Headteacher Message
Hello all,
What a week. I have just come downstairs from watching the Debatemate team work with our Year 5 and 6 children. They are fine-tuning their debating skills before shortly going into battle with another school. I was also supervising the card trading club. You may or may not know that a number of our children love to collect Pokemon cards. I am going to be very honest here, I am not sure what a Pikachu or Gorganzoid is but I do recognise that they really enjoy it. I had a good idea, which like many things in life didn’t quite work. I had said that cards were allowed in school on a Friday to be traded and have fun. In reality, without the necessary regulatory boards in place, it didn’t work. Cards were getting into the classroom and teachers weren't altogether happy. This is where democracy came to my aid. I was going to ban cards. Simple solution. Problem solved (in all honesty this did not quite sit right with me as they are developing a number of skills when trading with others). I put it to the democratically elected school council and told them I would abide by their decision. They voted overwhelmingly to keep cards in school with the understanding that they would be dropped off at the office at the start of the day and collected at the end. Bingo! What is lovely about the club is that there are children from 2,3,4,5 and 6 and the interaction they have is lovely.
This week I was lucky enough to visit another London school. It was Chesterton Primary School in Battersea. Myself and Emma Claridge spent the morning there looking at their outstanding phonic provision. It is lovely to get out and about, and we came back buzzing with ideas to further improve our phonic phonics across the school. This sort of school to school collaboration is so useful. We currently have a number of schools queueing up to come and look at our Nurture provision. We will always strive to get better at all that we do and in the process help other schools to do the same.
For instance, we have a really nice library but (and I am not competitive) it was not quite at the exceptional standard of Chesterton's. The space has so much potential, and we intend to utilise it. This is where you come in. As you know school budgets are very tight, we simply do not have the money for a project of this sort. Therefore, we are going to make ‘The New Darell Library’ our fundraising project. All the money we raise through Christmas fairs etc. will go towards this. When I say library I also mean books, lots of new books. We will be looking for donations towards this project. I am acutely aware that these are difficult economic times for us all and there is zero expectation regarding this - everything is a bonus. I will be releasing details of how to do this shortly.
The fact that we currently have a working library is due to the hard work our volunteer librarian, Kathleen Gaster. She has a long association with the school and has ploughed a lone furrow for a number of years but no longer because this is going to be a whole community effort.
With that rallying call complete, I am off to deliver our celebration assembly accompanied by one of Kool and The Gangs greatest tunes. A lovely way to dance into the weekend. Have a lovely weekend.
to be booked in advance. Next week, you will receive details of how you can book your tickets.
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