Dear Parents,

Welcome back after the half term holiday. I hope the children had a restful break in readiness for full steam ahead! We all know how hectic school becomes leading up to Christmas. We have so much in store this half term – from Pudsey Day and the PTFA Coffee Morning, to the Key Stage 1 and 2 Christmas services in Church. Of course, we mustn’t forget the highlight – the Early Years Nativity!

Congratulations:

Bailey ~ ‘Man of Match’ for Whittlesey Yellows/Chelsea ~ Sponsored 9 mile walk for Breast Cancer/Daniel ~ Red belt in PKA kickboxing/Ellie ~ 3 mile Great Eastern Fun Run/Ben  ~ Completed the Library Reading Mission and also won a family ticket to Wicksteed Park being a term time Winner/James ~ First in Boys Level 1 9/10 Years Cambs Amateur Gymnastic Association/Thomas ~ First in Boys Level 1 7/8 Years  Gymnastics/Joshua ~ ‘ Man of the Match’ for Whittlesey Reds and also won ‘Trainee of Week’ at Cambridgeshire Police boxing Club/Esther ~ Came second in Level 1 9/10 Years Gymnastic floor work and second overall also passed Piano Grade 2 .

Diary Dates

Wed 15 Nov ~ Class 5 assembly/Bookfair in small hall begins before and after school /Fri 17 Nov ~ Pudsey Day/Wed 22 Nov ~ Class 10 assembly/Tues 28 Nov ~ Christmas display. Volunteers please see Mrs Jackson/Frid 1 Dec ~ PTFA Coffee Morning AM.

Wed 6 Dec ~ Early Years  Nativity 2pm. Parents/Relatives welcome./Tues 12 Dec ~ Christingle 2pm St Mary’s Church. All welcome./Thurs 14 Dec ~ KS2 Christmas Service 1.45 pm St Mary’s Church. All welcome./Fri 15 Dec ~ Christmas Lunch/Early Years and KS1 Party/Mon 18 Dec ~ Lower KS2 Party/Tues 19 Dec ~ Upper KS2 Party.

  End of Term ~ Tuesday 19 December 2006

School Office hours

The school office hours are 8.30 am –4.30 pm.  The answer phone is on before and after these times and Mrs Sutton will pick up your messages and attend to them.

Peanuts

As we have a number of children with peanut allergies we would ask you to consider this fact before sending peanuts to school as part of your childs’ play lunch/pack up especially with the younger children.

Asthma Letters

Please ensure that all Asthma letters are returned asap.

Christmas Dinners

Christmas Dinner orders must be placed by Friday 1 December.  Booking forms will be sent home shortly.

Early Years 2007

If you have a child due to start school in September 2007 and have completed our school admission form for them to attend Alderman Jacobs it is now also necessary for you to complete the Primary Common Application Form.  This can be collected from Mrs Wright in the school office or from the Nursery School that your child attends.  This form must be completed if you wish your child to attend Alderman Jacobs School and returned by 8 December 2006 at the latest. 

Pudsey

Please save all your small change.  Mrs Bielawski will be organising the covering of Pudsey Bears with pennies during the school morning of Friday 17

November. 

Welcome back!

We are pleased to Welcome back Mrs Willatt and Mrs Hatfield after a break away from school whilst on Maternity Leave. Mrs Willatt has begun teaching 50% with Mrs Vardon in class 14 and Mrs Hatfield is now teaching 50% in class 3 with Mrs Brown. We wish them a happy return and hope that they do not miss their ‘little bundles of joy’ too much.

School visits provide a fantastic learning experience!

Over the past month children in Year 4 and Year 2 have been on school visits to St. Mary’s church and to West Stowe Anglo-Saxon Village and children in Year 5 and 6 have welcomed visitors into school. Please read more about their experiences below.

Year 5 ~ All about Space

On Monday the 2 October Mrs Crawford came from the University of Cambridge and told Year 5 all about space.  Before we could get in the classroom, class 18 had to move the tables out of the way.  The whole of Year 5 got in and sat down.  When the whole of Year 5  were sat down Mrs Crawford showed Year 5 a quiz.  She asked Year 5 lots of questions about what Year 5 knew about space.  Next Mrs Crawford told Year 5 all about the solid rocky planets which are Venus, Earth, Mars and Mercury.  After that Mrs Crawford told us about gas giants which are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Afterwards Year 5 learnt that Uranus spins sideways like a ball.  Mrs Crawford then told Year 5 that the gas giants were the outside planets so if you went there your breath would freeze because the planets are so cold.  Year 5 found that interesting.  After, Mrs Crawford told Year 5 that you couldn’t live on Mercury because it is too close to the sun so there is no water.  Also Mrs Crawford said that on the planet Mars there is a giant volcano.

