We receive regular updates from the Department for Education and the local authority. The situation is unprecedented and all we can do is wait for and follow the guidance given. At the moment schools should continue opening as normal but the national situation is changing at a drastic rate and we need to be prepared for possible school closures. We are thinking about our contingency plans and what we can do to help pupils continue learning. ClassDojo will help with this and help teachers share work, tasks, etc on a daily basis so please make sure you get connected. We will of course update parents immediately that we have any news.

We officially launched ClassDojo to the school this week and it is brilliant to see that so many of you got connected quickly. The teachers were excited to start making their first posts and are looking forward to sharing lots of news from their classes. We haven’t shared many photos yet as we are giving parents chance to get in their permissions. Remember, ClassDojo is a great, safe way to share photos because only the invited school community can see them. We will be reducing the number of newsletters now as all this information and more will be shared on ClassDojo. If you’re not yet connected, we hope that you do soon. We have sent email invites to a parent for every pupil – please check your junk mail if you haven’t received one. If you would like a second parent to be added for your child, just give the office a call and they will send an extra invite.

We have had a fabulous Science Week. It started brilliantly with a special assembly from Mrs Hawker and her science ambassadors. They explored the theme, ‘Our Diverse Planet’, looking at diversity in humans, animals, plants, weather etc. and even carried out a mini weather experiment. The children have learned a lot of science this week and they were thrilled when many parents joined them in the classroom. We had nearly 50 parents at each of our four open sessions! From making mini water cycles, to investigating body parts, to creating strong structures with spaghetti and marshmallows, everyone seemed to have a great time. All pupils were encouraged to take part in the science poster competition too. The poster has to link to the ‘Our Diverse Planet’ theme and Mrs Hawker will send the best batch to the official British Science Week competition. At the end of the week, each teacher chose the best, most enthusiastic scientist in their class – you can imagine that with such fantastic scientific thinking being shared all week, it wasn’t an easy choice to make.

Thanks to FRoG, we have just got a lovely new set of iPads and one of the things we are going to use them for is to share news and information about what’s happening in the classroom on a more regular basis. We will be using an online tool called ClassDojo – which some parents already know about and use. In my last school, every parent was connected and they absolutely loved it because we shared school and class stories with many photos on almost a daily basis. ClassDojo can also be used to share extra details about homework tasks and links to useful websites. As only ‘invited parents’ (that’s just in our Greenfield School community) are able to see what we post, this provides a safe platform to share photos – including of our Stars of the Week. Parents can comment on posts or send non-urgent messages too. With the phone app, it will be extremely easy for parents to use and, as we can share loads more on ClassDojo, we will be reducing the number of newsletters we send out. We are just setting this up for the whole school and we will send you more information via ParentMail to get connected.

Everyone loves to celebrate their achievements or be noticed for the wonderful things they do. As it is a long time between each Golden Book Assembly, we have decided to introduce a weekly Celebration Assembly on Friday afternoon. Each class teacher will be choosing a Star of the Week and these children will be awarded a special certificate. If any child has achieved an award out of school that week, this will also be a chance to show the whole school.

What a wonderful effort everyone made for WBD yesterday! We were thoroughly impressed with the creativity that went into the costumes. Everyone enjoyed guessing the different characters in our special parade assembly. Miss Tang kicked off the storytelling as we all started the challenge to share a million stories. Each class had different teachers visiting them to read more stories and lots of children took part in the book swap at lunch time. We hope everyone keeps sharing stories over the next week to help get nearer to that target. Don’t forget, that your child can use their WBD voucher in most book shops to buy one of the specially printed WBD books or have £1 off a book of their choice.

This week we held Greenfield’s annual Eisteddfod. This is not only a celebration of the upcoming St. David’s Day but also of the wonderfully talented pupils we have here. The contestants auditioned before the holidays and, after securing their place in the main competition, it was clear that they had been practising and perfecting their performance. Earlier in the week in assembly, we thought about our individuality and how we are all special in our own way, so it was wonderful to see these children sharing their talents. They all gave such fantastic and confident performances in front of the whole school and the judges, Judith Moreland, Mrs Stylianides, former pupil Grace Park-Davies, George Jeffries and Mr Sutton. Everyone was wowed by the magnificent singing, excellent playing of instruments, superb poetry recital and delightful dancing. The contestants made everyone very proud as well as making it almost impossible for the judges to choose the winners. A huge thank you to everyone who took part for making this event so special. Thank you to the parents for supporting them and Mrs Remmers and the staff who organised everything. The winners will be announced in next week’s newsletter and there will be a performance especially for their parents on Thursday 2nd April 2020.

This week we have been talking about respect. We have been thinking about who or what we should show respect to and how. The children are learning that you have to give respect to receive it and that, following the Greenfield Golden Rule, you should treat others as you would like to be treated.

Our Digital Ambassadors and Mr Dove did a great job leading two assemblies for Safer Internet Day this week. They explained some key messages about protecting your online identity and how to be a good digital citizen – remembering not to do or say things to someone online that you would not do or say in person. People’s lives are embedded in the internet these days so it is really important that everyone learns to use it both safely and respectfully.

Everyone was excited for our Golden Book assembly today. The worthy recipients (pictured on the back of the newsletter) have earned the recognition and respect of the grown-ups for their fantastic attitudes, hard word, positivity and their super, respectful behaviour. They are all superb role models to everyone.

Parents’ evenings were bustling this week and we were pleased with the fantastic attendance. We received many positive comments and we hope everyone found it informative and helpful. Thank you for your continued support. We really appreciate the work you do at home, supporting with reading and homework and we know that you will take on board any further suggestions we have made. A huge thank you for supporting the book fair too. We sold £472 worth of books and we will receive some commission to add to the school library. If you didn’t manage to come in for parents’ evening, we can arrange for you to see your class teacher after school one day so that you know how your child is getting on.

This week in assembly we were thinking about ‘perfection’ and how people strive to achieve this. The children learned that while you might find the perfect car, or have the perfect home and maybe even, perfect teeth, there is no such thing as the perfect person. Sometimes it is hard for children (grown-ups too) to appreciate that nobody is perfect and they can be hard on themselves when they make mistakes. We talked about how everyone makes mistakes and it is the progress you are making when you are improving and getting better at things which is most important. One saying particularly sums this up: strive for progress and not perfection.