Fitness Thursdays

It’s great to have Fitness Thursdays back at long last. Things got off to a great start last week with Scoot and Toot. It’s skipping this week so everyone’s invited to come and show off their skills, or to learn some new ones. Gates open from 8.30 – please head up to the top playground.

After-school Clubs

It’s been hard organising clubs and finding people to run them during the pandemic, so I’m really grateful to the teaching staff for arranging an exciting programme of after-school clubs that start next week. There’s something for every class and I hope the children are looking forward to getting started. The ideas for the clubs came from a survey of the pupils themselves, so if the club they want isn’t running yet, please encourage your child to mention it to us. We’re taking suggestions for next term already!

Covid update

Numbers are low at the moment, although the virus seems to be working its way through the staff. The change to 5-day minimum isolation is helping to reduce the impact on children’s absence but this doesn’t necessarily mean that children are well enough to return after 5 days, of course. As always, keep following the advice on the website and please ask if you have any questions.

Currently, there are 6 children and 2 staff isolating at home after a positive test.

Annual Reports – quick Ping survey

Thank you to everyone who replied to our quick survey about annual reports. We had 128 replies and the votes were overwhelmingly (78%) in favour of a Spring Term report.

We’ve started on the reports already and will be sending them out closer to the end of term in March. We’ll also arrange parents evening appointments to talk through the report with you.

Stormbreak

Every week all children take part in at least two ‘Stormbreaks’ with their class. These are short physical activity sessions that are designed to have wellbeing benefits which help us teach children about different aspects of building good mental health. Hopefully, your children have talked about these with you. We have even started to award ‘Stormbreaker of the Week’ certificates to those who are demonstrating healthy attitudes and effort to others.

Stormbreak are always keen to get parents involved and have sent us a set of 5 Stormbreaks for you to try at home with your child on the theme of resilience. I have attached their information leaflet at the end of this newsletter.

Sustrans

On a similar theme, Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity people, have been in touch with their plans to support Children’s Mental Health Week which is happening this year from 7th to 13th February. They remind us that being active and away from screens can be especially important for our wellbeing in these challenging times and they have prepared some fun, easy-to-use resources on their YouTube channel to help with this.
Primary School Playlist: http://tiny.cc/6xi8tz

New Textile Recycling Bank

Thank you to everyone who donated to the Bag2School collection last week. With your help, FOSS raised £100!

Don’t think that you have to wait for the next collection to get rid of unwanted clothes and shoes however – we now have a lovely green recycling bank in the school car park. You can’t miss it!

Marchesi House

You may know that the developers have requested a change of access to the building site at the bottom of Sycamore Road, a change that would bring delivery lorries and other construction traffic into Sycamore Road and Rowan Close. As this affects everyone who drives or walks these roads to and from school, I have registered my concerns and last week, along with our Governor Pete Barrow, met with the developers to discuss the best ways of making sure these approach routes to school could be made safe for families to use.

We were given a number of reassurances at the meeting that works traffic would be suspended during the critical times of school drop-off and collection. We hope to see official confirmation of this plan soon and stressed the need for them to arrange public information sessions where residents’ and school families’ questions could be answered. We have been told today that a ‘consultation event’ has been arranged for Monday 31st January from 6.30-8.30 at the Southill Community Centre. I have attached their information sheets below.