Our nurture club has been very successful and well attended in previous years. Nurture club is a supportive after school club, initially for up to 30 children.

If we feel your child will benefit from attending this club they have been provided with a letter today (31st January).

The children in this nurture group will spend an after school hour each week with a mixture of other year group peers, for a range of planned activities. The nurture group is aimed to provide a warm and welcoming environment which contains aspects of home and school, with plenty of space and resources for fun activities, such as music, art, games, dance and any activities the children may request. It is a safe, predictable environment where the unique developmental needs of each child are met.

This club will be staffed by three adults, which include Mrs Raine, Miss Oselton Mrs Hannant/Miss Waters. The nature of the relationships which the staff of the ‘nurture club’ have with the children is explicitly supportive and courteous. The staff will continue to support the children to enhance their confidence, cement relationships with others and take pride in themselves. The task of the staff is to make the children feel accepted and valued, to engage them in learning and in the life of the school, and to help them relate to each other by using the group dynamics to foster and promote strong relationships. As confidence grows, we hope each child grows within themselves, which will support them as they grow and achieve throughout our school and beyond. This club will be every Thursday and as the weather improves we will spend time outdoors. Children part of this club who are at swimming will be brought back to school for this club.

Sport Relief brings the nation together to raise money through the power of sport. With your help, we fight inequality wherever we find it to create a better, fairer world – free from poverty.

On Friday 20th March children can come to school dressed in sport’s clothes to participate in a one hour street dance session, this is intentionally one week later than Sports Relief week due to other commitments in our school.

We are very conscious of the fact that we have been requesting money for charity already this year, including the Sports For Champions in February. In light of this we have decided not to raise money in terms of sponsorship for this event but if children would like to donate any funds to school that day, we will forward this onto Sports Relief. We will also be selling ‘Sports Relief 2020 Wristbands’ in school for £1 each, 50p of all wristbands sold is donated to Sport Relief, so we are happy that we are raising money in some way.

We are also conscious that we will be requesting sponsorship for our ‘IF U Care Share’ event on Friday 10th July.

This year, World Book Day will take place on Thursday 5th March. Children should come to school dressed as their favourite story book character. You can get ideas for exciting homemade costumes by visiting – http://www.worldbookday.com/dressing-up/. The day will be filled with lots of fun activities: all focusing on reading, writing and developing our use of vocabulary.

As part of the celebration, we will be holding a Book Swap Shop, in which all children will have the opportunity to visit over the course of the day. This will be an opportunity for children to experience new

books for free. If children would like to participate in the Book Swap, we are asking that they bring up to 3 books into school that they have already read and would like to swap for something new. The books must be appropriate for their current age group. Children will then be given tokens to exchange at the Swap Shop for new books to take home and discover.

On World Book Day we will spend the afternoon creating our masterpieces for a ‘Book on Fabric’ competition, where children are invited to think about and create a favourite book represented on a fabric bag or pencil case (we will provide each child with an item). Children will be given a sheet so that they can design their item and think of resources they might need over the half term. School will provide basic art supplies but any special resources needed must be brought in on World Book Day.
The competition will be judged by our governor’s and winners will be announced on Friday 6^th March.

The main focus of World Book Day is to promote reading, the Travelling Book Fair will be in school w/c 9^th March and children will be provided with a £1 book token to use towards books at this fair.  If children have any other unwanted books at home, they can also bring these to donate to our reading scheme – Accelerated Reader.

Thank you for your continued support

Miss McNeill
English Lead

On the 24th of February the GB Athlete, Matt Lee, will be coming to school to work with the children. In the morning, Matt will give an inspiring assembly to tell everyone about his personal journey and then talk to the children about the importance of living a healthy lifestyle and having a positive attitude. Following the assembly, Matt will do a fitness circuit with each class.

On Thursday 23rd January, all children received a sponsor form for the circuit activity and were informed of the prizes they would receive for raising certain amounts (this information can also be found on the sponsorship form).

Please can all sponsorship forms and money be returned to your child’s class teacher no later than the 10th of February. Money raised from sponsorship will go to ‘Sporting Champions’ who support up and coming GB sporting stars with their training and expenses.

If, as a school, we raise more than £400 in total, we will receive 60% of the surplus amount to spend on sporting equipment for the children.

As every child will be taking part in the circuit, regardless of sponsorship raised, please can you ensure your child has their PE kit with them on this day.

Below is a list of term dates and training days for 2020/21/22.

Year 6 SATS weeks are also stated on this attachment.

List of Holiday Dates up to Summer 2022

If your child has handed in a booking form for one of our special lunch events for Mothers Day. You should have received a text confirmation today.

To pay, you need to log into ParentPay and pay £2.46 for your adult meal under the ‘Special Lunch for Mothers Day 2020’ meal assignment. To pay for your child’s meal/meals, it is £2.05 under the usual ‘school meals’ option.

Your account will be debited on the day of the event.

If you have not received a text you have either not returned the form or your child has not handed it in.

So far there are 17 spaces available for the 18th March and 32 places available for the 25th March.

Photographs of your child with their special person must be emailed to consettjunior@durhamlearning.net before Friday 6th March.

Thank you

Mrs Raine