Dance, cricket, art, maths, English, science, construction, rock climbing, cycling, climbing, loads of play and so much more!

We are back in school and loving every minute!

A treat for our Nursery children this morning. A new, custom made mud kitchen just for them.

A gift from our amazing caretaker - Pablo

The last day of home learning was a fun one with children across the Junior School asked to create book nooks and toilet roll characters linked to their reading books.

The Infant School also made scenes for their Supertatos.

We all came together at the end of the day for a virtual Hot Chocolate and shared our creations. 

Supertato was the Infant School #WorldBookDay2021 theme this week... check out some of these awesome creations!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No... It's SUPERTATO!

We are delighted that all children will be returning to school full time on Monday 8^th March. Below are some key points which may be useful when you are getting ready for next week.

COVID Risk Assessment

We have updated our risk assessment, and this will be uploaded to our website by midday tomorrow (Friday) here. There are only small changes; most of these are reinstating measures we had in place before the lockdown. All changes on the January 2021 Risk Assessment will be highlighted in yellow.

Lockdown – ‘stay at home’

Please remember, that even though children are returning to school, the ‘stay at home’ rule is still in place and will remain in place until at least March 29^th. 

This means that you should only leave your home for limited reasons and meeting other families at the park or in households before or after school is not allowed. The full Government guidance can be found here.

Laptop Bank

As children return to school, we are asking for all loaned laptops to be returned to school between Wednesday 10^th March and Friday 12^th March. Please bring your laptop to the Junior Office where it will be checked and signed back in. These laptops will be used in school by the children and available for loan for children who have to work from home due to isolation. 

Hot Meals

From Monday 8^th March hot meals will again be cooked in our onsite kitchens. The menus can be found here. Next week will be ‘Week 1’.

Warm clothes – outside learning

The weather is getting better however, there are still chilly and wet days. To make sure we can learn outside as much as possible please ensure your children have coats and waterproofs suitable for our varied British weather in school each day. 

Uniform

Children will need to wear uniform next week, but we understand that they might have grown out of certain items. If you are struggling to get uniform that fits please let the class teacher know. Children’s feet can grow so quickly, and shops have been closed so your children’s black shoes may not fit. In this instance, children will be permitted to wear trainers until further notice (please do not wear sandals).

Rapid Lateral Flow Testing for households

From 1 March 2021, if you are a member of a household, childcare bubble or support bubble of staff or a pupil you can get a twice-weekly test:

• through your employer if they offer testing to employees
• at a local test site
• by collecting a home test kit from a test site
• by ordering a home test kit online

More info from the DfE can be found here

Information about school start/ finish times and wraparound care

Please refer to my last communication for this information here

See you next week

As always, thank you for your continued support, we can’t wait to see you all on Monday. 

Best wishes, 

Mr J Beament

Executive Headteacher

St Saviour’s Schools

World Book Day is next week and we have some exciting activities planned for the children.

Thursday 4th March 

Infant School 

Children will be sharing the story of Supertato by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet throughout the week as a starting point to discuss their favourite book hero. They will be designing their own potato book hero and then making the accessories/ costumes to create their potato character. Teachers will be sharing ideas with the children prior to World Book Day and will be creating activities to inspire book talk and a love of reading. When making their book character children can use a potato or any vegetable as the base to their character. If you don’t have a vegetable to hand children could roll up a ball of socks or use a toilet tube as the base and then accessorise with features of their character. Faces, hats, clothes can all be made from paper and sellotaped on to the potato. Felt pens could be used directly on to the potato. Anything goes! Once the characters are complete, please take a photo for your child to bring into school so that they can be displayed in classroom reading corners when they return on March 8th.  

Children who are in school do not need to bring anything with them on World Book Day or the Friday. Just their imaginations!  

Junior School 

The Junior School Staff have put together a ‘Masked Reader’ video for the children to enjoy! Children will be asked to guess who is reading each book, and for bonus points, what the book is! On Thursday morning on the Teams chat, Mrs Offler will upload the Masked Reader video and a sheet where you can record your guesses. There will be a small, book related prize for the person with the most correct guesses. Who will you find behind the masks? 

Friday 5th March 

Friday will be an exciting extension to our World Book Day celebration with children invited to get involved in a crafty day of activities with Sophie, Mrs Simmons and Mr Beament. 

Children will receive two Team’s invites instead of their normal Friday schedule. A live launch of the activities on Friday morning (Infants at 9:15am and Juniors at 9:45am) and an extended ‘Hot Chocolate Friday’ where children will be able to share their learning and creations at the end of the day. 

(Please note, that if your child(ren) have a targeted intervention or live session on Friday this will continue as planned. These will still appear in your Teams Calendar.) 

This Friday will serve two purposes. We will be able to bring the children together as a large community, celebrating books and literature and have some fun. It will also allow teachers and staff teams to spend time preparing the school site and resources for the return of all children on Monday 8th March. 

In order for your child(ren) to get prepared your children will need the following resources: 

Infants – comics strip templates (optional- these will be available to print off from the home learning section of the website), paper, cardboard box, felt tip pens or crayons, your Thursday book hero and any other craft materials that you have available.  

Juniors – cardboard boxes (cereal boxes and shoe box sized boxes are ideal), toilet roll tubes and basic craft supplies e.g. paper, felt pens, glue etc. These will be used to make up to 3 different book related craft projects. If you would prefer to complete your own activity (e.g. book review, making a costume/dressing up as your favourite character or something else) this is absolutely fine – use the day as an opportunity to be creative.) 

Children in Year 3 have had an exciting week.

Jim at Aardman (creators of Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Creature Comforts and Chicken Run) has sent through a special video talking about how they make the puppets.

The children have drawn characters and Jim has written them a handwritten note back about their work. They have really loved it and been chuffed with their notes.

Next week Jim will send another video of how to make a Shaun The Sheep.

All children to return to school on Monday 8th March

We truly appreciate all your support and understanding during another period of lockdown and home learning. We understand how difficult this has been for our families and are delighted to be able to welcome all the children back to school for a full-time timetable on Monday 8^th March.

We will be updating our risk assessment this week and will send this out to families next week. We are not expecting many changes to this document and the measures we had in place pre-Christmas.

Our current COVID19 risk assessment (January 2021) can be found here.

A reminder of school start and finish times

In order to ensure reduced ‘traffic’ on our school sites, we will maintain our gradual staggered start times and use multiple entrance and exit points. This will help adults and families social distance when dropping off and collecting their children.

The plan for this is below and is the same timings and drop off/ pick up points and entry/ exit points as before Christmas:

Infants

Juniors

As before, the gates will be open before these times and families are encouraged to use available space on our playgrounds and school site to maintain social distancing.

What about Breakfast Clubs, SuperPirates After School Club and other after school clubs?

The DfE have stated that:

‘Wraparound childcare will be open to parents who need to access it to work, attend education or seek medical care, and to vulnerable children’

Therefore, our Breakfast Clubs will restart from the 8^th March.

We encourage you to book Breakfast Club in the normal way using the School Gateway and if you need to just turn up on the morning this flexibility is available again as well.

SuperPirates After School Club will also restart on Monday 8^th March and this can be booked via the SuperPirates website here: https://www.superpirates.co.uk/stsaviours. Booking will go live from tomorrow (Thursday 25^th February).

Information on other after school clubs will be communicated as soon as possible.

Will attendance be mandatory?

The DfE have stated that school attendance will be mandatory for all pupils from the 8^th March.

Please contact the school if you have any concerns or worries about returning your child(ren) to school on 8^th March, so we can support you.

What next?

Over the coming days, we will review our school risk assessment and update families about any changes. Additional Government information has now been released that we will be considering as part of the risk assessment process. The Government have also released a blog with information for families – this can be found here

As always, thank you for your continued support.

Play is so important to the St Saviour's community and we are delighted to share our new plans with you.

After months of planning and fundraising (thank you PTA) we have confirmed the new play equipment installations at the Infant School.

After meeting with the children, gathering ideas and speaking to a number of companies we are delighted with the final plans with the installation planned to start on the 8th March.

EYFS outside area 

We are replacing some of the old play equipment with new fixed equipment and moveable outside blocks. Children will be able to build and design a new play area everyday. 

Main Infant Playground

Working with the children we have created a challenging and open ended fixed play structure. Children can climb, hang and swing on the adventure park. The only limitation is their imagination 

Half term

Next week is half term, with school reopening for the children of critical workers and vulnerable children on Monday 22^nd February. Home Learning will also recommence on 22^nd February.

Microsoft Teams will be muted over half term, so children will be unable to add comments on the Teams chat. 

Please use this break to relax and have some fun. This term has been really tricky for everyone and some quality family time is more important than ever.

COVID19 ‘Track and Trace’ during half term

If your child or a family member receives a positive COVID19 test over the February half term, please can you email us using this address:

trackandtrace@stsaviours.bwmat.org

This inbox will be monitored regularly over the half term. The normal school inboxes will NOT be monitored.

We may need to contact you and assist in ‘track and trace’ alongside advice from Public Health, especially if your child has developed systems within 48 hours of their last day in school.

Even if your child has not been in school, or there is a positive test within your household at the end of half term, please still continue to use the trackandtrace@stsaviours.bwmat.org inbox to inform us of any positive cases, so we can use this information to plan for the start of Term 4. 

When will all children return to school?

This is the question on the tip of everybody’s tongue and I know how much everyone wants schools to reopen fully as soon as it is safe to do so. The Government have stated that they plan to start the full reopening of schools from 8^th March. They have also stated that schools will be informed of the ‘road map’ two weeks before this date. If the Government stick to this commitment, we should have more information shared with schools straight after half term. 

As soon as this has been released, and we have had a chance to consider what this means for St Saviour’s Schools, I will write to families. It is likely that the Government will lay out a plan for a gradual and staggered return to full school attendance so please be prepared for this possibility, it is unlikely all children will be back in school on the 8^th March. 

