St Cecilia's News

Dear Parents,

We've reached the final few days of the Autumn term, as we look back a big thank you from all the staff for your support over this busy and hardworking term. It's been a joyous term without the restraints of the pandemic, lovely to have everyone back in school again for all our usual events.

Scarlet fever

It's been a challenging few weeks for many families coping with children suffering from sore throats, fevers and the broader symptoms of scarlet fever. We now have 4 NHS confirmed cases of Strep A and Scarlet Fever in school and our daily absences average around 70 children. Thank you parents for keeping us informed about illnesses, we pass this information on to Public Health on a regular basis.

We are hearing how local health services are pretty stretched as the infection spreads, we hope that you are managing to get support if your child is unwell, don't forget to contact 111 if you are unable to get through to your doctor. See Class Dojo for our letters from Public Health.

Please make sure that your child is fully fit and well before returning to school, we are seeing that this bout of illness takes the children some time to recover from. We hope that they all make a good recovery before Christmas, there's still plenty of time!

Reports on the way

Years 1-6 will receive data reports for all National curriculum subjects on Friday, the report is sent via email, look out for the "temp" file at the bottom of the email. We send them out from Pupil Asset's email servers, don't forget that reports from year groups arrive at different times.

Last week of term

We have two non-uniform days this week, Monday for the Christmas Lunch (wear Christmas jumpers) and Thursday for the class Christmas parties.

Please don't forget that the term ends at Midday on Friday.

The staff and I wish you a very happy, peaceful and blessed Christmas with your family,

Best Christmas wishes,

Vince Burke

Head Teacher

What a lovely day we had at the fair, we're so glad that so many of you were able to support this wonderful event. Thank you to parents and staff for pulling together to really make this event such a success, it was amazing to see so many parents supporting the school. I hope that you had some festive fun and some quality family time at the fair, as a staff we truly enjoyed meeting with you all and seeing the children having a good time.

Thanks especially to Elizabeth Khan, Chair of the PTA and her committee for their sterling organisational skills! Whilst an enjoyable event is at the forefront of everyone's thinking, we also managed to raise £6983.83 for PTA funds, a tremendous amount, we look forward to announcing how this is allocated in the coming months.

Congratulations to Ceci and Oliwia who designed our beautiful Christmas cards for this year, we send out hundreds of them to our families and the agencies and specialists that support the work of the school. Many thanks girls for your lovely cards!

At the Winter Wonderland Trail children can search around Whitehall Historic House and make Christmas decorations. Additionally, the Magical Christmas Trail at Honeywood Museum will get them crafting Santa Claus masks, special headbands and Christmas cards. Tickets: £2 per child for trails. Book using the link below.

Mrs O'Dwyer, subject leader for History and member of the Historical Association reports...

It has been an exciting term of History learning throughout the school. From Stone Age to World War Two students have broadened their knowledge of different historical time periods and have been historians finding out about the past for themselves. Year 2 have particularly enjoyed learning about Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. They have enthusiastically debated which one of the 2 should be remembered the most with a commemorative statue.

Our Knowledge and Skills grids have been updated to reflect our curriculum changes and show the progression of disciplinary skills throughout your child's school journey.

We have moved to an enquiry based approach to history where each topic begins with a big enquiry question that students work towards answering by the end of the sequence of work.

We use resources from KeyStage History to support the structure of history teaching throughout the school. Part of the excitement of learning in history is being presented with the enquiry questions for challenge and debate, we therefore only share them in advance with students if we need to!

Either History or Geography is taught each term, they are taught in blocks on a rota. It's important that we help students to remember their learning in these subjects, reading historical books and visiting places out of school with you can really help them to embed their learning.

You can find details of our revised curriculum for History below. These documents are frequently updated, our website usually has the latest version.

News on our enhanced curriculum for Geography from Mr Caulfield in the next newsletter!

During the winter period schools are more likely to be affected by severe weather. Please make sure to keep an eye on Class Dojo to check if the school remains open. We must always have sufficient staff to supervise the children safely and food and catering staff for lunchtime. Closures can happen quite late in rush hour as staff discover that they cannot get to school. Whilst we do not expect to close, please make sure to check Dojo each morning for any urgent messages, especially during severe weather.

If we do close for severe weather, learning will continue online, via Google Classroom (Years 2-6) or Class Dojo (Years N, R and 1) as soon as possible. Please make sure that you have your child's login details available.

