Newsletter 5

NOVEMBER 2018

St. John’s RC Primary School NEWSLETTER THE SEASON OF ‘GLITTER AND GLUE!’

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

As you walk around our school you can tell that Advent begins this weekend and the Christmas season is upon us. Children are practising their performances, carols are being sung and our Christmas cards have been made. It’s a really special time of year and our children have been busy thinking about how we can help others in our community over this season. Over the festive period we will be supporting the play therapy unit at the Manchester Children’s Hospital as well as Cornerstone and the Wood Street Mission.

NOVEMBER 30th - Own clothes day (donations a bottle or chocolates for the Christmas Fair would be much appreciated.)

CURRICULUM UPDATE

Our new approach to the curriculum has been going very well and last week the Governors and I went round classrooms looking at books and talking to children about their work. The Governors were very impressed by the enthusiasm and excitement the children showed about their learning. We were very proud of the children and our Head Girl and Boy team did an amazing job when hosting the event.

The Year 4 Beech class treated us to a wonderful assembly which brought together all of their learning about the Ancient Egyptians. They performed a really informative play and it was clear how much they had enjoyed their topic. The Year 5 classes visited the Manchester Art Gallery last week to learn about paintings based around Greek myths and stories. They followed that visit up by holding an Ancient Greek experience day where they tasted traditional food and learnt a traditional dance.

KS2 CAROLS BY CANDLELIGHT

This was a very special event last year and got everyone in a really festive mood! The good news is that it will be repeated again this year on Tuesday 18th December at St. John's Church. This year there will be an added bonus; following the evening 7pm session, festive drinks and mince pies will be served. Any donations will go to RMCH Play Therapy Unit as our designated charity.

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DECEMBER 1st - First Reconciliation (Cherry) 10.30am onwards (please see individual times) 2nd - Parish Christmas Fair (1pm) at St. John’s Parish Centre 3rd - Loreto carol concert rehearsal at church 12.30-3pm on Monday (choir) 4th - Choir performing at Loreto Carol Concert 7pm.

(St. John’s church) Everyone welcome 4th & 5th - PTA funded pantomimes in school 7th - PTA Coffee morning & grotto.

AFTERCARE & ENRICHMENT CHANGES TO COLLECTION PROCEDURES We have some building work beginning on Monday to upgrade some of our windows in Reception and Key Stage 1 so there have been some changes to drop-off and pick up from Morning and Aftercare; • Morning and Aftercare will be accessible only via the door near Miss Murphy’s classroom off the KS1 garden area. The gate and door by Miss Murphy’s classroom to access Aftercare and Morning Care, will be open to drop off and collect throughout the sessions. Children can be picked up at anytime between 3.30 & 5.30pm as normal.

• After a comprehensive review of our safeguarding procedures (and in light of the building work) we have decided to trial a slightly different procedure for collecting from the enrichment clubs. The side gates will be locked from 3:45pm and then will be only be opened again to allow access to club collection at 4:25pm. Aspire clubs on the astro will be released from Mrs McEvan’s classroom. The gates will then be relocked from 4:45pm and opened again at 5:25pm.

• If for any reason you do need to collect your children early from enrichment clubs, please ensure you have informed school prior to the collection time so that the club provider can be informed.

• The safety and happiness of the children is always at the heart of life at St John’s. May we please remind you that children must be signed out of clubs prior to the child leaving the club. Please do not take your child out of a club early without ensuring you have informed the club provider and signed the sheet. Also, please do inform school if your child is not attending their booked session for aftercare.

Staff will be on hand this Monday to ensure that the entrances are clear to all. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.

ENRICHMENT CLUB SPOTLIGHT - CRAFT CLUB Craft club have been busy with embossing and creating Autumn trees using the season's colours as inspiration. What beautiful work they have produced!

PTA

The PTA are working hard, as usual, to make money for our school projects as well as putting on events that give our school a wonderful community feel. They sent out a newsletter last week with lots of detail about past and future events and how you can help out. If you would like to contact them please email them on; juliettetomlinson7@gmail.com Lisa (mum to Lucas YR6 & Megan, who will start nursery next year) lisaclennell23@icloud.com Helen (mum to Thomas YR5, James YR2 and Theo, who will start nursery next year) helentaylor10@icloud.com Follow us on twitter: @stjohnsrcpta

EASY FUNDRAISING Help us raise funds for free when you shop online. Easyfundraising is a brilliant way to raise money for St. John’s PTA. It is accepted by over 2,700 retailers who will give a donation every time you buy something, at no extra cost to you. It is very simple to use and can make a lot of money for our school to go towards fantastic resources for our children.

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Further information can be found by watching the Youtube video by following this link https://www.youtube.com/watch? time_continue=4&v=FdLjsJCwmJU

CHARITY CHRISTMAS COFFEE MORNING The school chaplains have this year selected the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital Play Therapy Unit as our chosen charity with the intention of supporting the Kelly family following the recent very sad loss of their son Thomas Kelly. A few of our children in school have also used the play therapists whilst in hospital, so we are really keen to support their invaluable work. Come along to the school hall after drop off on the morning of Friday 7th December for a Christmas cuppa, cake and catch up. There will be shopping opportunities, a uniform stall and also some memorable performances from the choir.

FATHER CHRISTMAS We are so pleased to let you know that Santa has scheduled a stop at St. John's RC Primary School on Friday 7th December during our coffee morning. He will visit our Early Years Foundation Stage children (Nursery & Reception). He will be in his grotto and the children will be taken in small groups from their classes to see him.

Instead of each child taking home a gift - we would like to request that you make a donation of an unwrapped toy for the Wood Street Mission appeal and to help us to help children less fortunate than us. (This is entirely optional. ) Children will be given a small token of thanks from Santa like a chocolate coin, candy cane or alternative.

Please let your class teacher know if you don’t want your child to visit the grotto.

SPORTING NEWS

We have taken part in lots of exciting sporting events over the last few months and have taken lots of different children to a variety of competitive and non-competitive fixtures. We pick the children carefully and keep a record of which children have attended each event to make sure that our opportunities are spread amongst all the children that would like to have a go. If your child is chosen to take part, you will be notified via Schoolsbuddy. It would help us enormously if parents didn’t then post details of these events onto other social media sites as we often then get confused phone calls to the office from other parents in the year group whose children are not involved.

SPORTS LINK AMBASSADOR SUMMIT We have created a sports link with the Birches School. Five of their sports ambassadors and six of ours met at St John’s to plan for way forward to Link our two great schools together in sport. We are going to try new sports that they will teach us, such as new age kurling, as well as trying to do some football training together.

The summit concluded with a joint motto, “Learning to achieve together through sport.”

We can’t wait for our next joint activity

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REFLECTION

This week we have been talking about the feast of Christ the King and using this painting to stimulate discussion.

Christ our King, help us to be like you, to listen to your truth and to see that all people are important, no matter who they are or where they come from.

Amen.

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