New Monument Primary School
Weekly Update
Dear Parents and Carers
I hope that you all had a lovely half term rest.
We welcome the pupils back to Year 4 taking part in the Multiplication Check, while our Year 1 pupils will complete their Phonics Screening Check. We are incredibly proud of the effort they have shown in the lead-up to these assessments. We wish every child the very best of luck and know they will do their absolute best.
Preparations for our much-anticipated summer fair are now well underway. As part of our commitment to being a more sustainable school community, we are thinking creatively about how we can reduce waste. We would greatly appreciate your support in this by saving any plastic milk bottle tops you have at home. If you are able to rinse them and send them into the office (or with your child), we will reuse these as tokens for the tombola instead of traditional raffle tickets.
It is Green Week at school this week and the children are very busy with activities! We look forward to the VR workshops yesterday for Key Stage 2 on climate change. For our writing this week, all pupils in all year groups are using ‘Here We Are’ by Oliver Jeffers, which is a lovely story helping children to understand the world and their place in it. We have so many fun things planned this week, all around Sustainability.
As part of our ongoing commitment to providing the very best learning opportunities for our pupils, we are also investing in our technology provision. All teachers now have access to iPads, which will support them in delivering dynamic, engaging lessons and further enhance teaching and learning across the school. We are excited about the positive impact this will have on pupils’ experiences in the classroom. We will have new sets of iPads for pupils to use in September.
As part of our ongoing commitment to safeguarding and ensuring the safety of all pupils and staff, we will be carrying out a practise lockdown procedure in the coming weeks.
This is similar to other safety drills we complete, such as fire drills, and helps us ensure that everyone knows what to do in the unlikely event of an emergency situation (for example, if there were an animal on the school grounds or another external risk).
Children will be informed in advance that the practise will take place, although they will not be told the exact time. We will support all pupils carefully throughout the process, as we understand that this may feel unusual for some children. As always, our staff know the pupils well and will ensure the practise is conducted in a calm and reassuring manner.
I would like to say a sincere thank you for your patience and support as we continue to upgrade and improve our school environment. These developments are an exciting step forward for our community, and we are looking forward to sharing them with you.
We will be hosting tours in the Autumn term, giving families the opportunity to come in and see the improvements for yourselves. Our nursery space has now been completely cleared—this is an important stage of the project, and we are really looking forward to seeing the finished results as the work progresses.
And finally… some very welcome news! The potholes on the gravel path at the front of the school have now been filled - hurrah!
Thank you, as always, for your continued support. It makes a real difference to our school community.
Kind regards
Karen Barham