On the gas giants you can’t breathe or stand on them or you will die or fall straight through the planets.  Also Year 5 were told that on the surface of Europa it looks like broken ice and that Titan is too cold for anyone to live on.  Then Year 5 got to hold a bit of rock from out of space. Then we had to go for lunch.  Year 5 thought it was a very interesting day and learnt a great deal.  Aimee 

Year 6 ~ German Lesson

On the last Friday of last term, Year 6 had a German lesson with Mrs Pearson from Sir Harry Smith Community College.  We learnt how to say Hello, good day, what is your name and my name is.  Then we played a German game which is the German equivalent of Bingo.  It was good fun and we all enjoyed it very much.

Alex

Year 2 Visit to St Mary’s Church

On Wednesday 18 October Year 2 walked to St Mary’s Church.  Luckily it was a fine day and we were able to look at the outside first.  The Reverend Whitehouse spoke to everyone and then we looked all around the inside.  We heard the organ and sat in the choir stalls.  Everyone found it very interesting, especially all the carvings and colourful stained glass windows.

 History Visitor Year 6 ~ Changes in Britain since 1948

 On Tuesday 17 October, a lady from the Peterborough Museum came in to Year 6 to talk about fashion from the 50’s to the Year 2000. Because in Year 6 we are learning about it in our History lessons. Each of the Year 6 classes went into class 21 to look at all of the clothes she had bought in.  She talked about some of the decades then she let us try the clothes on and use some of the other artefacts she had bought in such as: cameras, Kettles, irons, shoes, dresses, skirts, trousers and hats.  We had a marvellous time.  After that we all sat down and then she told us some information on the clothes and all the other artefacts she had bought in. The best part of it was dressing up in the clothes because it was hilarious comparing the clothes from then to now.

By Samantha 

Visit to West Stow Friday 20 October 2006

We travelled by coach to West Stow to see how the Anglo Saxons used to live.  We were in groups.  When we were in the museum we took part in a quiz. It was great fun trying on a helmet and shoes that an Anglo Saxon warrior had worn.  The shoes were made of very soft leather but the helmet was heavy and very uncomfortable.  It was really exciting looking at the houses.  They were really strange and not a bit like our houses.  We could pretend that we were Anglo Saxons when we went inside the houses.  Some of us told stories of Beowulf.  We took a picnic and sat in the sunshine in the park to eat.  Before we got on the coach to come home, we were allowed to play in the huge playground.  It was a fantastic day out.

Useful Contact Number for Parents

Do you need advice or support concerning your children? Although you can always come into school to discuss any issues you have there may be times when you would like to speak to someone else.  Here are a few numbers you could contact:

Parent Parentship Service  ~ 01223 714111 /Parentline Plus ~ 0808 800  2222/Family Hurdles ~ 01733 554817/Careline ~ 020 8514 1177/ Positive Parenting ~ 023 9252 8787

Forever working to improve our standards!

At the end of the Summer Term last year we invited county advisors for English and Maths into the school to help us to analyse our children’s end of year tests to identify areas that the children may be finding more difficult. Please read the reports from our Subject Leaders concerning targets we have set for our children to help them improve their reading, writing and maths. Please support us by working on these areas with your children at home.

Maths Targets

This term all year groups are focussing on ‘money’ for their maths targets, from sorting and matching coins in Early Years to using a calculator to input amounts of money and interpreting solutions for multi-step problems in Year 6.

We would very much like your help by giving your child opportunities to experience money in a range of real life situations. For example for younger children playing shops, counting coins etc. and encouraging older children to keep a running total when shopping or calculating change. Thank you for your support.

Mr Colbran Mathematics Leader

English Targets

This year the pupils have new targets for English which were a result of areas for improvement highlighted in the Summer tests.  The main focus in writing is the correct punctuation of sentences.  In Key Stage 1 sentences need to be punctuated with capital letters and full stops.  By the end of Year 2 pupils should also be using question marks, exclamation marks and commas in lists correctly.  In Key Stage 2 the pupils learn to use speech marks and apostrophes and by Year 6 use commas to separate clauses.  Please help children with any writing completed at home.

The focus for reading is that children be able to recognise the features of different types of texts.  Help can be given with this at home by encouraging children to read discuss and use different types of books to give them a wider range of reading experiences.

