Happy New Year! I hope that you all managed to have a restful and peaceful time this Christmas. It is always tricky to rest in the midst of all of the unwrapping of presents and preparing the food needed for the celebrations; but I really hope that you have done so. There certainly seems to have been some stubborn illnesses around too with lots of families, and staff, suffering the effects of winter bugs. Thank you all for communicating this with school so clearly this week.
Often, at the end of one year, we feel compelled to reflect on the year that has been; thinking about the things that we haven’t done or haven’t achieved. I have urged the children to look ahead, to build on what they accomplished and learnt last year; always growing. When Jesus was born, our God in human form, a shining light was given to us. A light to guide us, to inspire us and for us to become. This is our mission, to be the light in the world for others to follow. Over the next week, the children will be spending time in prayer and liturgy thinking about how they will shine their light brightly. This will be added to a thought-provoking lighthouse display in our worship area. We can’t wait to share this with you when it is finished. This half term, our virtues are to be eloquent and truthful. As a community, we will be exploring what this means and what it looks like as followers of Christ.
This term is quite short compared to the Autumn term, but there are still lots of opportunities to enhance the children’s learning. We are continuing our invitational approach to parents coming into school with phonics coffee morning for Year 1 parents, Stay and Plays for Reception and Learning Looks for all parents in the build up to Parents’ Evening later on in the term. Please do check the school calendar for key dates relevant to your child, these will be continued to be added over the next few weeks. More information will appear on the class pages towards these dates.
“Technology can be a useful servant, but a dangerous master.”
Online safety is one of our biggest safeguarding concerns in school. In the world in which we live in, it is all too easy for the children to have access to devices; tablets, gaming and phones, from a given age. This age is in fact getting younger and I have found myself having conversations with some of our KS1 children regarding phone usage. This Christmas, devices seems to have been the present of choice for our pupils and as a result, we have seen an increase in safeguarding issues around online safety. This week, I have had daily conversations with pupils regarding their online behaviour; the amount of messages that have been sent (over 200 in some cases), class Whatsapp groups, inappropriate online messaging via Whatsapp and games consoles - the list is quite endless.
Please can I urge you to have a conversation with your child at home regarding their online behaviour and device monitoring. I have added two links below regarding parental controls and a guide to gifting technology. I have spoken with our IT technician regarding an advice drop-in where you can bring your devices to be set up with parental controls. We will also be using the National Online Safety Day to spearhead our campaign in school at the end of this month. Thank you for your ongoing support with this. Our children are moving into a technological world, a very exciting world! We need to ensure that we work together to help them to navigate this safely.
Weekly Attendance
News from the Office
Happy New Year. The office has been a hive of activity this week as we have set up things for the new term.
Fencing has started for our KS1 children this morning. Thank you all for paying so promptly before the course began. They had a wonderful time.
Dinner money is now on Parent Pay for this term. Please can you check it and ensure that payment is made. Thank you so much.
At the office, we have the school foodbank which the Student Council set up last year. The donations from before Christmas were sent to the local foodbank so we are now ready to start afresh. The following items have been requested and are in need in our community:
Sanitary products, noodles, tinned fruit & veg, toothpaste and orange juice. If you are able to contribute in any which way, please send the items into school or bring to the office. Thank you so much.
Vacancy within school
We are currently looking for a cleaner to add to our school team. This is a post for 10 hours a week; from 3.30-5.30pm. If you think you would like to apply or know someone who will, please contact Mrs Gregan at head@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk by next Tuesday.
How can we be a good neighbour?
I really love where our school is situated. It is firmly planted in the middle of a community with close links to the parish. However, this placing has its issues too. There are a number of roads around our school that if not used correctly, or we do not park correctly, can become unsafe for our pupils, families and neighbours. The road signs around school are there to prevent cars being parked there, we are going to need to increase these as some of the corners are being used for parking, meaning that it is dangerous. We have also had some phone calls into school from our neighbours about parking across driveways. One neighbour was unable to move his car and therefore missed an appointment. Can I please ask that we are considerate with where we all park and use the time to maybe park further away from school and walk in.
As we approach the better weather, we will be looking at this with our student council. They are really keen to run a safer road safety campaign. They are also looking at Church Road and hopefully getting a crossing put in place. If you live on the opposite side of Church Road to school - we need you! Can you complete the form below by simply saying that you cross this road, to get to school. It doesn’t matter how you cross this road, we just simply want numbers. There will be a walk to school campaign in place too. Thank you so much.
Have a lovely weekend with your families
God bless
Mrs Gregan