News and Letters

January 2024

Newsletter - January Week 3

Published 26/01/24

Dear Parents and Carers,

Another week has flown by - quite literally with the help of Storm Jocelyn who left her mark on our playground! Luckily we are fortunate to have all of our beautiful (albeit muddy) grounds at the front of school to use as an alternative while Mr Gidman works on the playground. We are hoping to be able to use it again next week but having wellies in school would be useful to avoid the inside of school becoming a mud trail!

Big Garden Watch Weekend

Today is the start of the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch weekend. It is the world's largest garden wildlife survey. Every year lots of people take part and it helps the RSPB to build a picture of how garden birds are faring.

If you would like to take part below is a short video. There are also bags of birdseed and a guide to the top 10 garden birds at reception.

Happy Birdwatching!

https://www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/big-garden-birdwatch

Forest Schools

Congratulations to Mrs Williams who has completed her Forest Schools training meaning that we are now an accredited Forest School provider. Research shows that the benefits of this type of outdoor learning are numerous and far reaching - benefiting mental health, resilience, problem solving and academic performance. We are very excited to start incorporating this into our curriculum after half term. We will start a rolling programme where each class has half a term of Forest Schools as part of their PE curriculum.

Young Musician of the Year A message from Mrs Elkin, our music lead:

Just before Christmas we entered 4 of our Year 6 Musicians into the new Co-op Musician of the Year Competition: Millie - flute, Florence - guitar, Imogen and Gini - clarinet. They were recorded playing a chosen piece. These pieces were then submitted to be judged. Well done to all 4 musicians. It's quite nerve racking being filmed playing a solo!

There were 186 entries and only 41 musicians have been chosen to go through to the semi-finals. Gini is one of these semi-finalists! Our region's semi-final will take place at the Mitchell Arts Centre in Hanley during March. We are delighted to have someone representing Co-op Academy Friarswood.

We are so proud of all of our musicians who have lessons at school on clarinet, flute, guitar, violin, guitar or piano. If you have private lessons outside of school, please let me know so we can celebrate your success too!

Next year, we're hoping to open the competition up to all players. Watch this space.

Good luck Gini!

On Tuesday 39 members of our school choir went to Birmingham to take part in the Young Voices Concert at The Resort Arena. It was a long day (the coach left school at 10AM and didn’t return until just before 11PM!) but an amazing time was had by all and the children represented our school beautifully. Thank you to Mrs Elkin, Mrs Dickens, Miss Smith, Mrs Master and Mrs Bebbington for volunteering their time to allow the children to be part of such a fabulous opportunity to perform.

You can see photographs of the day on our website

Year 6 Choir Members Anna-Frieda, Gini, Florence and Amelia have written this report of their exciting day.

"39 of our choir members went to the Young Voices Concert on Tuesday. As we entered Birmingham Resorts World Arena, full of excitement and bursting to sing, we realised it was a much bigger venue than we had imagined!

We rehearsed from 2 - 5pm. The rehearsal started with 'The Moment' Young Voices 2024 official song. From the moment we opened our mouths the connection between not only us a Co-op Academy Friarswood Choir, but the other 5,832 pupils was more than clear. A huge amount of children and their accompanying staff, singing together was beautiful and such fun!

We sang with an amazing live band and 3 backing singers Otto, Maddy and Jane. We also had 3 stars: Natalaie Williams a talented singer, Nandi Bushell an amazing drummer who is only 13 and MC Grammar who is actually a teacher! We also loved dancing along with Urban Strides, the dance group.

There were lots of surprises during the actual concert. At 7pm the arena sky filled with stars and we all went mad! We sang and danced and the parents even joined in too. We created the biggest Mexican wave and had buckets of fun!

Thank you to Mrs Elkin for organising everything, to Mrs Dickens and Miss Smith who are also part of Co-op Academy Friarswood Choir and Mrs Bebbington and Mrs Master who enjoyed fabulous singing and dancing with us too."

PTA

Our wonderful PTA have been busy organising our first events of the year. Here are some dates for your diary:

If you haven’t done so already please could you fill in the PTA Feedback questionnaire. This gives the PTA an overall idea of what events you would like to see and events that are going well.

Attendance
Our attendance this week has been 97.1% putting us in the top 2% of schools nationwide - congratulations everyone for working hard to keep our children learning!

Upcoming Dates

Valentine's Disco	7.2.24	See attached poster
Inset Day	9.2.24	School and Small & Tall Closed
February Half Term	12.2.24 -16.2.24
Mother's Day Lunch	6.3.24
World Book Day	8.3.24
Non-uniform for chocolate bingo	15.3.24
Celebration of Learning	18.3.24	2.15pm
Chocolate Bingo	20.3.24
Easter Holidays	25.3.24 - 5.4.24

Ms Hartley

Newsletter - January Week 2

Published 18/01/24

Dear Parents and Carers

We may have only had a dusting of snow this week but my goodness the children have made best use of what they had! It has been wonderful to watch their determination and imagination to make something and use the snow creatively. Almost everyone has been well dressed for the weather - even if the temperatures rise slightly next week please ensure everyone is still wrapped up warm so that we can stay outside safely at playtimes.

