Caring Curious Courageous

Enabling all children to learn and grow

Dear all families,

Time is flying! I can't believe that it is already half-term, and soon we will be starting the final term of the academic year. It has certainly been a very busy one with statutory tests for Year 2 and 6, caterpillars metamorphosis into butterflies in Reception and Year 5, the Year 6 residential to Osmington Bay and a trip for the orchestra just to name a few.

As you will have read over the weeks, reading is a real focus for us at school at the moment. We place a huge importance on developing each child's love of reading. Our aim is that children have the curiosity and desire to pick up and book and devour it.  It is so important that reading becomes a daily habit as it is a great tool for developing vocabulary but is also a great way to relax and escape for a bit. Please do look at the recommended books each week and come and speak to us if you would like further support with engaging your child tor read.

The weather looks good for half-term. I hope you have a lovely holiday and the children enjoy their break from school.

Looking forward to seeing the children on June 5th for a fun packed final half-term where there is still plenty of learning to be done.

Wishing you a lovely week,

Frances Bracegirdle

Headteacher - headteacher@vineyard.richmond.sch.uk

Parent Survey - final chance to fill in the parent survey which closes at midnight tonight

This is an important way of you contributing to the development of our wonderful school. We value your feedback and will use it to help us write our priorities for next year. 

The survey can be taken online using this link

Parent workshop - PSHE - Wednesday 7th June at 8.45am and 5.30pm

If you would like to find out about what your children will be learning in the 'changing me' unit during the second half of the summer term please join us at one of the workshops. They will include the material we will be teaching on puberty and growing up in years 4,5&6.

Attendance

Here are the attendance figures for this week. It is fantastic to see that all classes have remained above 96%! A particular shout out to Reception and Year 3 for having the highest attendance this week. 

Vineyard Recommended Reads!

The children have loved recommending so many amazing books over these last six weeks; we hope that you have some helpful reading recommendations to delve into this half term.

Maria in Year 3 recommends: The Black Cat Detectives - Wendy Maddour

Reading Age: years 2 - 4

Genre: comedy & mystery

This book is the perfect mix between hilarity and mystery. When Shaima and Ramzi meet a new neighbour who cheats at monopoly they decide that this is a person not to be trusted. What follows is a an investigation into the unknown which gets our characters into heaps of trouble! There are hundreds of hand-drawn illustrations which reminds readers of Roald Dahl and David Walliams.

If you would like to see what book a reception butterfly (Rory) would recommend go to Instagram. 

Mr Jones- Reading Lead

Teaching and learning

This week, all class teachers got to attend a writing moderation meeting, whereby we scrutinised children’s writing in every year group to ensure that we were making consistent judgements in line with other schools in the borough. Trained moderators that attended, explained how important writing stamina and handwriting is as children work their way up the school. This is something that can definitely be supported at home, so please do encourage your children to write with purpose over the holidays. This could be a postcard to family and/or friends, a diary entry, story writing, script work, labelling a picture, a book review etc. It will all help in building children’s confidence in writing.

Ms Reilly- AHT Teaching & Learning

Copter Competition

What a fantastic turnout! The School Council, alongside Mrs Henn, worked hard to arrange the exhibition and create the marketing material to encourage as much participation as possible. Thank you to all those that created their wonderful ‘Copter models’ and for all those that came along to the exhibition. There was such variety in how the ‘Copters’ were made; even an edible one! We hope you also enjoyed the musicians, Miss Bracegirdle, Sara and Charlotte. Thank you to our music teacher, Miss Bracegirdle, for organising this and the refreshments on offer from the PTA. We have managed to raise just under £400 for London Air Ambulance, which is a terrific achievement.

It was a very difficult decision, but the judging panel decided that the winning helicopter is Effy and Olivia’s from Emerald class. Well done!

Open Classrooms - 09.06.23 between 8.45-9.30am

This is an opportunity for you to visit your child's classroom so they can show you what they have been learning over the last term. You will need to drop your child at school at the normal time. The class teacher will register the children. Once this has been done you will be able to enter the classroom so you child can show you their books.

Bouncathon

Thank you to the PTA for arranging this wonderful event for the children today at school. A huge thank you to those who spent their morning counting bounces and working out the winning classes in each year group.

Winning class for KS1 - Year 2 Pearl with an average of 111 bounces per child per minute.

Winning class KS2 - Year 4 Onyx with an average of 148 bounces per child per minute

We smashed last bounceathon total. This year we had 58, 537 bounces from the whole school.

Special mentions :

Alex Bamber in Year 4 Zircon with 214 bounces.

Year 4 as a whole who got 19 percent of the total bounces.

The teachers had fun too!

Safeguarding

We have found out that some children are exposed to inappropriate shows on Netflix and are using Tik Tok. We strongly encourage parents/carers to closely monitor their child's online usage to safeguard them. If you are unsure about something your child is watching/playing please do come and ask me. 

Miss McArdle

Music Talent Show

We are holding a talent show in the next half-term! All children are invited to audition with the final taking place on Thursday 29^th June. Children can perform a song or a piece of music. It can be a solo item, or children can work together. If children would like to work together, please note that they must work with children in their own class. To sign up, each classroom has a sign-up audition sheet. There will be three rounds:

• Week commencing 12^th June: Round 1 (auditions in classroom)
• Week commencing 19^th June: Round 2 Semi-finals
• Thursday 29^th June: Round 3 The final

We ask that children perform in the auditions in their school uniform. On the day of the final, there will be two overall winners – one from Reception/Key Stage 1 and one from Key Stage 2. Due to space, we can’t invite families to this event.

We look forward to a fantastic day!

School Poem

Click here to read a poem all about school written by one of our Year 5 pupils - Noah.