The Courier

Dear Parents and Friends of the School

After Christmas art day last Friday, we have got fully into the Christmas spirit this week. We all enjoyed the Reception and Year 1 Nativity performance on Wednesday, as well as the Year 2 Christmas Cracker rehearsal the day before. We can add to this rich festive mix the Christmas Open Corridors, the Reception theatre trip and, to finish it all off, today’s Christmas Bazaar.

It has certainly been a busy one with lots of opportunities for parents to come along and join with the School in celebrating the season with the children. One other event that deserves a special mention is the LAMDA showcase on Monday where the children in Year 3 and 4 performed their poetry monologues to their parents. The sheer quality and confidence on show that evening was a great credit to the children as well as Ms Bowdige, our excellent drama teacher. We have more of these to come next term for the Year 5 and 6 children, as well as the exams themselves, where I suspect our children will do very well indeed. The assessor won’t know what’s hit him.

One of the many advantages of our specialist teaching team here at school is that preparation for events like these don't have to always impact on the learning in the core curriculum subjects as songs and routines can be learned in drama and music lessons. We are always looking to strike the right balance between the desire to put on quality performances with the crucial importance of the learning that goes on in the classrooms.

Next week we are on a similar theme, with the Carol Service to look forward to on Thursday, as well as performances and theatre trips. This will be our last full week in school before we wind down for the festive season and I hope to see you at least one of these occasions before that time comes.

My son James is returning this week from his first tour of duty as a Royal Navy officer and he’ll be coming back into Portsmouth Harbour sometime in the middle of the week. We are very much forward to looking forward to seeing him again and hearing about his traveller’s tales.

Whatever you have planned for the weekend, I hope it goes well and I suspect it will involve some Christmas shopping. Mine is going okay but there’s still quite a bit to do…

Joe Thackway
Headmaster