Sports

Our outdoor PE programme continues through the winter weather, coming inside for rain or snow. Please make sure that your child has plain jogging bottoms with them for PE days and after-school clubs, they can wear their school jumper for PE outdoors. After-school PE clubs are more likely to be cancelled in poor weather so please keep an eye on Dojo and be ready for a usual end-of-school collection. As our childcare service uses the hall after school, options for sport are more limited.

We continue to have problems with our automated front gate.

After 25 years of loyal automated service it has decided enough is enough! The Diocese have already announced that we have received funding for new gates and fencing along the front of the school and that gate is scheduled for replacement at Easter.

School budgets are stretched at the moment and it is not worth spending over £7k to replace the gate if we have a new one arriving within a few months. We hope that you agree. We will work with our building advisers and the Diocese to see if we can get the new gates installed a little earlier than Easter and will continue with the delivery gate on Clarkes Avenue as our pedestrian gate during the school day for now.

Our new gates will be located near the existing double playground gates that are used at the start and end of the day. They will enable us to have a secure walkway to the school office, visitors will no longer have to cross the playground. We are grateful to the Diocesan team for their support with this safety project.

We are working with Healthwatch Sutton to measure the emotional wellbeing of children in Years 5 and 6 post pandemic through an online questionnaire, it is completed and reported on anonymously. The children will complete the questionnaires in January and we will discuss our results with them later in the spring when we receive them back. The survey will support our work in our PSHE Talkabout sessions each week.

You can find out more about Healthwatch Sutton via the link below.

We've been asked by our local safeguarding team to share this timely resource with families about the importance of safe approaches to sleep for young babies. Please see the link to the Lullaby Trust below.

There's some practical advice around safeguarding for you in the leaflet below in case you are sourcing a club or adult to support your child with activities.

Community health have sent through a reminder of two local sessions for the flu vaccine:

We are running two flu nasal spray clinics before christmas, they are walk in clinics and consent can be given on the day. (Please bring your child's NHS number)

Wishing you a Merry Christmas from Sutton & Merton Immunisation Team

Monday 19th December – 10am – 2.30pm

Centre Court Wimbledon

Vaccination Hub, Upper Shopping Level

4 Queen's Rd, London SW19 8YE

Tuesday 20th December- 10am – 2.30pm

St Nicholas Centre

Vaccination Hub, Ground Floor

3 St Nicholas Way, Sutton SM1 1AY

!!Please note there may be a waiting time!!

http://www.nhs.uk/child-flu

For any queries, please email:

HRCH.immunisationteammertonmailbox@nhs.net or

HRCH.immunisationteamsuttonmailbox@nhs.net

London Road, Sutton, Surrey, SM3 9DL

Email: office@stcecilias.school
Website: www.stcecilias.school
Phone: 020 8337 4566

December

See our recent office email for full details of Christmas events and lots of reminders!

Monday 12th - Christmas Lunch and Jumper Day

Tuesday 13th -

• 1000 Y5 Mass at St Cecilia's
• 1030 Y4 Nativity at the Hospice
• 1145 Nursery Christmas Sing-Song

Wednesday 14th at 6.30pm. Candlelit Carol Concert (School Hall)

Thursday 15th

• Last day of term for Nursery
• Y4 Nativity for parents of children in St Angela's Class
• Data Reports issued to Years 1 to 6 (All national curriculum subjects)
• Christmas Party Day!

Friday 16th

End of Term for Christmas at Midday - breakfast club only, no after-school childcare.

January

Wednesday 4th - Spring Term commences

Friday 6th - Feast of the Epiphany, Mass for Years 3-6.

Monday 9th - ECA Season 2 commences

Tuesday 24th - Year 5 Viking Day

February

Monday 13th - Friday 17th - Spring half term

Friday 24th February - Data reports for all year groups, including EYFS

March

Thursday 2nd and Tuesday 7th March - Parent Teacher Meetings - all year groups

Friday 16th - Year 5 are at the Royal Philharmonia

Monday 20th - ECA Season 2 ends this week.

Thursday 30th - End of term for Nursery

Friday 31st School closes at Midday for Easter, breakfast club only, no after school childcare.

Our online calendar URL

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=stcecilias.school_pvak5bd6nf4ig2k9j77ic84kmg%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Europe%2FLondon

Our online calendar in iCAL format:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/stcecilias.school_pvak5bd6nf4ig2k9j77ic84kmg%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics