Newsletter – 10-May-24

NEW LOOK SPORTS DAY! – 20th JUNE

What better way to cap off an amazing year of sports at The Priory than with a fabulous brand new look for Sports Day!  This academic year has seen more children than ever before from all year groups representing and competing for our school across a range of different sports in our local area. Whatever the year group, sport or venue these events all have a single unifying theme – teamwork, co-operation and sportsmanship. Our reinvigorated sports day reflects these school values and our school vision, and allows the children of The Priory to demonstrate to our community how important these values are and what an incredible example all children at our school set when working together as a team.

The Priory Sports Day 2024 Itinerary 

Teamwork, Co-operation and Sportsmanship

Session 1 – These events happen simultaneously

KS1 Track – Relay running races.  Class house teams will race each other on an obstacle course designed by the children (and their teachers!).

KS2 Field – Classes will rotate around 4 throwing and jumping events scoring points for their house team.

The all important snack break!

Session 2 – These events happen simultaneously

KS2 Track – Each class will compete in a house team sprint relay AND a house team hurdles relay.

KS1 Field – Classes will rotate around 3 throwing and jumping events scoring points for their house team.

We’re not giving away all our Sports Day secrets here though, so you’ll need to keep an eye out on the day for our olympics style opening ceremony (one to rival Paris no doubt!) and strangely clad (but very special!) teamwork and sportsmanship mascots!  At The Priory we are passionate about every child having access to an active and healthy lifestyle and giving ALL children access to inclusive, positive and fun sporting experiences – so please do come and be part of the team and support our Sports Day!

Sports day will happen in the morning (exact start time TBC) and will end with the awarding of the trophy before everyone enjoys their usual picnic lunch at around 12pm. If you would like to volunteer as a helper for Sports Day please contact the school office – thank you for your teamwork! 😊

No long distance races I hear you cry? 

Oh yes there are!  Years 1-6 will compete in a new school long distance event on Wednesday 12th June at around 2pm (exact start time TBC). Check in to the newsletter next week for more details.

Dear Parents and Carers

End of Key Stage tests

Next week, across the country, Year 6 pupils will be taking part in the End of Key Stage 2 tests (commonly known as SATs). Our Year 6 team has been preparing the pupils for these tests which are an important benchmark for both themselves and the school. Our main aim as a school, however, is to prepare our pupils for their transition to secondary education. Our curriculum progressively builds the knowledge and skills that the pupils need to take them onto the next key stage, whether it’s from Reception to Year 1, or Year 6 onto Year 7. 

We are very proud of our Year 6 pupils who have continued to work hard all year. Term 3 is a mixture of finishing the curriculum, along with lots of fun events and a week-long residential trip!

Stay & Play

We are pleased to announce that following the success of our first two Stay & Play sessions, we are developing this into a weekly (Friday) event. For safety reasons we will still need to run this with a KS1 or KS2 focus, but siblings will always be allowed to attend. 

Refreshments will be available. Whilst Mrs Clitheroe can continue to bake a tray of cakes on Fridays, we are kindly requesting that parents in year groups take it in turns to provide a few cakes each week. 

We appreciate the support of our class parent reps to help co-ordinate the following schedule:

If any parents are able to help at these community events, please let the office know. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Inspirational Sports Assembly Series

We are beyond excited to announce our second confirmation for the June Festival of Sport assemblies – Age Group World Champion Triathlete and Cyclocrosser Kate Robson!  Kate is a Priory parent (Isla YR5 & Cohen YR3), a hardworking primary teacher and a leader in her sports fields – where does she find the time!  We’ll find out this June!

Star of Wonder Awards

YEAR R: Sebby, Paige, Aaria and Hannah

YEAR 1: Charlotte, Oliver and Xanthe

YEAR 2: Charlotte, Thomas, Layla and Evie-May

YEAR 3: Arthur, Lilah, Louis and Heidi

YEAR 4: Jolie, Joey and Alannah

YEAR 5: Elsie, Isla and Adam

YEAR 6: Clemmie, James and Belle

Special Mention to...

Two superstar siblings who ran an impressive 3k and raised a whopping £430 for the Azaylia Foundation.  An incredible achievement for an important cause.  The Azaylia Foundation aims to support families and provide memorable experiences for children fighting cancer.  We’re very proud of Teddy and Paige.

Safeguarding and Wellbeing

At School 

With increasing concerns around what our children and young people are accessing online, in this week’s section we are again highlighting the filtering and monitoring requirements that we comply with at school. Recently adopted and updated software – SENSO Cloud – enables us to monitor every website, app and online interaction made by any pupil or member of staff that logs into our IT systems.  In order to protect everyone, this then alerts us to any ‘critical and urgent’ violations as well as enabling us to undertake regular monitoring of all activity across a day/week.  Therefore, if any of our children search for or try to access any potentially harmful content the system takes a record of this and alerts our DSLs to the issue.  This ensures that we can investigate any concerns and therefore check that the children have not accessed or been impacted by any inappropriate or harmful content.

As a school we have the back-up of expert IT providers to set up the required filtering and monitoring processes to avoid children having access to harmful, extremist or terrorist materials. At home the onus is on parents to ensure that their children and young people’s access is safe.

At Home

As always the NSPCC is an excellent source of information when, as parents and carers, you are trying to ensure that your online access at home is as secure as possible.

The link here will take you to the NSPCC’s page which contains guides on setting up parental controls across a range of devices, apps and other online services. With the long Summer holidays approaching and the increased opportunities that children may have to be online, then ensuring that your parental controls are set appropriately is crucial to protect your children and young people when they are online at home.

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/parental-controls/

Online Monitoring 

As part of the national requirements for safeguarding pupils in schools (Keeping Children Safe in Education), we monitor the pupils’ online activity on the school internet. Our monitoring system is set up to flag any potential issues with:

• Bullying
• Self harming
• Extremism
• Pornography 
• Violence/harm to others

This is monitored by our Safeguarding Leads, Mrs Adams and Mr Walsh. 

So, if, for example, a child typed a word linked to one of the categories above into a search engine, it would be flagged on our monitoring system and would be followed up with the pupil to ensure they were safe. If we had any concerns, we would contact the child’s parents. 

Our internet is very secure and has a firewall to ensure no inappropriate images or content is accessible to pupils, but the system above adds an extra layer of protection.

Summer Clubs

Please note that there will be two new summer camps running at The Priory this summer and The Oaks will continue to run their summer club at Mortimer St Mary’s.

• 22nd – 26th July:  Summer Camp with Mrs Enticknap

  (a Priory parent and qualified teacher) . Please click here for full details and then click here for the booking form and email to zoe@hillyardmail.com

• 29th July – 16th August: Curveball Summer Camp with Coach Zack

  Please click here for more information and click here to book

• 5th – 23rd August:  The Oaks at Mortimer St. Mary’s

  Please click here for details or email office@theoakschildcare.co.uk for more details.