THIS WEEK AT FRENSHAM

Dear Parents,

 

Happy Friday! Hope you have all had a great week.

The Junior School has certainly had a productive week and it has been great to see the children out of their learning spaces and using our amazing landscape to aid and inspire their different activities and projects. This culminated in the whole Junior School linking up across year groups to complete the RSPB Spring Birdwatch audit this morning in their assembly time and what fun it was!

 

Other educational adventures this week have seen Year 4 out and about, visiting different parts of the school where they were set and solved a number of maths division problems from members of the Frensham staff. Year 2 have completed some collaborative work with Year 6 and made and tested paper helicopters before also jointly dreaming up new ideas for Transport of the Future. The EY children have completed a volcano experiment which in turn linked into a look at dinosaurs and Year 1 have been exploring the scientific concept of blubber in polar animals. Year 3 having been making their own Buddhas in their PRE and exploring prisms in their maths. Reception children have been making and painting their own space helmets and Year 5 have been making ammonite fossils using salt dough. What a week!

 

Next week sees the start of our run of Year Group Assemblies. Year 6 lead the way on Monday 6th February with a performance based around their Refugee inspired theme of ‘Conflict, Crisis and Courage’ and then Year 5 will be following up on Friday the 10th February with their assembly reviewing their work on both Space and David Attenborough. Assemblies are a great way to both creatively showcase the children’s learning from their educational adventures while also getting a chance to perform on the stage, express themselves and build self-confidence.

 

I wanted to offer an update on Performance in the Junior School as we head toward the Spring 2 Half-Term. Due to staff illness, we have had to alter the staffing within the Junior School for our performance sessions. Moving forward your child (or children) will have their session with either Lorna (who is currently our Film Studies Teacher, an EPQ leader and who has been a Head of English and Drama for many years), Niah (who is our dance specialist graduate gap) or Albert (who is a LAMDA trained drama teacher). The coverage for Performance will therefore continue to be led by strongly skilled performance specialists who will work hard to give the children of the Junior School the best opportunity and guidance in this field possible.

 

I have talked a lot about Changemakers over the course of this half term and I am excited to announce that our new tribe of trained-up Peer Mentors will be out and about after half-term, supporting and guiding the children of both the N-3 and 4-6 play-spaces. The Changemakers ECA has come up with two great causes to champion next term (still top secret at this point I’m afraid) and today has also seen the first Outreach event, a lunch and entertainment showcase run by the Year 6 children in Jade’s class, for the members of the Brightwells Gostrey Senior Centre. This was an event that really shone the beacon for everything that Frensham represents.

 

On a busy Friday, I also had a productive and enjoyable meeting with the Junior School Parent Voice Reps. These meetings are valuable and a great way to keep up the key dialogue, conversations and feedback (in both directions) with you, the parent community. We discussed many key areas and ideas and it was also great to celebrate all of those elements to the Junior School that are working well, having an impact and making a positive difference. I also really enjoyed being part of a meeting where everybody carries the same passion and interest for what is going on in our fabulous Junior School!

 

Next week is the final one of this half-term and within it we will be celebrating and recognising both Children’s Mental Health Week 2023 and Safer Internet Day 2023. This will be done through morning activities, assemblies and my Emerging Horizons sessions throughout the week. On the Safer Internet Day front, you should have received an email from Katie (Year 4 Teacher and ICT Lead) on a free Webinar being run by Natterhub, earlier in the week. My encouragement is to try and access this webinar if you are able as Natterhub run great sessions and this one is aimed at supporting safety online with Junior School aged children.

 

Thank you for all of the energy that you bring as parents to the Junior School and I hope that whatever your adventures this weekend, that you have good one!

Take care and see you on Monday.

 

Nick O-T