E-Newsletter 213

‍Open Afternoon 

Many thanks to everyone who supported our Open Afternoon just before half term. The children were so excited to share their work with you and I hope you were impressed with the knowledge the pupils acquired over the duration of their global curriculum themes. 

W‍orld Book Day 

The school is looking forward to celebrating World Book Day on Thursday 6th March. Last year's event was a huge success and coincided with the opening of our wonderful new library. FOGS has also arranged a visit from local author Roshni Patel who has just had her first book published.

On World Book Day, children are invited to dress up as their favourite book character for a voluntary donation of £1 which will be put towards new books and equipment for our library. For those children who aren't keen on dressing up, they are allowed to come in mufti for a voluntary donation. 

There is also be a Book Cover Design competition with a prize for the winning entry. Children should choose their favourite book and design a new cover to best reflect the story - entries should be returned to school by Wednesday 5th March.  

A message from FOGS:

FOGS will be running a pre-loved fancy dress sale on Friday 28th February at 3.30-4.00pm for World Book Day which takes place on 6th March. If you have outgrown children's fancy dress costumes to donate, we would really appreciate it if you could send these into school prior to our sale. All        donations will be greatly appreciated. All money raised will go to the school. 

‍'Grendon Runners'

Well done James, Rhys and Heath for setting up 'Grendon Runners'! This new lunchtime club has been running for a few weeks and the three boys have done a fantastic job organising activities for children to enjoy, including giving out certificates which will be shared at Friday's Achievers' Assembly. A great example of initiative and responsibility. Any children interested in Grendon Runners should speak to their teacher or James, Rhys or Heath! 

‍Peterborough Diocese - Y‍ear Of Prayer

A reminder that the closing date for submitting school prayers is Friday 28th February. Please see the information below. 

Competition Time

This is open to all pupils in school and the task is to write a school prayer for us here at Grendon. The prayer might refer to our school values (respect, kindness, honesty, appeciation, courage and forgiveness), the global curriculum and anything else that makes our school special. It must also be suitable for other schools to use as part of their own collective worship.  

The prayer can be of any length and presented in any format. You can add illustrations to your entry if you wish but this is not essential. There is a School Prayer template below that you can use to help.

School prayer template

Smart Technology

A small number of children have brought Smartwatches into school. These are covered in our Online Safety Policy. Smartwatches have the capability of sending and receiving photos, messages and emails and accessing the Internet. As well as causing disruption to lessons, the main concern is that it is not possible for staff to moderate their use which potentially places pupils at risk. 

Although Smartwatches are not named specifically in the school's Online Safety Policy, they are included in the policy as 'mobile devices' and so the following part of the policy applies. 

Pupils using mobile devices in school Pupils are not permitted to use mobile devices in school. If a pupil were to bring a mobile device into school then it should be kept in a secure place in the classroom and returned to the child at the end of the school day.

Many thanks for supporting us with this. 

Wraparound Care Update

The school is working closely with a third party wraparound care company with a view to them offering after-school provision at Grendon. An application has been submitted to the local authority for funding to support the initial implementation of the provision and I will keep you updated as this progresses.