The Big Plastic Count

We have received a ‘Massive Thank You’ for taking part in this important survey.  Thank you to everyone who helped the school to make a contribution.

Absences

Please can you email angela.dean@coopacademies.co.uk with your child’s absence and reason for absence.  Mrs Dean does not access Class Dojo.  Thank you.

Online Safety

As many of you will know, we receive updates from Alan MacKenzie, an online safety advisor.  This week he has shared the following which may be very useful to some of our families (if not all of our families).  If you know of another family who would benefit from this advice, please share it with them.

Online Safety for Foster Carers

Internet Matters have created an incredible set of resources for foster carers. They’re all free and go into a very wide range of issues along with useful advice and guidance including videos in 4 modules: Understanding, Empowering, Nurturing and Flourishing.

Foster carers can access the modules HERE.

TikTok and Other Social Media Checklists

With half term just a few short days away, now is a good time to send out information sheets to parents in relation to social media. Internet Matters have a good range of guides that help parents with family pairing (where available), privacy settings, reporting and much more. This is a really helpful resource for parents and you can find all the guides HERE.

Safeguarding / Online Safety

Here at Friarswood, we regularly teach children about being safe on the internet.  We teach the children about ‘not making friends’ with strangers.  Not everyone is who they say they are along with many more safety issues including how to be safe if taking a photo of them or their family.

In school, we have a monitoring system which alerts me to any concerns which includes words being used which really shouldn’t be used and phrases which could be linked to something untowards.

The staff talk to children about an acceptable user agreement, which defines what behaviour is acceptable when online and using computers.

If there are ever any concerns, I speak to the child involved, the teacher and when necessary I will involve parents too.

Should you have concerns about your child’s online activity there are lots of support sites available.  Below are a few;

NSPCC How to keep kids safe online

Supporting families to keep their children safe online

Keeping under fives safe online

We also have lots of information on our website.

Should you ever have any concerns about online safety or safeguarding, please don’t hesitate to contact myself or Mrs Hartley.

Board of Trustees Visit

This week, we were visited by Jane Cowell, who is on the Board of Trustees.  Jane came to have a look around the school, meet with our children and find out more about Friarswood.  It was lovely to see our children chatting comfortably with her about what they were learning about.  Year 1 proudly showed off their writing skills as well as their artwork.  Year 6 entertained her with their acting skills linked to science and eating healthy and Year 5 amazed her with their extended writing.

She was impressed with our safeguarding procedures and how we look after the wellbeing of the children and the staff.

Cricket

Today, Mrs Sharman and I took a group of children to play cricket against several other schools in a competition. They won with an amazing score. Well done to the cricket team.

Student Voice Conference

Some of our children have been invited to go to the Co-op’s headquarters in Manchester for a student voice conference.  The children will get a chance to find out how we can develop this in school and what other school’s do regarding this.  Our children will also have the opportunity to share with other Co-op schools what we do at Friarswood regarding pupil voice.

Alongside this, they will get the chance to have a look around the headquarters and find out about all the different types of careers available in the Co-op.

We’ll let you know how we get on after half term.

Defibrillator in School

We now have a defibrillator in school.  It is located in the main entrance.  Should it ever be needed, you can come straight into school, take it and follow the instructions.  The machine talks you through the whole process.  Here is a Youtube clip should you wish to know more.

We wish you all a lovely half term and hope the sun shines for the jubilee celebrations. 

Thank you for your support.

Take care and stay safe.

Mrs Wilmer

Co-op Ways of Being 

Be yourself always

Succeed together

Do what matters most

Show you care