Reaching high for the best for your child

Just to let you all know....

The Summer Fete 2017 raised an amazing £5,555 and 55p!!

A HUGE well done to all the parents, carers, staff and children at our amazing school who gave up their time and effort to achieve this fantastic result!!

It was the first Summer fete in eight years at Fairlands and was massive success. There was so much that went well - why don't you email us at parentforum@fairlands.herts.sch.uk let us know what you think went well, and any ideas for improvements for next year?

Year 6 parents/carers can book tickets for this year’s exciting performance using our online booking system at https://fairlands.parentseveningsystem.co.uk. Performances will be on Monday 10th July, 2pm-3pm, and Tuesday 11th July, 7pm-8pm (secondary age children and older only). Tickets are limited to three per family per performance.

We have just held the draw for the new Parent Forum representatives and I can confirm that the following names came out of the hat:

Nursery: Samantha McCullough

Reception: Kate Gordon

Year 1: Demi Saward

Year 2: Rebecca Rump

Year 3: Donna Hitchcock

Year 4: Joanne Black

Year 5: Tracy Nixon

Year 6: Peter Foord

Please note that these representatives are NOT there to communicate ideas and issues from all the other parents in their year group! 

If you have an idea or an issue that you would like discussed at Parent Forum, then please send them through to the dedicated Parent Forum email: parentforum@fairlands.herts.sch.uk

Many thanks to the other parents & carers who put their names forward. We will keep you on record and hopefully you will be happy to be called on if one of the reps cannot make a particular meeting. 

Please keep an eye out for the Parent Forum Blog after each meeting!

From next month, we are changing the way in which Parent & Carer Forum works, to ensure there is greater representation of views across the whole school.

The new forum will be made up of one Year Group Representative from each year group, who will meet once a month with Mr Staples, and other staff as necessary, to discuss new ideas which will make Fairlands go from strength to strength.

The meetings are very informal, very positive, and very solution focused - and there will always be cups of tea & biscuits! They will normally be held at 2pm on Fridays but we will agree dates with everybody at the first meeting on 9th June 2017. 

SO……DO YOU WANT TO BE THE REPRESENTATIVE FOR YOUR YEAR GROUP?

Although it sounds very ‘grand’, there won’t be huge demands placed on you as a year group rep. We mainly want to hear what your experience is as a parent or carer in the school. Occasionally, we might ask you to take a question away to ask a few other parents what they think and let us know what was said. We tend to talk about how things are working in the school, like homework or uniform expectations, or discuss new ideas for curriculum events and activities. The representatives will change once a year. 

If you are interested, all you need to do is let your child’s class teacher know and we will get in touch. We will not get into nominations or voting as that can sometimes get difficult or embarrassing! If there is more than one volunteer per year group, we will simply draw names out of a hat.

If you are not sure, but think you might be interested and want to find out more, then feel free to come and speak to your child’s class teacher, one of the deputy heads, or Mr Staples and they will be able to talk it through with you.

We know that a child’s ability to read is the key to their achievement in all curriculum areas. DfE analysis suggests that if all pupils in England read for enjoyment every day or almost every day, the boost to their academic performance would be huge! But did you know that reading also has a wider impact on mental health and wellbeing? Alongside the educational benefits, research suggests that reading helps you sleep better, improves social awareness, increases levels of creativity and can decrease levels of stress by more than two thirds!

The level of parental participation has a huge effect on a child’s literacy development, not just when they have started to read written words, but way before this too. A child’s literacy experiences before they start school have a significant effect on their educational success.

So in a nutshell:  Good literacy skills support wellbeing, accelerate performance at school and throughout life. Children are most likely to acquire good literacy skills through being taught the skills of reading at school and having regular opportunities to practice at home. So please work with us to promote reading as a valuable and worthwhile activity. Please ensure that your child, no matter what age is being read to, or reading themselves,  regularly at home.  

In doing this we will support our children to understand the importance of reading and strengthening the culture of reading for pleasure at Fairlands!

Thank you!