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The sound of laughter and extremely happy children (and cheeping!) has been so evident this week as all of the children returned to face to face teaching. Despite this being the sixth iteration to our education provision over the past twelve months, the children, staff and whole school community have displayed incredible resilience, kindness and adaptability, skilfully navigating the government guidance to provide the very best experiences for the children. I am incredible proud of how the children have adapted once again to the change representing all of our learning superpowers. Watching parents and children meet at the school gates this week, they all seemed euphoric connecting with one another. According to Robin Dunbar, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford University, in an article in The Times this week, ‘friends give us endorphin highs, and are necessary not just for our happiness but for our health too.’ Loneliness is turning out to be a major
underlying factor that compromises physical health. The future that the computer scientist Tim Berners -Lee predicted back in the 20th century after he created the world wide web has finally arrived. What aspects of this should we keep after the pandemic is completely over? We need to ensure that communities can meet up and share interests and hobbies for all ages, not just our children who do this so well with sport, music and activity clubs. Workplaces including schools need to see the return of staffrooms for staff to relax and unwind during a difficult day. Screens and smartphones have proved that they are useful but it’s friendship we are now realising is so crucial to wellbeing. Connectivity was at the heart of our remote learning programme, attempting not only to keep children interacting with one another but also with their teachers. In our Monday morning assembly, we awarded prizes for the extreme reading competition during book week. The winners were Tilly, who was reading in a canoe, Sasha, reading at great height (how did she get up there?!), Pirate Annaliese at the top of a tree and Alice reading quietly in her bedroom… on top of her wardrobe. Well done to all of our entries– the photographs follow later in the newsletter.
Newsletter No: 21 Friday, 12th March 2021 skated and sent in their distances to school. Mrs Hallgate then calculated the total distances. It was great to hear all of the Houses travelled the distances required and completed this challenge. The winning House with the most kilometres was Micklegate who finished with a stunning total of 1251.7km. Special mention to Mrs Johnson, James and Teddy M, India M, Bertie R, Edwin G, Joseph B and Joy-Elise and Hugo for their extremely impressive totals.
Next week we will be celebrating Comic Relief with another challenge that will be announced in Monday’s assembly that was an idea from one of our House Captains. On Friday children can wear red noses and accessorise their school uniform for Comic Relief.
On Sunday it is Mother’s Day and in the week of International Women’s Day, we want to celebrate all the Mothers, Sisters, Daughters, Aunts and Grandmothers in our school community and beyond. Have a lovely weekend, Following a meeting with our House Captains Zac, Joy-Elise and Immy, we set each House a challenge to see if they could make it back to school from remote parts of the UK. Monk had to get back to York from Lands End, Micklegate had to get back from John O’Groats and Walmgate had to get back to school from Dover. The children had walked, run, cycled and roller-