Weekly Update 1

SEPTEMBER 2018

ST. JOHN’S RC PRIMARY SCHOOL

NEWSLETTER WELCOME BACK! We hope you all had a wonderful summer holiday and we warmly welcome you back to school. We are looking forward to a busy and exciting term with lots of stimulating learning across the curriculum. We would also like to extend a very warm welcome to all our new families across the school.

STAFF We welcome Miss Knight (Year 6) Mrs Solomon (Year 6 booster) and Mrs McGovern (TA) to our school family. We’re sure that they will be very happy here and you will welcome them warmly.

UNIFORM The children looked really smart in their uniforms last week.

Please make sure that ALL items are labelled including PE kit.

Children who are taking part in sporting activities during the day will need to wear their school PE kit - navy blue t-shirt and shorts (football kits are only to be worn when in the after school football clubs.)

COMMUNICATION CONTACT INFORMATION A reminder to all parents and carers to ensure the office staff have all updated contact information including new mobile numbers, contact numbers for other members of the family and any change of address. This information is vital in ensuring we can easily communicate with you and can get hold of you quickly if we need to.

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HOW TO KEEP UPDATED

A full list of dates for the year ahead will be sent out this week.

Twitter is updated regularly with exciting information about what is happening in school. Join us at @st_johns_rc The website is a vital source of information and has new class pages where you will find photos of the children and their homework etc

SEPTEMBER 2018

CONTACTING SCHOOL BY EMAIL We have four email addresses for parents to contact the school, each of which has a specific purpose. Please direct your query to the correct person to get the information that you need. info@stjohnsrc.net - for any queries to be forwarded on to teachers or a member of staff admin@stjohnsrc.net - for general enquires or for aftercare/ morning care head@stjohnsrc.net - for any extremely important or confidential information enrichment@stjohnsrc.net - anything relating to any enrichment clubs (these clubs are all run by outside providers whereas aftercare/morning care are run by school so the enrichment clubs now have their own email address.)

Emails may take up to 3 days to receive a reply so, if your enquiry is urgent, please phone the school office on 0161 881 1040. We would really appreciate emails only being sent in work hours (8am - 6pm) SCHOOLSBUDDY Staff will send all information about anything important via the Schoolsbuddy website/app. This summer, Schoolsbuddy have completely upgraded the app to a newer version. You will have received information regarding this from the office. Please check your email accounts for instructions on how to access the new, improved app.

NEW CURRICULUM This year, we will be changing our curriculum to make it more creative and to give the children a chance to be more involved in their learning. We are adopting the ‘International Primary Curriculum’; an exciting, topic led approach to the curriculum. In adopting this approach our aim, is to produce a 21st Century curriculum which extends knowledge, skills and understanding, develops personal attributes and supports an international perspective in a way that responds to the changing world around us and the needs of our pupils. (All the units are in line with the national curriculum requirements) The IPC qualities develops qualities such as team work, research & creativity, flexibility & thoughtfulness.These attributes will help children to be become able and inspired learners.

In addition to this, children will extend their knowledge and understanding of communities beyond that of their own country by exploring many aspects of other societies and ways of living.

All of the creative arts will be developed within the units and Mrs Law will be with us every Wednesday afternoon to teach art across the school. Sam Morris and Richard Sanderson are also going to be with us a day a week to ensure that the music curriculum is covered in an interesting and exciting way.

As part of our commitment to making our curriculum exciting, creative and rich we have booked curriculum trips for each year group for topics throughout the year. These dates will come to you as part of the whole school dates list.

NUTS IN SCHOOL

We now have 2 children in school with severe nut allergies. We would like to ask everyone to not giving nuts to children to bring into school as a snack or in packed lunches. We appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

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PARENT GOVERNOR

The term of office for our two parent governors has come to an end so we will be looking for two parents currently at St. John’s to apply for the role. The letter with all the details of what the role entails and how to apply will come to you by email early this week. May I take this opportunity to thank Lisa Williamson and Pauline Ashcroft (our outgoing parent governors) for their work and support over the last 4 years.

PTA NEWS PTA AGM - Thursday 20th September (8pm) Venue to be confirmed.

All committee roles will be up for election. Everyone is welcome to stand for these roles and we would welcome everyone from all year groups at the meeting.

ASDA HULME BAG PACK - Saturday 22nd September. (12pm - 4pm) If any one would like to volunteer please contact Chris Grocott. chris.grocott@yahoo.co.uk AUTUMN FAIR- Sunday 30th September at school (1.30pm until 3.30pm) This is always a really fun event! Family and friends are most welcome and if anyone feels that they could help (even for 30 minutes) their class representative would love to hear from you. Raffle tickets will be on sale this week.

SPOOKY DISCO - Thursday 18th October at the Irish Centre. Years 1-6 only.

REFLECTION God of community, you do not see us as rich and poor, as black or white, but as one family, involved with one another, bearing each other’s burdens, standing together.

Help us to see in our every day lives the moments and opportunities for caring and healing and reconciling.

Touch our depths with your Spirit that we may go that extra mile in love.

We make this prayer through Christ our brother, Amen.

Mass times at St. John’s church Fr. McMahon would love to see you at mass at the weekends; Saturday - 6pm Sunday - 9am & 12pm (family mass)

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