St Saviour’s Virtual Library 

We have just launched our virtual library on our school website.

Choose a book from our virtual bookshelves and a teacher or teaching assistant will read you a bedtime story.

Click here to enter the library  

#HotChocFri makes the press

This week a ‘Hot Chocolate Friday’ article was published in the ‘Bath and Wiltshire Magazine’ website. You can read the article by clicking here.

You can also visit all previous articles that have been published about St Saviour’s Schools by visiting our ‘in the press’ section of our website. 

Thrive@Home

Mrs Simmons will be running some 30 minute, stand alone, 'Thrive@Home' sessions for small groups of children starting after half term. These sessions will initially be by invitation only (you will receive an email an invite on Teams which you will need to accept), but please do let us know if you think your child is really struggling and could benefit from attending one of these sessions. 

Sessions will be run live on Teams and be based around fun, creative activities, with the opportunity to have a general chat whilst the children are doing these activities. You may be asked to collect a pack of resources from the Junior School Office prior to your session if we are using resources you may not have readily available at home. If you do not feel your child would like to attend the session, this is no problem, but it would be helpful if you can please let us know as soon as possible, so that we are able to offer the space to another child. 

‘100 Challenge’

This week in assembly, we celebrated the life of Captain Sir Tom Moore. Sara, Sophie and Mrs Simmons read a story about his life which you can watch here. They have set you all a ‘100 Challenge’, where they have asked you to complete an activity 100 times in memory of Sir Tom, who walked 100 laps of his garden before his 100^th birthday to raise money for the NHS. This could be anything, from completing 100 star jumps to reading 100 books! Maybe you will complete your activity very quickly, or perhaps it will take a longer amount of time. 

Get creative, and we can’t wait to hear and see what you have been up to.

Junior School Live French Lessons and Spanish and French clubs

Starting next term ‘Todo el Mundo - Languages for Everyone’will be teaching every Junior School class French live on Teams – you will receive an invitation for these sessions.

We will also be starting up an additional free Spanish and French club live on Teams. This is available for the children that working from home. Please email french@todoelmundo.co.uk to sign up to one of the clubs below. A Teams invite will be sent before the first session.

The clubs will teach French or Spanish through songs, games, stories and art.   Places are limited to 12 per class to ensure plenty of individual attention.  Children can be new to the language or have learnt before and there is no activity book to buy or worksheets to print.   

Year 2 FREE French Club with Elise Acard Tonga 

Thursdays 12.30-1pm 

Years 3&4 FREE Spanish Club with Katherine Mallia 

Thursdays 12.45-1.15pm 

Years 5&6 FREE Spanish Club with Katherine Mallia

Wednesday 12.45-1.15pm 

We have updated our ‘Pupil and Parent Agreement for Remote Learning’

We have added information on this document to clearly state why we record online live Teams sessions.

The new information is as follows:

• Group and whole class sessions will be recorded for the core purpose of storing the information so absent children can access the missed session(s) 

• One to one sessions will not be recorded but other safeguarding mitigations will be in place, for example, staff will be in school when meeting a child one to one online, or another member of staff will be present in the call

To read the full agreement please click here

‘Camp in a tent’

Inspired by the example of Max Woosey, (featured on BBC News) who camped in a tent to raise money for a hospice and the challenge to 'give a tent for Lent' with the Shelter Box Charity, Robert Beesley (The Clerk to St Saviour’s Governing Body) is going to camp in a tent for Lent to raise money to buy tents for Shelter Box. This is 39 nights, starting next Wednesday!

The tents bought go to disaster areas around the world. 

You can donate to this fundraising event via Robert’s ‘Just Giving’ page here 

A message from the BANES ‘Community Wellbeing Hub’

If you are vulnerable and need help getting food, medicine, housing or other essential items, are feeling isolated, or concerned about your physical and mental wellbeing the Community Wellbeing Hub can help.
 
Call the Community Wellbeing Hub on 0300 247 00509am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. Please check for Christmas and New Year opening hours.
 
email BATHNES.thehub@virgincare.co.uk
website: http://communitywellbeinghub.co.uk   
 
Text 07870 868368
Following us on Twitter @cwhbanes
 
Bath & North East Somerset Council, working with 3SG, Virgin Care, and local NHS colleagues, have set up the Hub to give advice and support to those who need it during Covid-19. If you need support to self- isolate please contact us on the number above so as we can support you through this process.
 
If you can get support from family, friends or the local community, or can order food or medication online, please continue to do so. This means staff operating the phone line can prioritise those who need the most help and get to calls as quickly as possible
 
If you need to contact the council about its services please ring Council Connect on 01225 394041 or email Council_connect@bathnes.gov.uk

Thank you

On behave of all the staff at St Saviour, thank you for your continued support and understand through another tricky term for our community and thank you for balancing your personal and professional lives with home schooling. 

Please have a relaxing and enjoyable break. 

Best wishes, 

Mr Beament 

Executive Headteacher 

St Saviour’s Schools