Headteacher's News 30.09.22

All the most recent news from Edith

Friday 30th September 2022

Dear parents and carers of Stepney Park Primary School.

The children are continuing to come into school with smiles on their faces, and they seem very happy. Reception and Nursery children are settling well too, it is great to see how much they enjoy coming in each day.

Our children love saying ‘hello and goodbye’ to us in Spanish (as well as English!). Children who leave with their learning behaviour postcard reward are proud and eager to tell us why they got the postcard, which is always linked to them demonstrating a good ‘learning behaviour’ (Trying new things, collaborating, showing ambition, being curious, being responsible, showing empathy).

Resilience:

Resilience is one of our school values; we want our children to grow up becoming resilient so that they can deal with setbacks and challenges when they inevitably arise.

Although rain has ‘stopped play’ on a few occasions, and although the weather is becoming more autumnal, children continue to enjoy playing with their friends and playing sports outside in the fresh air as much as possible.

We will be organising activities such as learning in our Woodlands, and trips such as our Grit- Trips and residentials to help children develop resilience.

Our Year 1 children are getting stronger and better at coming in and carrying their chromebooks and bookbags. They sometimes even manage to carry their backpacks as well! We will continue to help and encourage them to do this independently, as it will really help their resilience, and they always manage in the end. Some parents have asked us if Chromebooks need to go home every day. We do this because it is very difficult to keep chromebooks charged at school, we simply do not have enough charging points for children to do this here. In addition, the cables would become a trip hazard. We thank you for your support with this.

Parents attempting to deal with behaviour of a child who is not their own child:

As you know, we have a very good behaviour strategy and policy, which can be found here.

It sets out the steps we take when a child has made some poor behaviour choices.

It is our responsibility to deal with this, but occasionally a parent makes a decision to speak to a child who may have said or done something to their own child. This can be very intimidating for the child who is being told off by a ‘stranger’. In addition, the parents will not have heard both sides of the story. When we deal with the issues, we always investigate the incident by speaking to both children first.

A parent approaching another child is never acceptable, and I want to remind parents that they do not have the right to approach anyone other than school staff about their concern, no matter how certain they are their child is a victim. Please trust that we will always act as a matter of urgency if you report a concern about the behaviour of another child and that we will always keep you informed.

We appreciate your understanding and trust that we can work together on this.

One way system at pickup times:

We will continue to operate our one way system at pickup time. Parents can enter the playground from Smithy Street and leave via either the Redman’s Road gate or the playground alleyway gate. This is to ensure we can stop congestion as well as to ensure that we can spot children who may have lost their parents.

I will always be available to speak to parents at the alleyway gate, so do feel free to find me there if you would like to discuss something with me. I will always try and make time to speak to you straight away, or make an appointment to see you if I can’t due to other commitments or if it needs a longer meeting

Road Safety:

Unfortunately, a person was hit by a car this morning when they were crossing Smithy Street at the start of the school day. Although the person did not use the zebra crossing, it is always the responsibility of the driver of the car to ensure that pedestrians are safe. I would like to urge our parents to ensure that they set the right and safe example to their children by driving with the utmost care and crossing roads in safe ways.

School Uniform:

There are an increasing number of children who come into school not wearing the correct school uniform. Leggings and tracksuit bottoms are particular issue

Please remember to send your child into school wearing the following, labelled uniform clothes:

Purple T-shirts and jumpers or cardigans with school logo
Grey trousers or skirts/ dresses (not black)
No tracksuit bottoms (not even on PE days)
Tights or leggings allowed if under a dress or a skirt
White shirts allowed if under a purple jumper or cardigan

We are more than happy to support you if you have any worries or concerns about sourcing or buying the correct uniform. Please let us know if we can help you.

Year 6 School Journey to Mersea- a great success!

Year 6 had an amazing time at Mersea, please look at our website to see some photos of the fantastic things they experienced when they were there. What an incredible opportunity to become more independent, a great life skill!

Sadly, not all of our children were able to go, in many cases this was because either they or their parents did not yet have the confidence for this.

We are exploring ways to help children become more independent as they progress through school, so that by the time they get to Year 6, more children will be ready for the camping residential. We have plans for the following opportunities to work towards this:

Year 3- an evening at school, pick up at 8 pm
Year 4- an overnight stay in school
Year 5- an overnight stay at a residential centre (not camping) - hopefully free of charge
Year 6- we will continue with the 2 night camping residential at Mersea