Reaching high for the best for your child

From this week, all our teachers are introducing new, weekly Home Learning Blogs in each year group!

If your child is at home, either due to self-isolation or full/partial school closure, these blogs will provide you with learning activities for your child to be getting on with when they are able.

Each blog will contain a PDF document explaining everything, based around our CHAT, PLAY, READ approach, and will give ideas for actvities which are both online and offline.

Thank you for your ongoing support during this tricky time.

We were really proud to join Stevenage Football Club as they celebrated the EFL Day of Action yesterday. Our PE curriculum leader Mrs Jeffries was formally invited to meet the First Team Squad and talked passionately about the work SFC have been doing in the school over the past year, running weekly sessions with the children and also training up the staff on their football skills as well! We were able to share how the sessions have really increased the motivation and engagement of the children and helped build their sense of respect for their community.  Watch the full video here!

During the month of March, we will be thinking about the value of respect. 

In assembly this morning, we were thinking about how we can show respect to PLACES, THINGS and PEOPLE. 

We talked in particular about all the people we can show respect to: our familes, our friends, and teachers. We talked about why it is important to show respect to our elders and to people in positions of authority, like the Queen. 

Ms Hilton even showed us how to do a curtsy and clarified that it is 'Ma'am' as in 'ham', not 'Ma'am' as in 'farm'!

Today we held the launch event for our new TT Rockstars initiative, which will turn all our children in TIMES TABLES ROCK HEROS!

The children and staff looked amazing dressed up as rock stars and we all learned how to play air guitar!

We then spent the day doing loads of exciting maths and finding out more about the TT Rockstars app... please keep an eye out for the school comms message which will tell you all about this, how to login at home and how to help your child.

From September 2020, all primary schools in the UK are required by law to deliver mandatory relationships and health education, and must clearly communicate how this relates to sex education provided by the school.

Some definitions:

- relationships education is teaching about the fundamental building blocks and characteristics of positive relationships, with particular reference to friendships, family relationships, and relationships with other children and with adults.

- health education is teaching pupils about physical health and mental wellbeing to give children the information that they need to make good decisions about their own health and wellbeing. 

- sex education (at primary school) is teaching about the facts of human sexual reproduction. 

To make this clear for parents and carers, we have written a new Relationships, Sex and Health Education Policy, which explains how these new requirements fit in to other parts of the curriculum: including our values education approach, science, online safety and computing, and physical education.

It is really important that we hear your views about this policy and we are running a consultation until the 13th March. Please let us know your thoughts and any ideas you have to ensure we deliver our curriculum in an age-appropriate way for children, and providing support for parent, carers and teachers.

We will be discussing this at parent forum, so please let us know what you think by emailing parentforum@fairlands.herts.sch.uk, or making an appointment to meet with your phase deputy headteacher.

Each term, we have a whole school focus for improvement, and for the spring term we are focusing on Making Maths Memorable!

Every single member of staff has come up with something to do that will inspire the children to remember the core maths knowledge that they should know by the end of each year group. 

We need your help too! Keep and eye out for information coming home on the home learning flyers, which will give you ideas of how you can help.

Did you know, for example, that by the end of Year 6, ALL children must know how to convert between the commonly used imperial and metric measurements in the picture above?

Do you know how to do this? Try to find times at home where you can introduce this to your child, at an age-appropriate level, of course! Check back a few days later and see if they have remembered it!