Merry Christmas!
Pop choir performed some songs for us this afternoon. The whole school then joined in with a Christmas sing-a-long. Merry Christmas and a happy new year to everyone!
A special visitor
Early Years and KS1 were lucky enough to have a visit from Santa today. He read stories and handed out presents. We’re all feeling very Christmassy now!
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...lunch!
We all enjoyed a delicious Christmas lunch today prepared by our wonderful kitchen staff. The lunchtimes supervisors did a fantastic job (especially Mrs Pennock) decorating the hall too. Thank you!
School Council tree planting - thanks to Scholes in Bloom
We have planted another 120 trees from the Woodland Trust on the school grounds this week. Thank you to Scholes in Bloom and the School Council for helping to do this.
You can also see the Scholes in Bloom presentation here that children in school saw last week too. The village looks wonderful!
Yorkshire Cricket
We had another visit from Tom Bates from Yorkshire Cricket this week. He worked with teachers last week, sharing coaching tips for us to use in lessons. He shared an assembly with us this week, talking to the children about cricket, upcoming coaching and competitions we will be entering.
New annual report format
At Scholes (Elmet) Primary, we seek your thoughts on lots of things, whether this is straight after an open-session in school like our Watch us while we work sessions, or in the annual surveys in the summer term.
Just before the summer term last year, we also asked for your views on the annual reports. We wanted to make sure we kept the reports as informative for you as possible, and we also wanted to relieve some of the workload for teachers when they write them.
You told us that the aspects of the reports you found most helpful were the teachers’ overall comments and the grades for progress, attitude and attainment – we’ll be keeping these aspects in the new reports (we’re going to make the grades even clearer and use them for attendance, behaviour and effort, too).
Some of the sections will be made smaller or not included. This is based on your feedback, too.
Thank you to all the parents/carers who helped us with this. Do speak with me if you’ve any questions, comments or concerns.
Taking pics at our productions
As we approach the time of year when many of you will be visiting school to enjoy our Christmas production, we thought it would be useful to send an extract of our Online Safety Policy (even though this new version is still in its draft format):
Staff and parents are reminded at least annually (eg during an assembly or performance) about the importance of not sharing digital images and video without permission, due to reasons of child protection, data protection, religious or cultural reasons, or simply for reasons of personal privacy.
We appreciate that families will treasure photographic/video memories, and the general rule is that parents and carers may take photos and videos of the children in their care, for personal use only. There may be rare exceptions to this, and parents / carers will be made aware in advance of particular events where no filming etc is possible.
When parents capture footage or still images of their children, there is a strong possibility that other children will also be visible or audible. For this reason, no such content should be shared publicly.
Live streaming, whether public or private, cannot be permitted on streaming platforms or ‘live’ features (e.g. Facebook Live) to stream events/circumstances as they occur. Parents / carers may be asked to leave the premises or event if this takes place.
Parents will be provided with clear direction by a senior member of staff in order to comply with this policy around public performances.
You can read more about this in an article written by a barrister specialising in education law.
Living and Learning : Community week with Scholes in Bloom
Scholes in Bloom came to talk to us about their fabulous achievements this year. They work so hard to make our village look beautiful and have been recognised for their wonderful work!
Living and Learning : 'out and about in the community' competition winners
Well done to the winners of the ‘out and about in the community’ competition!
Our new school charity is...
The charity was chosen with a double dose of democracy! Following Talk Time homework where your child will have discussed charities at home, a discussion in class took place, and then a class vote to decide which charity the class nominated.
Then, the school council discussed the short-list and then voted again on behalf of the school.
Scholes CE Primary will support Dogs Trust for the next 12 months. One way it will raise money will be to ask for voluntary donations for the performances we hold through the year.