Weekly Bulletin: Friday 13th December 2024

Dear Parents, Carers & Families,

This week our youngest of children took to the stage and gave us two absolutely super renditions of the Christmas story. Both our Nursery and Reception children brought joy to everyone’s faces with their singing and acting. Well done to both year groups - Your confidence, storytelling and musicality made everyone smile and feel so proud!

Christmas Performances - EYFS

Every class across the school has developed their creative knowledge and skills this week and made some truly amazing Christmas decorations. When it comes to decorating the school for the festive season, the staff choose to stay late one night and completely festoon the place with decorations including those made by the students. It’s a magical moment when the children come into school, their surprised faces on seeing the transformation is a delight. Well done to all of the students and thank you to all of the staff - Everyone’s creativity and time has made the school feel especially Christmassy!

Christmas Decorations at Whitehill

Thank you also to the kind parent who donated an artificial Christmas tree to the school! This was very much appreciated and added to the festive feel within the building.

It was lovely to see so many of our staff and families come together for the Christmas Fair yesterday. Father Christmas was really pleased to meet so many of our fabulously well-behaved children there. Thank you to those of you who gave up your time to help or who came along to support and made it such a special occasion!

Christmas Fair

Mrs Gardner has formed links with a charitable who look to help families who are struggling to afford Christmas presents for their children. As a result, one hundred gifts were purchased and ten families will benefit. Thank you to Mr and Mrs Furze, Paula Cuffley and Mrs Gardner for making this happen!

Christmas Donations

Our parent governor elections have now come to an end. Thank you to those of you who put themselves forward as a potential candidate and thank you to those of you who took the time to vote. It is with great pleasure that we announce that Mrs Tinsley has been elected as parent governor. We look forward to working with you!

Thank you to those parents who completed the recent survey that was sent out and in doing so contributed to a review of our Combined PSHE and RSHE Policy. All of the feedback was positive and thus we have decided to stick with the existing approach to teaching PSHE and RSHE and subsequently to maintain the policy that we already have.

Lastly, we would like to say a big thank you, congratulations and best wishes to one of our HLTAs, Mrs Green. She is leaving us to pursue a career as a Teacher. We would also like to wish Mrs Lawrence and Ms Hand farewell and good luck as they leave to pursue new roles. Sadly, ill-health means that we have had to say good bye to Miss Mohamed and Ms Obels. We wish them well for the future!

We would like to welcome Miss King who has joined Ruby Class as their new teacher and Mrs O’Connor who will be teaching Mint Class. Both are very experienced teachers who have already been in to work with the children. We are delighted to announce that one of our HLTAs, Mrs Couchman, who has been pursuing the necessary qualifications to be a teacher, has accepted the position of Peach Class teacher. Congratulations on your appointments!

Have a lovely week everyone.

Best wishes,

Angela Carpenter

Headteacher

Attendance

The foundations of learning are laid in the Primary years of schooling and so Whitehill Primary School is committed to making sure that our children do not miss out on the education and care that we offer. Regular attendance is critical if our pupils are to be happy, successful and benefit from the opportunities presented to them now and in the future.

Good attendance is fundamental to a successful and fulfilling school experience. We actively promote 100% attendance for all our pupils and we use a variety of rewards and incentives to promote good attendance and punctuality. Awards are group focused rather than given to individuals as we recognise that our students cannot help being absent for medical reasons.

Below, you can see this week's attendance data. The stars indicate the year groups who were awarded 5 minutes extra Green Time for topping everyone else's attendance: