Ref – Welcome
Dear Parent, I would like to warmly welcome all parents to Manchester Communication Primary School; we have had an incredibly busy but exciting three weeks ensuring that our children and staff are settled in our brand new building. As I am sure you are aware, the school opened in September 2014 with 6 children another 30 children joined us over the year and we now have over 100 children in our nursery, reception and KS1 classes. I would like to thank all of our parents for their support during this time; your children have settled really well into their new routines. Communication It is important that communication between home and school is strong. Academy reception is the first point of contact if you need to speak with us, leave a message or ask a question. Class teachers are available at the end of the day if you need to meet them briefly. You can also make an appointment via reception if you would like to discuss something in more depth. We will be inviting all parents to a review meeting before half term; this will be an opportunity to discuss how your child has settled into their new school or year group, a letter will be sent home with more detail next week. You will also receive two written reports, one in February and the other in July and be invited to another review meeting in the summer term. After School Clubs On Monday we launched our extra-curricular clubs which have been very popular; we will offer clubs every half term, reviewing what has worked well and adding new opportunities. I must stress that it is important that your child has an interest in the activity and there will be occasions when clubs will be cancelled due to parents review meetings for example. At the moment we do not have enough parents interested in external pre and after school club provision. We have approached several providers but they need approximately 20 children per session to make it financially viable. A local nursery school can provide pre and after school provision and will bring and/or collect your child to and from school; we have leaflets available at the Academy reception. I do fully appreciate, as a working mother myself, that child care is a worry for some of you, so to help we are providing a free breakfast club that we are staffing. The club opens at 8:00am and last admission is at 8:25am.
The Week Ahead This weekend reception, year 1 and year 2 children will have homework to complete and can we encourage all of our children to read or share a story with an adult. We will also be giving weekly awards from next week. A ‘friend of the week’ and ‘star of the week’ for each year group and reception, year 1 and year 2 will also have a ‘Dojo’ champion. Children get to choose a book as a reward and are treated as VIPs!
Finally Great News! Manchester Communication Primary Academy has come 2nd in the Summer Reading Challenge Schools Competition! This was based on the second highest amount of children completing the Record Breakers, Summer Reading challenge 2015. Big congratulations to all the children that visited Manchester Libraries, joined the Summer Reading Challenge and borrowed and read 6 books each over the summer. Our prize is an author visit to our academy from the highly energetic children's author: Dominic Berry. Can I again thank our parents in encouraging our children to read and love books – a great start to this academic year.
Sue Farrimond (Principal)