Mrs Gipson English Leader

 Harvest Festival

We celebrated our Harvest Festival in style last month with a delightful class assembly by class 9. We invited Rev. Gill Stevens, who is also a Governor at Alderman Jacobs, to share our celebrations. Thank you to those parents who sent in food donations. These were collected by the Salvation Army and were distributed to people in need.

Improvements to our school building

While the children were resting over the holidays there was much activity around school! We are slowly working through a programme of carpet replacements around school. We have already replaced the carpets in the front entrance and long corridors, most cloakroom areas and one or two classrooms. This holiday 3 more classroom carpets were replaced and the last cloakroom was recarpeted. As I am sure you are aware, this is a very costly exercise and we are grateful that our children continue to respect and care for our building.

Mr Wyeth, our school caretaker, was also busy building a stage and sand pit in the courtyard area outside class 5. We hope that the children will be able enjoy this resource and we thank Mr Wyeth for all his hard work.

Improvements in the pipeline over the next few months include refurbishments of the girls’ toilets in Year 4 and Year 6, and a new traversing wall on the key stage two playground.

Rotary Shoebox Scheme Appeal

My name is Darren and I am in Year 2.  My dad gives up some of his time after work to help people that don’t have as much as us.  The charity club that my dad belongs to is called Rotary.  Every year Rotary sells shoeboxes and you fill it up with toys and other things to send to poor countries so that poor people have something for Christmas.  You can not put war toys, money, food and toys that need batteries.  I want to help sell lots of boxes.  If you want to help too, you can get a box at Alderman Jacobs School reception.  Please help to make someone happy this Christmas.  If you want to see some pictures of the children opening their boxes go to www.whitlesey1080.co.uk click on links and go to the shoebox scheme section.  Thank you. Darren

About Rotary

Rotary supports various charities and organisations, both locally and internationally.  Like many school, Alderman Jacobs has benefited from the help of Rotary-namely in Life Education Centres ( the hi-tech mobile classroom that was brought into the school grounds this past summer term, in order to teach the pupils health education and drug awareness) and events such as School Make Music ( which was hosted by Sir Harry Smith Community College, attended by all local schools and assisted by Sarah Combes of Alderman Jacobs).  Other project include Kids Day Out ( where pupils with varying disabilities from specialist schools are taken on an outing to an activity park.), Sailability ( where people with disabilities get to experience the pleasure of sailing) and the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) which offers training programmes in leadership development and teamwork for youngsters.  Please view our website for more information.  Another local event funded by Rotary will be the upcoming Bonfire on the 3 November (Northbank—just outside of Whittlesey) Rtn Mark Walton

Parking

Please do not park on the field  or in the car parks and wait for your child to finish school. Please either walk to school (good exercise and we are a Health Promoting school) or park outside of our school grounds.  If the practice of a few parents continues then I will have no option but to close the gate on our “concrete” roadway.

Staff training

At AJS we are very dedicated to continuing the professional development of ALL staff. Last month staff in school have had training on drawing skills in Art, teaching English as a second language, positive behaviour management and ICT. In addition, subject leaders have had time out of the classroom to look at ways to further improve teaching and learning within their subjects across school.

Alderman Jacobs achieves “Investors in People” standard for the fourth time

According to our assessor Amanda Scarborough, our school, “is an excellent example of Investing in People”.  She concluded that we have no areas for development. Our assessment process lasted for 1 1 ½ days.  35% of our staff (19 people) were interviewed.

People interviewed included Governors, subject leaders, TA’s, midday supervisors, cleaners and new members of staff. 

According to our feedback all staff were confident at talking about their role within our school and the ways in which we offer training and support for all members of staff.  Staff also said that they felt valued and they had opportunities to learn and develop new skills.

Overall Alderman Jacobs invests in its people to enable them to support and develop the skills of the children within our school.  Our IIP status will last for 3 years until 20 October 2009.

R Bains IIP Leader

Noise levels in class assemblies

It is always lovely to see so many parents and pre-school children at our class assemblies. We do appreciate that it is not always possible to keep younger children quiet for long amounts of time, however, it can sometimes be off-putting for children on stage if there is noise from pre-school children watching the assembly. Please can you support us by using the door at the back of the hall to take children out temporarily, if they are becoming noisy. Thank you

Health and safety Guidance for Parents Transporting Pupils to Events

We have for many years asked for parental help to take our children to sporting events and have never encountered a problem. Parents have taken their own child and filled their car with other children to take them to football and netball matches, etc. However, the County Council have now informed all schools of the following:

· It is acceptable, in normal circumstances, for parents tovolunteer to offer help to the school, to take their own and others’ children to and from school events and for the school to co-ordinate this activity. Where this involves children covered by the legislation, additional liabilities may be incurred, and the school must exercise due diligence to satisfy itself that the conditions set out are fulfilled by the driver.

