Dear Parents
Whole School Restart
What a lovely week! We have been so delighted to welcome our children back into school this week. The corridors have been filled with the joyous sounds of children chattering, laughing and playing. Standing in the sunshine watching a great number of the KS2 children playing football together was like watching them breathe again – the many interactions and unspoken signals between classmates unpractised for so long but now unfurled and flying once again. It has been amazing to see children of all ages slot back into the Cardinal Newman jigsaw of Learners, Believers and Friends so quickly and effortlessly. For staff and children alike, it has been such a positive restart and we hope families will also have enjoyed the respite and breathing space after so many weeks home-schooling.
Learning this week has focussed on allowing the children to reconnect and enjoy hands-on collaborative learning wherever possible. Teachers have been pleased to report some fantastic progress from home learning, especially in reading and handwriting. Initial impressions from the first week are very positive, with children able to build on their home learning in Maths and Science. We will continue to work with the children to ensure the building blocks are securely stacked but it is most reassuring that the initial indications are so positive. What a great testament to teachers’ hard work delivering remote learning and parents’ commitment to support our children’s learning through this difficult time! Thank you to all of you.
It has been so lovely to see the children enjoying the wider curriculum more freely once again! Forest School restarted this week with some of the older children (Y6) involved in a local planting project, digging holes for our new trees to continue to develop the Wildlife Area and school grounds. Following the success of the recorded PE sessions on Teams, children across the school have really enjoyed having real live PE sessions with Mr Fenton this week (despite the difficult weather conditions on Wednesday!) Our new IT Suite has also been in action this week – although all of the children have had plenty of screen time at home, they were very excited to see our brand new whole class IT suite and they are looking forward to starting their new programming units in Computing now we are back to school. Our thanks once again to the Parent Association (and all our parents who support their fundraising) for enabling us to purchase the equipment for the new suite.
COVID Measures
Thank you too for your care and attention to social distancing and supporting the measures in place to keep the community safe and the school open. We have already heard of pupils testing positive in other schools and bubbles having to close again. Let’s work together to ensure we can keep our children in school and learning as much as possible. Please remember, if your child is unwell, do keep them at home pending the result of a COVID test.
Parking
One negative result of the return to school has been an increase in inconsiderate parking on Arch Road. Residents have been in touch once again to ask that parents park elsewhere wherever possible, but most importantly please do not block driveways and pavements. Yesterday afternoon, it would not have been possible for emergency services to have accessed Arch Road due to inconsiderate parent parking; this morning there was actually an ambulance called to one of the residents, so this is a real issue. None of us would want an ambulance to one of our loved ones to be delayed and hampered by someone else’s bad parking, so let’s make sure we are not the cause of that problem for someone else.
Stations of the Cross
Thank you to Fr Bill and our Year 5 Prayer Council children who led the Stations of the Cross for the whole school community today. It is traditional during Lent to reflect on Jesus’ journey to the cross and this reflection was beautifully presented by the children. Next Friday 19th March, there will be no Stations of the Cross as it is the Feast Day of St Joseph and we will be celebrating whole school Mass at 2pm with Fr Bill (himself a Josephite priest). The next Stations of the Cross will be held on Friday 26th March at 11am when Y4 will lead the Stations with Fr Bill.
On Friday 19th March, we will be making a collection for food items for the Foodbank - please send donations in with your children. We will quarantine donations over the weekend and donate to the Foodbank the following week. Items which are particularly required at the moment are: Long-life milk, Long-life juice, Instant mash potato, Pasta sauce, Sponge puddings, Jam and Washing powder.
Thank you for your Lenten donations to the Missio Appeal on Scopay - this appeal will remain open until the end of term.
Hall Extension
The children have enjoyed seeing the development of the new hall project and are impatient to be inside and using it! We are not that far forward yet, but the project has certainly moved on. The steels were put in by crane last Friday and this will enable the completion of the roof construction in the coming weeks. The framework for the new audio-visual system will be installed next week and we are looking forward to having screens and projectors in both sides of the new hall to enable both spaces to be used independently, as well as together. It will be a truly amazing new resource when completed!
Thank you to those who have sent donations in during this week. The first batch of “Donor Bricks” has arrived and there are just a few bricks left to complete the framework. If you have been meaning to “Buy a Brick” and haven’t yet got round to it, do get in touch with Tina O’Kelly via email tokelly@cardinalnewmanschool.co.uk (Governor in charge of Fundraising) or complete the Buy a Brick form here
Thank you again to all parents who are supporting the Governor’s Fund with monthly donations – these donations go directly to support the hall extension at the moment and we absolutely couldn’t have got this far without you! If you aren’t yet contributing to the Governor’s Fund, please do consider supporting the school in this way. Unlike state-maintained schools, Catholic schools like those in the Xavier Catholic Education Trust have to fund 10% of any capital project work ourselves and parent donations are crucial to achieving this. Thank you for all your help to provide the best resources we can for our children at Cardinal Newman.
Lunches
Finally, just a note about lunches…. As you can imagine, the joint challenges of COVID guidance and having the school hall completely out of action have created some interesting situations for our amazing school kitchen staff! They have been incredibly flexible and coped with all these changes with good humour. We have adapted the set Twelve15 menu at the moment - it remains well-balanced and nutritious, but avoids some of the issues of peas and sauces all over the classrooms in the afternoon! The revised menu for this term is on the website here.
Thank you once again for the joy of your children’s company this week! We look forward to seeing them again on Monday and wish you a happy weekend in the meantime.
All best wishes
Catherine Burnham
Headteacher
