Sports Day, workshops and goodbyes!

1. ISSUE 10|June 2013 Sports Day, workshopsand goodbyes! Upcoming events Thurs 4th July Secondary Transfer Day Mon 8th July Y4 Parent Consultation Wed 10th July Celebration Evening 5-7pm Sat 13th July Summer Fair Monday 15th July Y4 trip to Hudnall Park Tues 16th July KS2 Performance 2pm Wed 17th July KS2 Performance 6.30pm Fri 19th July End of term Value of the month Our value of the month is Forgiveness. The children learnt this month that forgiveness is a very powerful value but that it is also a choice. We explored the parable of the unforgiving servant through words, actions and drama and also thought through questions such as ‘Why can forgiving someone be hard?’ and ‘When does someone need to be forgiven?’ We even had time to explore the brain and see how the brain works best when we are feeling the best. Martin Smith, Headteacher Meet the Leadership Team! Margaret Morgan has been one of Pixies’ two Community Governors since 2011. A Dacorum resident for over 30 years she started her life in the borough in St John’s Road, opposite the then petrol station and next door to the newsagents. As a result she gained a great deal of local knowledge due in no small part to constant dog walking around the neighbourhood especially around Boxmoor and Chaulden. This was enhanced when her husband became a Dacorum Borough Councillor in the mid 90’s. Since 2012 Margaret has chaired the School Improvement Committee which has a wide remit including responsibility for the maintenance and improvement of school standards. The recent Ofsted inspection has highlighted the importance of the work of this committee and has underscored its importance to the governing body as a whole. “The Committee takes its role very seriously,” she says. “We are all very aware of the importance of primary education and are committed to working with children, parents, staff and Ofsted to ensure that the Pixies Hill experience and education is the best possible for the pupils so that they are well prepared as they move through to secondary school.” Margaret’s professional background is in corporate communications where she has worked for and advised a number of FTSE 100 companies primarily in the healthcare sector. One of her two grown up children - her son - is training to become a primary school teacher specialising in SEN, and the other has followed in her mother’s footsteps and is working in healthcare communications. Because of her background Margaret will be considering and thinking of ideas to help celebrate the school’s upcoming Golden Jubilee. “All suggestions are truly welcome,” she says. “We want it to be a true celebration of Pixies’ achievements both past and present.” Ofsted Monitoring Inspection On 5th June we had a whole day visit from a HMI inspector who looked at the progress the school has made since January. We are delighted with his findings and the new Section 8 report which is available on the Ofsted website and will be uploaded to the school website in due course. It confirms the schools evaluations that we are well on the road to been graded as a ‘Good’ school and we are hopeful of a favourable early full reinspection date in the next academic year which will enable us to demonstrate this. Maths Workshop Thank you for all the positive feedback we have received about the Maths Workshop. Teachers and children demonstrated how modern maths is taught in school and parents had the opportunity to see this working in action, ask questions and finally get to the bottom of what ‘chunking’, ‘partitioning’ and ‘decomposition’ really mean! Your feedback has helped us to clarify what topic the next workshop should be on and plans are afoot to run a phonics workshop early in the autumn term and a writing workshop towards the end of the next academic year.

2. Stars ofthe week Goodbye Mrs Barton and Thank you! Although moving on is a natural part of school life, we were sad to say goodbye to Mrs Barton who has served the school well as Office Manager for 11 years. We were delighted to be able to send Mrs Barton on her way with gifts and comments from the children about why they will miss her and why she is so good at her job. Mrs Barton also left the school with a lovely gift - a scarecrow which has already been proudly raised in our school garden. After the conclusion of several interviews, we have shuffled roles around in the office and I am delighted to inform you that Mrs Galley is the new office manager while Mrs Trent takes over Mrs Galleys’ admin assistant role on Mondays and Tuesdays and Mrs Clark moves into Year 5 as the TA for 3 days a week. Please do bear with us whilst everyone gets up to speed in their new roles. Week of 07/06/13 Reception: Finley Smart Year 1: Mia Crouch Year 2: Harry Hyder Year 3: Matthew Morgan Year 4: Ben Smith Year 5: Harry Clements Year 6: Rayhaan Amjad Week of 14/06/13 Reception: Katie Beaumont Year 1: Teddy Hook Year 2: Jasmine Hardy Year 3: Matthew Morgan Year 4: Derin Su Year 5: Zofia Lamburn Year 6: Chloe Rance Week of 21/06/13 Reception: Callum Christie Year 1: Jackson Priest Year 2: Alex Flower Year 3: Nicole Lee Year 4: Kirsty Chemweno Year 5: Jack Clements Year 6: Reuben Tate Week of 28/06/13 Reception: Emma Lewis Year 1: Bhavandeep Walia Year 2: Elliot Su Year 3: Matthew Simpson Year 4: Pragnya Srinivasamurthy Year 5: Ben Birch Year 6: Jaden Bates Sports Day It was great to see so many families at sports day and a big thank you must go to Mr Franklin, Mr Braithewaite and the rest of the staff team for organising all the events, key stage support and programme for the day. We hope you enjoyed the new format which was aimed at reducing the amount of time children were sitting and waiting for events to start. Big congratulations to Shendish in yellow for winning the overall day whilst Ashridge won the KS1 event and Sehndish won the KS2 event. There was only 9 points between overall 1st and 2nd place! Use of Facebook Facebook is an amazing tool and we are considering how we might use this in a school context to further improve our communication. It has, however, come to my attention that a couple of parents are using this to vent frustrations about class teachers. Please come and see the class teacher to air concerns in the future so we can put things right, deal with the issues and move forward. Your child’s progress Earlier in the year, we adopted a new report format which received very positive feedback. As part of this process, we said we would report on your child’s progress at the end of an academic year. We are currently collating the progress data so do look out for your child’s progress report which will detail levels, progress and an explanation of what this means in a national context. Well done to everyone!