Year 6 Standon Bowers
A class certainly making use of the great outdoors this week has been Year 6 who have spent the week at Standon Bowers. They have had a fabulous time learning new skills and developing their teamwork. When I visited on Wednesday I was very impressed with their have a go attitude, resilience and kindness. They have represented Friarswood to the highest standard possible - thank you and well done Year 6.

Of course the week has only been possible because of the staff who have volunteered their time in the evenings and overnight. A huge thank you to Mrs Sharman and Mrs Hughes for taking the children and to Miss Coleman for being part of the midweek relief squad who stopped over on Wednesday evening to allow the other staff to have a night off!

KS2 Children
In the absence of Year 6 the other children in KS2 have done a marvellous job stepping into the caring and leadership roles they usually take on the playground. It was lovely to see them proactively helping the KS1 and Early Years children - a real Friarswood Family moment.

Attendance
Despite the cold snap and the associated illnesses that will come with it our attendance is still 94.6% this week. Thank you to everyone for still making the best effort to get the children into school as much as possible. Every moment really does count.

Academy Community Pioneer
This week we have welcomed Matt Linley-Simon to Friarswood as our Community Pioneer. This is a part time Central Trust role to strengthen links between academies and the communities we serve. Watch out for projects and initiatives that Matt will be developing with us soon.

Small and Tall Dojo
A dojo group has been set up for Small and Tall parents. This is to allow parents to communicate any last minute messages directly to the Small and Tall staff rather than via teachers. Teachers are frequently unable to check Dojo during the school day due to teaching commitments so occasionally messages are missed. Using this group will ensure that messages go directly to the people who need to know! If you use Small and Tall, please check that you have been added to the group and if not let Mrs Dean know.

Upcoming Dates

Young Voices - Choir	23.1.24
Valentine's Disco	7.2.24
Inset Day	9.2.24	School closed Small & Tall Closed
February Half Term	12.2.24 -16.2.24
Mother's Day Lunch	6.3.24
World Book Day	8.3.24
Non-uniform for chocolate bingo	15.3.24
Celebration of Learning	18.3.24	2.15pm
Chocolate Bingo	20.3.24
Easter Holidays	25.3.24 - 5.4.24

Ms Hartley

Newsletter - January Week One

Published 09/01/24

Welcome back!

I hope that you all enjoyed the holidays. We have started the new year as busy and purposeful as always with lots of learning in and outside of the classroom.

Nutcracker at The New Vic Theatre
KS2 started the year with a trip to the theatre on Tuesday. On their return the children’s faces were full of joy and excitement. I heard many tales of giant gingerbread men and teddy bears over playtime! As always the children represented our school brilliantly and the staff at the theatre passed on their admiration of their behaviour and their attentiveness - well done Friarswood! Thank you also to the parent volunteers who went on the trip, I hope you enjoyed it too.

Mrs Wilmer
Mrs Wilmer is continuing her recovery at home. She is making good progress but still needs a little more time to get back on her feet fully. We all wish her well and a full recovery. In the meantime I will continue to spread my time between Year 2 and Acting Head.

Go IT Competition
The children in Year 6 have been working hard developing app ideas in their computing lessons that could help to improve our environment. This is part of a Co-op Academy Trust competition, the finals of which are being held in Manchester later this month. We could only send 1 team to the finals so this morning Mrs Sharman and I had the incredibly difficult job of choosing 1 out of the 5 fantastic presentations. We had an official judging rubric from the competition organisers and the team with the most points were The 4Rs - Ayva-Lilly, Isla, Albert, Jack and Thomas. Well done to all of the teams and good luck to The 4Rs in the finals!

Attendance
You may have already noticed that school attendance has been in the news much more recently. This is because of a Government campaign - Moments Matter, Attendance Counts launched this month. January to March are months particularly fraught with minor childhood ailments, the NHS Is my child too ill for school guidance and the Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty’s letter on mild illness and school attendance might help you to decide if a day off school is actually required. None of us want to bring an ill child into school but we’ve all seen the amazing recovery a child often makes an hour or so after waking!

Message from Mrs Elkin:
On Tuesday I received a super day's training with Read Write Inc trainer Jilly. I have become Friarwood's Reader Leader as I am passionate about making sure every child at Co-op Academy Friarswood becomes a confident and efficient reader! Our super team of teachers and teaching assistants also share this ethos.

Parents and carers of Reception, Year 1 and 2 children, who have daily phonics lessons, look out for regular videos being sent by myself or your child's class teacher via Class Dojo to support you and your child at home with their reading!

We would love to hear about some of the success your child is having with reading at home as the Read Write Inc programme that we follow really does ensure your child makes the best start possible with reading. Message your child's class teacher on Dojo and we will share these successes! If you need any help or support with your child's reading, get in touch.

Happy reading!

On a similar note a reminder that we have an INSET day on Friday 9th February when all of the staff will be receiving further reading training from Read Write Inc. There will be no Small and Tall as the staff are required to attend the training.

Upcoming Events

Year 6 Standon Bowers	15.1.24	All week
Young Voices - Choir	23.1.24
Valentine's Disco	7.2.24
Inset Day	9.2.24
February Half Term	12.2.24 -16.2.24
Mother's Day Lunch	6.3.24
World Book Day	8.3.24
Non-uniform for chocolate bingo	15.3.24
Celebration of Learning	18.3.24	2.15pm
Chocolate Bingo	20.3.24
Easter Holidays	25.3.24 - 5.4.24

Ms Hartley