and children who test positive will continue to be advised to stay at home and avoid contact with other people for at least 5 full days, and then continue to follow the guidance until they have received 2 negative test results on consecutive days. In addition, the Government will:

No longer ask fully vaccinated close contacts and those aged under 18 to test daily for 7 days, and remove the legal requirement for close contacts who are not fully vaccinated to self-isolate.

End routine contact tracing. Contacts will no longer be required to self-isolate or advised to take daily tests.

Staff, children and young people should attend their education settings as usual. This includes staff who have been in close contact within their household, unless they are able to work from home.

The School Leadership Team met on Wednesday evening to discuss these changes and we have decided to operate with the following guidelines, subject to a weekly review, through to the end of this term on Friday 1 April.

Pupils in the Senior School and all staff will continue to wear face coverings in corridors and communal areas. Staff and pupils are welcome to wear face coverings, in other areas, especially where there may be crowds of people or reduced ventilation.

Visitors to the School will be expected to wear face coverings in corridors and communal areas. For events organised in School, we may advise the audience to wear a face covering if the venue is going to be crowded.

Staff and day pupils are no longer required to test twice weekly. Separate arrangements will apply for boarding pupils.

Until 1 April, if you have symptoms of Covid-19 you should arrange a test and you should stay at home and avoid contact with other people. If your test result is positive, please follow the government advice; this means you should stay at home for five full days.

Following the five day isolation, you should return to school when you have received two negative LFT tests on consecutive days or when the full 10 day period has elapsed, whichever is the sooner.

There will be no contact tracing, self-isolation or daily testing required for close contacts.

Regular handwashing and cleaning of surfaces remains a key part of our control measures.

We also advise that classroom windows remain open to enable good ventilation during lessons.

After 1 April, the guidelines will change again and we will update you in time for the start of the summer term.

As we enter this new phase of Living with Covid, our best advice is for the whole School Community to exercise strong common sense and collective responsibility.

Alongside the Covid guidance in place until 1 April as outlined above, please follow the long-established pattern that if pupils are unwell with illnesses other than Covid, they should stay at home until they are well enough to return to school.

Online Learning For the remainder of this term, our guidelines for remote learning will not change.

If a pupil is at home and unwell with Covid, they should not take part in remote learning. If a pupil is self-isolating because of a positive Covid test and has recovered sufficiently to be well enough to take part in remote learning, they should do so until the end of their period of isolation.

Any pupil absent for illnesses other than Covid is at home because they are not well enough to attend school, and so they should not take part in remote learning.

We will update this guidance after 1 April, once new guidelines come into force.

Year 1 & 2 Outdoor Club New this term!

The Outdoor club have been planning their adventures this term. We shared ideas for what we would like to do in our sessions with Ms Sydney-Ford. So far we have built dens in the woods with branches, used the large apparatus for our balance and coordination, created magic memory sticks out of wool and fallen sticks, and got creative exploring bark rubbings in our forest.

Student voices: ‘ I like the activities in Outdoor club’ Ayden 1W ‘I like when we make things outside’ Olivia 1T ‘I like everything in our club and our den.’ Elliot 1W ‘I like exploring outside and the forest’ Castora 2D

IAPS Netball Regional Tournament The U11 netball squad travelled to Hurstpierpoint where we experienced a range of weather. It was raining when we arrived and the court and ball was rather wet!

Our first game was a tough one against The Study where we played well however needed to settle into our game. Next was a good win against Brambletye which lifted our spirits. After a long break where it was lovely and sunny, we had a close fought game with St Hilary's followed by St Catherine's who took the advantage of our slightly rushed play.

At lunch, the weather turned and it hailed briefly and was very windy, Mrs Lloyd bag of tricks came in handy with hats, gloves, and scarfs to keep the team warm.

We were into the Plate competition and had to play Wimbledon, while warming up it snowed briefly and then luckily started to dry off.

We started off on the back foot in our match and despite working well as a team found ourselves 4-0 down at halftime. All was not lost with our new rotation going in our favour with Margaret & Rubie shooting with Ruby in centre court. Everyone dug deep and soon the goals started to go in, very soon we found ourselves level at 4-4. With minutes to play the girls stayed calm and worked hard to get the ball into our shooting circle. GOAL we were winning, we just needed to keep possession of the ball to win.

Finally, the whistle went and into the Plate final we went.

The final was another tough game against Halstead who quickly found their rhythm and scored 4 in the first half. Second half we worked super hard to claw back a few goals however the final score was 3-7.

Congratulations to the squad who all played a fantastic part in our silver in the Plate competition. Thanks to Miss Johnson too who came with us to coach the team with Mrs Lloyd.

London Youth Games Sports Hall Athletics On Friday 11th February the U11 Sports Hall Athletics team headed to Westcroft Leisure centre to represent Croydon at the London Youth games Regional qualifier.

With 8 teams in total we needed a top 3 finish to go through to the finals. It was a difficult one to judge with pupils taking part in different field events from speed bounce to triple jump, vertical jump to chest push. We had 3 pupils doing each activity and every score counted towards the final total.

The pupils came back having given 100% and producing super scores. It was slightly easier to gauge the track results as all 8 teams raced in each event. With some solid top 4 finishes we knew the scores would be close. Everyone had done all they could so it was just a waiting game.

When the final results were announced the team finished in a very credible 4th place by 24 points. The pupils were understandably disappointed however Mr Hudson and Mrs Lloyd were very proud of the teams excellent efforts to not only get to this point but do so well too. Well done!

From the Sports Department Every week is different in the PE department and that is what we love about teaching sport. From first thing Monday morning with Y5 right through to Y3/4 games on Friday afternoon we teach every year group in the Junior School and love the range of activities we deliver. With the addition of clubs after school and fixtures there is not much time left in our busy schedules. Weekend tournaments and competitions give us another great opportunity to participate in some excellent competitions.

The range of sports go from dance, dodgeball and table tennis to basketball, gymnastics and badminton. Swimming, hockey and netball to orienteering, rugby and handball. The lower juniors learn the key skills in a huge range of sports, Y2 have been particularly impressive with their Badminton skills, Y1 have been working together during team games. Reception are developing their throwing and catching skills and Nursery are gaining in confidence in all their activities.

In just 1 week at school there can be fixtures in hockey, netball, girls and boys football, swimming, trampolining and cross country. Since the start of this year 70 Junior School teams have played in over 200 fixtures in 10 different sports!

It’s is wonderful to see the pupils flourish in these sports and activities and grab every opportunity with open arms. All we ask is for pupils to do their best and we see this every day.

Netball

Football

Swimming

Hockey

Cross – Country

Trampolining and Gymnastics

Biathlon

Thank you from the Salvation Army On behalf of The Salvation Army in New Addington/The Vine Foodbank I want to thank you once again for a truly amazing show of support for our Christmas Family Program.

Thank you for taking the time and effort to choose such beautiful gifts and delicious food items. It was clear that much thought and compassion went into your giving.

2021 was another tough year for many families and we are so grateful to you for joining with us in facilitating the Christmas Gift program once again. We really couldn’t do it without your support. Together we helped over 150 families.

We wish you every blessing for 2022.

Coach House Sustainable Uniform Shop The Coach House sustainable uniform shop on campus will be open on Friday 4th March at the normal times of 3.00pm – 4.15pm.