St Cecilia's News
September 2022
HM The Queen
Some children will obviously be upset by this news, others less affected. Class teachers have been talking about the Queen during prayers this morning and we have all prayed for her. Any connection with a passing can bring back memories for children of their own experiences with death, perhaps in their own families. The death of Her Majesty can provide an opportunity for children to revisit emotions and feelings, this is all very healthy behaviour and we will support the children in school.
Children may want to create their own prayers for Her Majesty, a formal prayer of the Church is the Eternal Rest:
Eternal rest grant unto her O'Lord
and let the perpetual light shine upon her.
May she Rest in Peace
Amen
School life will continue as usual during the national period of mourning, we will observe any public holiday announced by HM Government.
Welcome back to a new school year
A warm welcome back to school after the summer. I do hope that you had a lovely summer holiday, the weather certainly helped us to enjoy the break from school.
A very special welcome to all our new families joining us in Nursery, Reception and classes across the school, your children are settling in well to school routines and with our experienced staff they will be off to a great start. Thanks for all your support in preparing them for admission, it's lovely to have you with us for the next 7 or 8 years!
We have seven lovely new members of staff too:
Teachers - Miss Norman (Y2) Mr Morris (Y3) Mrs Callaghan (Y4)
Teaching Assistants - Mrs Lavelle (YrR) Mrs Vile (Y1) Mrs Cox (Y2) Mrs Gavin (Y5)
In these early days if you have any questions or worries don't hesitate to reach out to the school office on office@stcecilias.school. We are keeping a close eye on messages to make sure that everyone is settled in to the new term successfully.
Best wishes for the new school year,
Vince Burke
Head Teacher
Relationships and Sex Education (RSE)
Following lots of discussion with the school community, in order to provide the time needed to develop the curriculum we have moved away from "Fun Friday." That final hour on Fridays will be used to reflect on the school week and relationships within the classroom. Teachers will use a range of resources from Bounceback, our emotional resilience and character building programme as part of this work.
Each month, we will have a "Big Assembly" for Years 2-6 where we will focus in on aspects of character and relationships in order to support the children's understanding even more.
Last year we met with parents online in a very useful meeting to help us shape our approach to RSE. Further meetings with parents on behaviour have also helped us refine our processes and we look forward to more joint working on this in the year ahead.
We are amending our core values as a school so that they encompass the breadth of our RSE curriculum, they are essentially the Bounceback Core Values.
Be honest
Be fair
Be responsible
Be kind and supportive
Accept differences in other people
Co-operate with others
Be friendly and include others
Be respectful
Show self-respect
After our Big Assemblies we will often have resources available for the children online and some will be sent home in their homework folders.
Following feedback from parents and children we are broadening our "Star of the Week" programme so that we will now recognise three children per week with a Friend of the Week, Believer of the Week and Learner of the Week. This will give more opportunity for children to shine and hopefully prevent the situation where a child has to wait months to be chosen. House points are continuing as usual.
This month we are looking at Be kind and supportive. This is quite an important one in the new school year as children move to different classes with changing systems.
Big Life Journal have a lovely kindness tracker which you may find useful for your child to use, I have attached it for you below.
Using the library
As we start a new school year please make sure that you have a safe place for library books at home. Children need to return books properly, straight to an adult at the library desk in library time or to the returns post box in the library. If they leave the book on their teachers desk / on their own desk / in their own book corner etc it will not come off the system. Automated emails are generated by our library system, please do not reply to these, they come from a "bot." If there is an issue with the location of a book please contact the class teacher urgently via Class Dojo.
We have a lovely library featuring the latest book stock, I'm often in Waterstones buying all the latest titles and we are very happy to purchase titles that the children want to read if we do not have them on our shelves. Some of the latest titles are shown above.
You can access our library catalogue online using the link below, this is best done on a PC - it does take a long time to load!
Pupil Premium
We use the Pupil Premium payment to offer your child free or subsidised school visits, homework clubs, musical tuition and instrument rental, priority access to ECAs and mentoring from a member of staff. If your application is successful your local authority will contact the school directly.
