An end-of-term message from Miss Harper

Wensleydale Tournament
What an absolute delight to have been able to return to public performance this year. And what a treat The Wensleydale Tournament was. This is such an invaluable experience for our children: affording them the opportunity to push the boundaries of their comfort zones, challenge their performance skills, and enjoy their wonderful speech and song entries. So many thanks to all the adults who helped to make this happen: Mrs Loughlin, Mrs Stone, Sarah Clark, Mrs Allenby, and Mrs Gurden. Huge congratulations to all the soloists who took part too – a real achievement for all.

New member of staff in EYFS
We are delighted to welcome an additional member of support staff to the EYFS team after Easter. Please click here to read more about that.

Statutory Assessment
The downside to the lifting of restrictions is that we see the return of statutory testing in the summer term (SATs, times tables tests, and phonics tests)! We have been preparing our children as much as we can and have our fingers crossed that we see all their hard work pay off.

Read Write Inc (RWI)
We have seen so much progress in early reading, especially in EYFS where our children have had such a consistent diet of RWI (no Covid disruption). Thank you for all your support at home with your child’s reading.

New Reading Records
We will be launching an exciting new app after Easter: an electronic reading record, enabling us to keep comprehensive records over time and minimise the risk of any notes being misplaced. Watch this space!

Easter Egg Competition
What a cracking collection of decorated eggs we had the pleasure of seeing this week. Some absolutely eggscellent designs and some inspired ideas! Thank you to all for supporting this and to the PTFA for providing generous quantities of chocolate to reward our winners (and to treat every child in school)!

Easter Service
Thank you to those of you who were able to come to the wonderful service on Wednesday led by Revs Dave and Tom, and Sarah Clark. The service was moving, celebratory, and another great opportunity to come together. Some of the prayers written by our older pupils were absolutely beautiful; linguistically ambitious, and profoundly caring and spiritual.

EYFS fence
Next term will see the replacement of the EYFS area fence at Bainbridge – to further improve our security and safeguarding but maintain a welcoming and vibrant approach to school.

Reminder: Monday 25th April is a training day – see you all on Tuesday 26th.

And Finally…
Thank you so much for all the hard work and dedication of our staff during a busy and long term. There have been so many things to celebrate – it has been egghausting! Thanks to all of our families for your ongoing support, feedback, and care. Most of all – thank you to our children for being the wonderful, spirited, kind, hard-working children that they are. I sincerely hope that everyone has a safe, relaxing, and fun-filled break. These egg jokes are cracking me up… HAPPY EASTER!