Green Top School

As I sit to reflect on our first half term since we all returned to school I am blown away by the support and positivity of our students, parents and community. The relaunch of our crews in school has added a new dimension to #crewGreenTop with some great examples of children supporting and challenging each other to be the very best version of themselves through kind, specific and helpful feedback. Our parent support centre has been welcomed by parents and engagement in our online processes for communication are streamlining the way we approach admin.  

The engagement in our first expeditionary case studies has been strong and the students have demonstrated great knowledge and understanding of their new learning, examples include, dissecting plants to understand the function and names of the parts of a plant in Y5/6 science; conducting market research whilst evaluating packaging of food products in Y3/4 design and technology; exploring pedestrian safety in KS1 PSHE and exploring owls as part of EYFS Understanding of the World. It has been lovely to see students collaborating, critiquing and grappling with new learning in their learning. 

We continue to see a calm start to the day with a relaxed opening with many positive comments received, we would like to ask parents to try to arrive by 8am and 8.45am in order to begin our lessons promptly at 9am from after half term. The early opening is something we are keen to maintain for as long as possible. In addition, our relaxed collection has allowed parents and students to access the site safely at the end of the school day. Collection will be from 3pm after October half term and our doors will remain open until 3.30pm, this continues to be more relaxed and allow for better social distancing than all collecting at 3pm but also ensures we can maximise on the core learning times 9am-3pm with all members of our crews. 

It has been amazing to see the number of students who have been able to engage with our online learning platform using the new logins, we are using this platform to ensure our curriculum is available for all online, the home learning menus are now available in the google classrooms and wherever possible we request learning is shared via this platform. After half term we will begin to send home learning legend cards and out of this world certificates again. If you have concerns around this please speak with your child’s teacher/crew leader. 

A reminder that if we receive a positive case of Covid 19 in staff or students we will contact the health protection team for their guidance. If they then ask us to isolate a class or year group, the learning for these students will be available on the google classroom until it is safe to reopen. To date our staff and parents have been very supportive and followed the guidance given appropriately, testing if they have symptoms and isolating until a negative test result is received. As always any updates will be posted on the school website if this is necessary. 

After half term we would like to start to reintroduce PE lessons into our KS1 and KS2 classes, this will be outdoors and children are requested to attend school in dark coloured sportswear on PE days. We request dark joggers/leggings and a dark coloured hoodie/sweatshirt on PE days, with a green polo shirt when the weather improves. This enables us to ensure children are able to take part in PE sessions involving high intensity as we have focussed predominantly on low intensity PE since our return. Our high intensity PE lessons will take place on the following days. 

There are a few dates for your diaries for our return in November. 

27th October – Last day for pumpkin carving competition entries (email your photographs to [email protected] , winners will be announced on the school blog 31st October.

13th November – Children in Need, wear something spotty. In our crews/classes we will be embarking on ‘act your age’ challenges which will be completed on this day – further details will be communicated by school council after half term. 

23rd November  – A day to remember Alan Finley – for those of you who remember Alan and want to mark the day we will be wearing football shirts on Monday 23rd November (to mark 2 years on 22nd November since we lost Alan). 

Finally I’d like to wish you a safe and well half term, stay safe and please reach out if you need any support using the ‘reach out for support’ form on the parent support centre. 

Stay safe, take care and keep smiling.

#crewGreenTop

Mrs Claira Salter

Headteacher