Uniform
Keeping the curriculum updated
Mr Caulfield, Subject Leader for Geography is working with teachers to introduce even more fieldwork, to make Geography highly practical.
Mrs O'Dwyer, History Subject Leader is working with teachers to ensure that we build historical knowledge and concepts across the historical timeline, carrying themes from one period to another, enabling the children to critically compare and contrast.
Mrs King, Art Subject Leader is using our Kapow curriculum to increase expectations across art now that the core skills of the new curriculum have been put into place.
We will be updating our Knowledge and Skills grids in these areas over the coming weeks, look out for updates on our website.
Marsden Coffee Morning
Please come along and have some tea/coffee and cake in the school hall once the children have gone in to class. A lovely chance to catch up with school friends after the summer.
Reports and Parent Teacher Meetings
- For children in Reception we will publish their Reception Baseline Assessment.
- For children in Years 1-6 parents will receive their child's updated Reading, Writing and Maths teacher assessments around mid-term, on the Friday before our Parent Teacher Meetings. We will send home full attainment information for all subjects at Christmas and in June.
- Don't forget that are our assessment system is live for parents on the Pupil Asset website and App - you can access this data at any time, teacher assessments can go up and down as assessment activity takes place.
The Autumn Term Parent Teacher Meetings for all year groups N-6 take place on Thursday 10th and Tuesday 15th November. Booking opens on SchoolCloud on Monday 31st October.
Communication and web services
We use Class Dojo as our messaging and news system for the school. Once new families are added to the system, class teachers then add pupils to their class from the central directory. If you are missing a connection on Class Dojo please let us know in the offices and we will get you connected.
At the start of the school year it's important to remind you that in the event of an emergency we use Class Dojo as our messaging system.
This newsletter comes out once a month or so, it goes to Contact 1 and Contact 2 on our database, we have rebuilt the newsletter mailing list for this school year and it will therefore be using the latest email address that we have on file for you.
Can I ask all parents, when emailing the school, to only use the email address from Contact 1 or Contact 2, this helps us with the security of confidential information. These email addresses are shared with the SchoolCloud website, Schoolgrid website and the Pupil Asset website and app to enable access to their systems.
Dates for this term
Monday 12th - Bikeability for Y6
Thursday 15th - School Council visit to Sky TV Studios
Monday 19th - Autumn ECAs commence
Tuesday 27th - PTA Meeting at 6.30pm
Thursday 29th Marsden Coffee Morning at 8.45am.
October
Monday 3rd - Black History Month begins
Friday 7th - School Closed - Deanery INSET day - no childcare service.
Monday 11th - Tuesday 12th - African Music and Chants Sessions
Monday 17th - Bikeability for Y6
Monday 31st - Parent Teacher Meeting booking opens
Monday 24th-28th Half Term Week
November
Friday 4th - Mid Term reports published Yr R to 6
Thursday 10th - Tuesday 15th - Parent Teacher Meetings
Monday 14th - UK Parliament Week
Tuesday 22nd - St Cecilia's Day
Monday 28th - Last week of ECAs (some may continue - check dates on SchoolCloud)
December
Saturday 3rd - PTA Christmas Fair
Monday 12th - Christmas Lunch and Jumper Day
Thursday 15th - Last day of term for Nursery
Friday 16th End of Term for Christmas at Midday - breakfast club only, no after-school childcare.
Spring Term 2023 commences on Wednesday 4th of January.
Use the link below to see the school calendar online.
Our iCAL is
St Cecilia's Catholic Primary School
Email: office@stcecilias.school
Website: www.stcecilias.school
Location: London Rd, Sutton SM3 9DL, UK
Phone: 020 8337 4566
Community News
Vaccinations - news from school nursing
Are you a parent whose child is getting their vaccinations? Have questions about how vaccines work and just why we get them all?
Have your questions answered by London clinicians and experts from the UK Health Security Agency (formerly Public Health England). Sign up at the link below.
- Tuesday 13 September 2022
- 1-2pm
- https://www.events.england.nhs.uk/events/parents-q-a-childhood-vaccines