Reaching high for the best for your child

After an amazing day, the first phase of the clean-up operation has been finished and we have achieved our primary goal: to get all the children back to school, being educated, at the earliest opportunity!

Year 3/4 are going to live temporarily in their fantastic new classroom, in the Upper Hall! Mrs Studman, Mrs Trafford and Mr Tweeddell have worked tremendously hard, with loads of help from teaching assistants and parents, to get ready in time for tomorrow.They spent most of the morning planning an exciting sequence of lessons for the children, which, I understand, will culminate in writing a 'Recipe for a New Classroom'! Then in the afternoon, they worked with the team of cleaners to salvage what they could from the classrooms and get everything spick and span for tomorrow.

I have just had a meeting with the Health and Safety Team. They have formally signed off all the spaces that will be used by children as safe, so pleased rest assured that all safety measures have been implemented for the physical wellbeing of the children.

Of course, the children's emotional wellbeing is an equal priority for us. We will be having various assemblies which will help the children to deal with what is ultimately a very upsetting few days. Our Emotional Literacy Support Assistant will be working in with Year 3/4 for most of her timetable and I am already in touch with the School Counselling service, should individuals require support.

See you all tomorrow!

The whole school will be open for all children tomorrow after a mammoth clean up operation.

Work started on the Year 5 and 6 classrooms last night and the contractors have been working throughout Monday to get sections of the upper building properly cleaned to make them fit for use by the children.

We are planning that Year 5 & 6 will return to their own classrooms as usual, whilst Year 3/4 will use the Upper Hall and be taught all together for the remainder of the week. The Year 3/4 teachers are busy planning appropriate activites for this arrangement.

The Year 3/4 corridor is significantly damaged and will take longer time to get fully up and running. This section of the school will therefore be sealed off with safety hoardings. These arrangements have been agreed with the Hertfordshire Health & Safety Team.

We look forward to seeing the children tomorrow, back and ready for work! Believe it or not, Ofsted are coming on Wednesday and Thursday so we need to knuckle down and get ourselves the good report we deserve!

Click here for the official Herts County Council Press Release.

Sunday 24th February 2008 will go down in the history books of Fairlands as possibly one of the hardest days the school has ever been through. But it will also go down as one of the finest days in Fairlands' history - as it proved that everyone in our fantastic school will always pull together when faced with challenging times.

Events began around 5am this morning, when local neighbours spotted flames in the school and alerted the fire services. Deepest thanks go to these neighbours, for without their vigilance, the fire damage would have been much worse.

Mr Horner arrived at the school around 6am, to find the upper building filled with dark smoke. By the time I arrived, there were 6 large fire engines and many fire and police officers and the situation was already firmly under their control.

The main area that is seriously damaged is the end Year 4 class, but most of the upper building has experienced smoke damage and there is soot covering most surfaces. This is likely to take some time to clean up properly, but we are anticipating that we will be able to reopen some sections of the building over the course of next week.

Although the lower building is unaffected, the whole school will be closed tomorrow in order to allow time for us to put a critical incident management plan in place. I will be meeting with local authority officers in order to establish how long the clean-up operation will take but please rest assured that our first priority is to get the children back as soon as possible into a clean, safe learning environment.

I would like to say an enormous thank you to all the staff and parents who have been ready with offers of help, support and much needed cups of tea during the day! After a very long and upsetting day, my enduring feeling is a huge sense of pride that I am headteacher of such a wonderfully supportive school community.

I will keep you all informed of any developments as and when they arise.

Robert Staples, Headteacher

Every half term, the whole school brushes up one aspect of Reading, Writing and Maths, with the aim of getting every child up to the right level for their age in this focus area.

We have decided to extend the current targets for the rest of this term, as both half terms have been so short this year! The only change is that the children will be relating their writing targets to fiction writing (stories & poems) this half term.

Please support your child at home, using the ideas on the Reaching High Target Flyers that you received last half term.

You can also go to the Learning Zone to find out more about the Targets.

Something for the half term break!

Can you solve the puzzles on our new Jigsaws page? Can you be the fastest to complete the puzzles?

Click here to have a go!

A great evening was had by all on Friday 25th January, when the Friends of Fairlands hosted its first Fun Cash Bingo Night.

Max Franklin did us all proud as the bingo caller and we thank her for volunteering. The Friends of Fairlands would also like to take this opportunity to thank those that came to play on a cold January evening. There were plenty of cash winners!

The Friends of Fairlands have various events happening in the coming months and we ask that parents and staff continue to support them.

Take a look at our events list on the Friends of Fairlands page to see what is coming up.