Latest News

An eventful week

Fri 25 Jan 2019

Young Voices was a great start to our week. The Key Stage 2 choir left school at lunchtime on Monday with great excitement to join a mass choir of over 6000 children in Birmingham. The pupils and staff had a fabulous time and were excellent ambassadors for the school. It was a busy day and late night but the pupils (and staff) showed great resilience. Thank you to everyone who went along to support the event in the evening and to the staff who gave up their time to go along. Without staff being willing to go that extra mile these events would not be possible.

We welcomed Heather Loveridge to school on Tuesday. Mrs Loveridge, the Assistant Director for Education for Telford and Wrekin, was very impressed with the creative curriculum offer at Short Wood and commented on how positive the learning environment was. Telford and Wrekin have recently launched a 'Belonging strategy' and felt the aims and ethos of Short Wood demonstrated this in action brilliantly. She asked if she could return for a longer visit later in the year.

The full governing body met on Thursday evening for their first meeting this term. Mrs Harris fed back details of the events in school last term. Teachers had prepared books for the governors to see to demonstrate the impact of the teaching and learning. Governors challenged the team about how well pupils are doing and what is being put in place to support pupils to make even better progress, not only with their academic studies but also with their social and emotional well being.

Mrs Saunders met the Eco-council this week, following their success at persuading the governors that single use water bottles should be banned, they have now set their sights on the individual milk cartons. You may have seen in the news this week that the government are looking to introduce a strategy to reduce the use of plastic bottles and milk cartons so our Short Wood Eco-warriors are ahead of the game.

On a sporting note our Basket Ball team achieved a Bronze medal in their competition this week, well done to them. We also want to say well done to the Golden Leaf winners this week, we look forward to celebrating such positive young people every Friday.

Don't forget Parent Evenings are planned for next week - if you have not already made your appointment you can do so on our website or you can contact the school office directly and one of the team will be happy to help. We are having them earlier in the term again so we can discuss how you can support your child at home as we know children have the most success when school and home work together.

Have a great weekend - see you next week.

Short Woodies on target

Fri 18 Jan 2019

This week we have been focussing on reviewing pupil progress and looking at our aims for this term. It is a pleasure to talk to the teaching teams about how the pupils in their classes are doing and the next steps or interventions we need to put in place to support every child to be the very best they can be. This will be shared with parents and carers at the upcoming parents evening (Wednesday 30th and Thursday 31st January). Don't forget to book appointments online or call the office if you need any help.

School council met this week to discuss the impact of Calm Brain and to share their views on the topics they have been learning about. One of the key messages about Calm Brain is that it creates a ' better place for learning that is calm, quiet and focussed'. Some of the other quotes included:

'you feel calm to work so you don't worry about giving everything a go',

'after the excitement of break when you have lots of energy it calms our brain and helps us think',

'some of the new ones make you laugh, it is good to laugh together', 'by doing calm brain first it changes the way I think, the way I am working on things'.

Some of the older members were also keen to understand a little more of the science behind the programme so we will look at how we can do this as the year goes on.

Thank you to everyone who attended the meeting this week that looked at our Personal, Social and Health Education curriculum and the new Respect Yourself resource to support the delivery of the relationships and sex education aspect of our curriculum. The feedback we received was really valuable and will inform the way we implement the resource. We will review this as a management team and then offer another opportunity for parents and carers to feed back to us. Working in partnership with parents and carers is really important to ensure we are delivering the best outcomes for all of our Short Woodies.

A groups of Year 6 pupils had a fabulous opportunity this week to spend a day at Newman University. Mrs Saunders is currently studying for her PhD and has identified a small group of pupil researchers to work with her. The pupils spent the day with different academics learning about ethics, data collection and research methods. The pupils shared the Short Wood website and were excellent ambassadors for our school.

We have sporting successes to report again this week, our Archery team have qualified to represent Telford and Wrekin later in the term after achieving third place in the local competition. The basketball team played against local schools and achieved third and fourth place.

The PTA met this week, they are planning some fun events as fundraisers for the school, including family bingo on Friday 8th February, look out for details being displayed around school soon. If anyone would like to come along and volunteer to support these events please contact the chair, Mrs Marie Duce, through the school office.

Congratulations to our golden leaf winners this week we are really proud of all of their hard work.

Happy New Year

Fri 11 Jan 2019

Welcome back to a New Year and a new term. We have been delighted to welcome everyone back this week. Having said some goodbyes last term we have said some hellos to new members of the team this week. Mrs Kennedy has taken over the role of Key Stage 1 leader. Mrs Tymon has joined the Early Years teaching team and Miss Wheat is teaching in Class 10 and Class 13. Also, we have welcomed Mrs Bryce and Mrs Hayward to our team of support staff. We know they will be made very welcome.

We have been talking to the children about the work of our Eco Committee this week and considering the impact of single use water bottles. We have decided to make a pledge that we will not use single use bottles in school. We have ordered new water bottles for all pupils, but they can bring in their own multi use bottle if they wish to do so. We hope the new bottles will be with us shortly.

Just a couple of reminders as the new year begins. Please find time to read with your children at home and note it down in their reading diaries. We know this makes such a difference to the progress they make with their learning. Children will continue to bring home maths facts and spellings or sounds as they did last term. Regular practise makes a huge impact. Please check your child knows the days they swim / have PE to ensure they have their kits in school.

If you need to make appointments for your children please try and do this out of school hours whenever possible. If it needs to be within the school day we appreciate you letting their teachers know or calling the office.

Parking at the beginning and the end of the day has been challenging this week. If you can walk to school please do. Not only does this help reduce the traffic congestion and pollution it is also a great time to chat to your children about their day and of course supports their health and well being by getting them active. If you do need to drive please be patient and allow plenty of time for your journey. Please also be courteous to other drivers and pedestrians. Our priority is to ensure everyone's safety. We will continue to work with agencies to try and ease the traffic pressures but we need you all to take responsibility for the safety of everyone outside school.

You will be receiving notification of parents evenings and curriculum meetings for this term shortly. The feedback from the parents evening last term was really positive so we are holding them earlier in the term again so that we can discuss the best ways in which we can work together to support our Short Woodies to be the best they can be. We look forward to seeing you.

Congratulations to our Golden Leaf winners this week - they have had a great start to the new term and were glowing in assembly today.