The Courier

Dear Parents

As a wet and somewhat gloomy week draws to a close, we can look back on a week of Christmas celebrations, sporting endeavour and hard work in the classrooms. Most children have now enjoyed their theatre trips with just the Year 1 and 2 classes still to go. We enjoyed the first nativity dress rehearsal from Nursery and Reception earlier in the week and look forward to the real thing on Monday morning. Many of you came in to see all of the wonderful seasonal displays for the open corridors on Tuesday. As this missive wings its way to your phones and tablets, we will be enjoying all the fun of the Christmas bazaar. Many thanks to all of the parents who have committed valuable time and energy to getting this all prepared and ready, with decorating and wrapping going on throughout the week. You will find me ‘helping’ on one of the stalls, although I can’t quite remember which one I signed up for.

Earlier in the week all of the children in the upper school enjoyed short taster sessions on mindfulness during their morning lessons. These were provided by Natalie McMahon, who many of you will know as she runs the excellent Yoga Bugs programme for the younger children. Natalie is planning to offer mindfulness as an early morning club from next term for Year 3 to 6 and this fits in very nicely with another initiative in school that we have started this half term. That is the School Mental Health Award, run by the Carnegie School of Education based in Leeds and backed by the Minds Ahead charity foundation. We have already begun a process of looking at exactly what we do in the area of promoting wellbeing for our children and staff, a process that will generate an action plan for us to work on and deliver over the next 12 to 18 months. We have a committee of staff driving this forward led by our SENCo, Lynda Brazier. This group will be feeding their findings back to staff next term and we will start to build our action plan.

You might also want to take an early note of another visitor to school next term, Mark Groome. Mark is an educational consultant and former Headmaster of Prestfelde School in Shrewsbury. He delivered an excellent training session to staff at the beginning of term on the theme of managing anxiety in young people and he will be back here on 26 March to present two talks on a similar theme to parents. The times and dates will be in the calendar that will be with you at the end of term and we will let you have some more background and detail a little closer to the time.

With just seven school days to go before we break up I hope you all get some peace this weekend. My children are putting pressure on me to put the tree up this weekend whilst I favour waiting for a later and more traditional start date for decorations. We will see who wins the battle of wills.

Joe Thackway

Many thanks to everyone for their positive response to my note about responsible parking in last week’s Courier. You may have noticed the appearance of traffic cones on the corner of Dalkeith Avenue that demarcate one of the particular trouble spots, for which we have the local community police to thank.

These cones will not stay in place indefinitely so please use their current positions as a guide to your future parking.  I know that local residents have been advised to report any obstructive parking to the police who of course have the authority to issue penalty charge notices.  

Thank you to the parents that have already responded to the Evolve Consent Form for the Foundation’s new Use of Images Policy.

A small number are still to reply and we would be most grateful if they would complete and submit their response to the form by the deadline date of Friday 14 December.  A consent form is required for each child attending the school.

You can find the new Use of Images Policy attached to this article here.

The Foundation makes various uses of images of pupils during their time with us. Where these are necessary for administration and the safety of pupils, such as CCTV and for security ID, the Foundation does not require your consent.

Images are also used for marketing and promotional purposes, to celebrate the achievements of pupils, promote the work of the Foundation and the education it provides. The Foundation does require your consent for these purposes and we hope that parents will feel able to support the Foundation in using pupil images in this way.

Images generally will not have pupil names against them. Names will be used with images when, for instance, celebrating a specific pupil’s, team’s or group’s achievement.

Additional specific consent will be sought for instances when a single pupil is the main focus of a press release or on billboard or bus adverts.

You may withdraw consent at any time in the future by writing to the School Secretary at Crescent School.  Please be aware that it may not be possible to change printed publications, such as a Foundation magazine or prospectus, or third party publications (for example where we have placed an advert or provided an image to a newspaper).

For a two or three week period this year we will be focusing on one of the sayings in the new School Promise. We will talk about this in assembly and in form period. It would be great if you could discuss this with your children at home and support the messages we are emphasising in school.

This week we consider the category of Good Learners. The idea behind this week’s promise is resilience and perseverance. This is such a key element of being a good learner. The desire and determination to master new skills can take children such a long way in education.

‘‘We never give up and always try again"