· Schools may purchase their own child seats and restraint systems to cover their own needs, provided they are suitable, compatible and stored effectively.

· Parents may transport their own child under their own liabilities and responsibilities. In all cases, the duty to ensure compliance with the regulations rests with the driver.

We have now been informed that we must carry out checks, ensuring drivers have a valid driving licence, relevant insurance and cars have an MOT certificate. In addition, we must also check all drivers used against List 99 and, where parents are used as drivers on a regular basis, a CRB check must be carried out. We are encouraged to compile a pool of willing parents who have been checked in this way and who could be called upon as needed.

As you can see there are many implications for our school. We will consider the recommendations by the County Council and we will, of course, ensure that we are acting within the law and with the best interests of our children’s health and safety. Look out for more information on this in future newsletters.

Charity Day – Summer Term 2006

I know it was a long time ago but I just wanted to let you know how successful our second annual Charity Day was last July. We raised a total of £671.35, which was also up from the previous year. The children had a wonderful day, taking part in activities from Olympic games and ice-cream making to pyjama days and pirate parties. Please see below for a more detailed breakdown of the chosen charities and the money raised. Well done to last year’s class 17 and 18 for raising so much and to all the parents who supported our charity day.

Class 1 raised £14.00 for Rotary, Class 2 raised for £31.49 Marie Cuire, Class 3 raised £14.25 for Wood Green, Class 4, 5 and 6 raised £62.50 for Sport Relief, Class 7,8 and 9 raised £28.30 for Deaf/Blind UK, Class 10,11 and 12 raised £56.30 for RSPCA, Class 13 raised £17.05 for Dog’s Trust, Class 14 raised £24.95 for Diabetes UK, Class 15 raised £23.32 for Cancer Research UK, Class 16 raised £23.93 for RSPCA, Class 17 raised £127.66 for RSPCA, Class 18 raised £152.73 for Milton Hospice, Class 19 raised £21.24 for RSPCA, Class 20 raised £18.53 for Cancer

 Research UK, Class 21 raised £25.10 for NSPCC and staff raised £44.00 for Cancer Research UK.

Headteacher’s Visit to Taiwan

On Saturday 11 November I will be leaving the UK to begin a visit to Taiwan organised by the National College for School Leadership and The British Council.  The visit along with 10 other Headteachers from all parts of the UK, has been arranged to enable school leaders to study leadership in another country and culture and to learn from the experience so that leadership in their own schools can be enhanced.

Taiwan is a well-developed, technological society with high achieving schools and a culture where education is held to be extremely important.  Children begin school at 6 years of age and are generally part-time for their first two years at school.  All pupils are assigned jobs in their schools and a typical day will start at 7.30 am until lunchtime and then after a nap (all ages and staff) school will continue until 4 pm.  Many children will then go to a “crammer” school to do more school work until quite late in the evening.  All children are assigned “jobs” in their school including full responsibility for all cleaning-quite different from the UK! Many children spend weekends at supplementary schools so their free time is very limited.

I hope to be able to bring back to Alderman Jacobs School some new ideas to promote learning and teaching in our school.  Taiwan’s schools are big-often over 2000 primary pupils.  It will be quite different for me as Alderman Jacobs is the largest school in

Cambridgeshire where it is quite usual to have school of less than 100.

I will be talking to the children about Taiwan at the start of next week but meanwhile a homework task for them could be to do some research on Taiwan at the library or on the internet.  It’s really good to broaden geographical knowledge at any time and here at Alderman Jacobs we take the international dimension very seriously.

I will look forward to my visit and I will tell you more about Taiwan on the December newsletter.  Meanwhile Mrs Challinor will take care of Alderman Jacobs (along with the staff and Governors) and I will return to school on the 23 November all being well.

Best Wishes

Other International Visitors

Last year we hosted a Swiss teacher for three weeks and during the Summer Term we had visits from two multi-national groups of students who were studying English.  Two weeks ago we had a visit from two German students who wanted to learn about our educational system and enhance their English skills.  Another visitor to our school, although not from far away, was Mrs Pearson from Sir Harry Smith Community College who has been teaching German to some of our Year 6 pupils.  All our Key Stage 2 pupils have the opportunity to learn another language.

Best Wishes