Newsletters

Regular news roundup from Headteacher, Matt Clifford

Welcome!

You can catch up with everything that is going on at Kingfisher through our newsletter!

Communication with our parents is critical.

We want to let you know what is going on in school.

Each fortnight I will be writing a short newsletter with a summary of what has been going on in the school, as well as what's coming up.

Remember also that you can check the school calendar on this web site. Our letters home section also has a lot of information. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions for the weekly round up.

Matt

Newsletter - March 2020

Dear Parent/ Carers,
We have been in regular contact with the Department of Health for England and are following their advice regarding coronavirus and what schools should do in the event of anyone having to self-isolate. I can confirm that we have been advised that there is no reason to shut the school and things should carry on as normal.

We have ensured there are more than sufficient stocks of soap and will also be vigilant with children washing their hands regularly. We will also be checking regularly with the Department of Health for any updates.

World Book Day

This Thursday, March 5th we will all be dressing up as our favourite book characters and taking part in many fun and exciting book related activities. We are very proud to host a writing workshop with a published author who is one of our parents! Her book, The chronicles of Jozzie Taylor can be bought from Amazon.

Science Week

All the schools in the Academy Trust have been working very hard together to plan an amazing Science week beginning on the 6th March. The children will be doing many amazing Science investigations from making soap and pollution catchers to investigating global warming and making self-contained ecosystems.

We will be having scientists from the Mad Science organisation in school who will be presenting an explosive assembly and running workshops for our pupils. We will also be joined, all the way from Germany, by someone from the organisation who run the solar panels on the roof of the school. We generate all our own electricity and the children will be learning about this and making solar powered toys! The Science week will culminate in an wonderful exhibition of the work of all the schools and it will be held at Heron Hall Academy on March 19th!

Our children; a force for positive change!

Our fabulous pupils have written their letters to Apple and Enfield Council.

Year 6 are campaigning for Enfield Council to recycle food waste from schools to reduce landfill and global warming (we recycle ours at school but have to pay for it). Year 2 have written to Enfield council to demand reassurances about the cladding on the local tower blocks so we never have to endure another Grenfell disaster (they have just learnt about the Great Fire of London) and Year 5 were so outraged when they learned Apple exploited children in their factories in China that they have written to demand change.

Our children are the future and they must have the opportunity to affect change.

An early morning newspaper group

I am extremely excited to be able to offer a free newspaper group to our KS2 children. I have recruited an inspirational colleague named John Gilbert to run his very informative club. I have had the pleasure of running these groups with John before and the children love them. The cost of the group is free, the children just have to bring in 60p for the newspaper which they get to keep. John supports the children with analysing and debating all the topical stories and the pupils become extremely well read on all that is happening in the world. Please try and get your children to the group. It will be commencing on Wednesday March 18th at 8:00 am until 8:45am and will be held in the school hall. I will give you more information nearer the time.

Thank you all so much for your continued support

Matthew Clifford

Dear Parent/ Carer,
Welcome back to school and I hope you all had an enjoyable Christmas break and a Happy New Year! Our children have settled back into school really well and are all working hard! During the break I was in school a number of times and without the children inside it seems a really empty and sad place. It is so much warmer and happier now that the rooms and corridors are full of happy, energetic children! It really is a lovely atmosphere. Thank you all.

£8k of new books have arrived!
We are all very excited now that all of the brand new library books have arrived. We have new collections of non-fiction books to help with the children’s

Topic learning and also hundreds of fantastic fiction books for children from Nursery to Year 6. Our hard working pupil librarians have been busy sorting and cataloguing all of the new titles, ready to put on the shelves. As soon as this is done we will give out children’s login details so they can access our library online, browse the books and even reserve titles they want to take out when it is their library day.

Outdoor Learning in EYFS
We are currently improving the outside area for our Reception children. We will be installing numbered stepping stones and featured areas for music play, water play, growing and of course the ever popular mud kitchen! The works should be done by next week.

Maximising Learning.
I managed to dust off my DIY tools over the break and managed to put up a large world map in the kitchen servery. Even though my papering skills were rusty it hasn’t fallen down yet! Now, as children are queueing for dinner, they are also learning many geographical skills and much knowledge!

Developing your teachers
We place a continued high priority on developing our staff with high quality training. With that in mind we have invested a significant amount on all aspects of training to ensure our staff provide high quality English teaching. We are working with a company called TT Education who are training our staff on the teaching of Grammar and our subject leads on developing their subjects across the school. We have also invested in training from a company called “Read Write Inc” in order us to improve our teaching of early reading.

Alongside this we have bought into a Music scheme called Charranga which ensures our children get high quality music lessons and we have invested in DB primary so our staff have the resources to deliver IT lessons in line with the National Curriculum.

I am also really pleased to say Mrs Molloy and the children are enjoying the French lessons she is teaching. Even though the government only make learning a language statutory from Year 3 upwards, at Kingfisher we now teach French from Nursery upwards. I think that children learn a new language more easily when they are young and by the time they leave our school they will have had eight years of French lessons!

We continue to invest in high quality maths support from Peter Warwick, an excellent, highly sought after maths consultant. If we fail to ensure our teachers have the best training, then we fail to ensure your children have the best teachers.

Thank you all so much for your continued support

Matthew Clifford