Blandford St Mary Primary School Newsletter Headteacher: Mr Paul Lavis Deputy Headteacher (on secondment): Mrs Lauren Houlston
January 2012 Volume 4, Issue 17
Contents:
Dear Parents
Thank you
2
Lunchboxes
2
Happy new year to you all!! I hope you had Cycle pods 2 a lovely time with your families and that 2012 brings you everything you’d want it School Nurse drop – in 2 to.
After school clubs Bad weather
Nearly two weeks are up already and time seems to be speeding up! So much to do 2 and so little time… 2
As you will have been told by the children Parent Support Group 3 I’m sure, we have been trialling a different approach to lunchtimes here at Blandford St Parking 3 Mary Primary School. With ever growing numbers and limited space around the FOS 4 school—lunchtimes were becoming increasingly challenging for staff and children Diary dates 4 to negotiate with regard to keeping our children happy and free from bumps and Celebration scrapes that are inevitable at these busy times of the day. To that end—we decided Assembly Dates to try making use of all the areas around the school by running lots of different ac20th January - Year 3 tivities, supported by our year 6 leaders, that the children could choose from. It is 27th January - Year 2 important to note that the children do have a choice about what they take part in at lunchtimes. 3rd February - Year 1
10th February - Reception
Now that the scheme has been running for a while—we can see the areas that need developing and the positive aspects too. We have found that some activities are more popular than others—which means we can extend these and possibly remove the least popular. We can also add numbers to each activity if need’s be so that more children from each class can take part if they want to. This will mean bigger friendship groups get to play together at lunchtime if they
want to. We have been very pleased with the majority of the leadership from our year 6 children, but we (and they) are aware that there needs to be some improvements. The Year 6 Common Room proves to be an incentive for these children should they choose to lead at lunchtime. We should also consider the positive impact of children developing friendships across the school rather than simply with their own classmates. The amount of difficult issues we have had recently at lunchtime have diminished hugely. Bumped heads and scraped knees have reduced (we’ll never get rid of them completely!) massively. As have incidents of having to deal with squabbles following arguments due to there not being enough room to play. I know it can seem a rather ‘structured’ way of conducting lunchtimes. However, our children still have the opportunity to play freely both at lunchtimes (the activities are not drilled!) and at break times. They have an ever increasing choice of activities to choose from and lunchtimes are a happy, vibrant, exciting time. Please be assured, we are always seeking to improve opportunities for our children and will continue to do so in this area. Any feedback—in any area—is gratefully received.