Dear Parents & Carers,

Prayer Space at Christ Church

With the help of three wonderful volunteers, Pastor Ruthy spent three days this week leading the children through an opportunity to spend some calm and reflective time together in our pop-up prayer space. Despite the mix of sunshine and downpours, it has been wonderful to see the children outside in the fresh air with a chance to be still, to wonder, question and reflect on life. In an increasingly busy world, we believe that it is important for all children to learn how to press the ‘pause’ button on life occasionally and to look around them, reflect on what they see and sense, and to take what they have learned with them. We are extremely grateful to Pastor Ruthy and her team.

Collective Worship – Aspiration

In our Collective Worship this week we talked about the value of Aspiration, one of our school’s core values. The children impressed us with their thoughtful answers to questions about their ambitions and goals, and we learned how our brains continually grow and develop, shaped by our experiences in life. Using the analogy of the ‘fleas in a jar’ experiment, our key message helped the children to understand that we must never put a limit on what we aspire to achieve.

Year 6 Beggar Bush

It was the turn of our adventurous year 6 children to visit Beggar Bush on Monday, providing an active and fun start to the week, full of learning beyond the classroom. As with all of the opportunities that together as a school community we provide, these essential experiences help children to develop in so many ways such as self-confidence, self-esteem, physical and emotional growth and much more.

Emerging Writers and Real Authors

As adults we understand how a love of books enriches our lives in so many ways. To encourage the children to learn more about how ideas come to life on a page, year 3 and 4 were invited by Clifton College to meet a renowned author and illustrator, Called Laura Ellen Anderson. We hope to see their enthusiasm and creativity build further in their own writing in the coming weeks.

Biscuit Bakers

With the welcome help of one of our kind and generous parents, year 5 spent an afternoon learning how to make delicious Eid biscuits together. Following the celebrations for our Muslim families at Christ Church School last Friday, all of the children were able to develop some cooking skills and really enjoyed sampling their own home baked biscuits.

Phonics Check

I am both pleased and proud to tell you that our fantastic year 1 children have all successfully completed the national phonics check this week. The check enables schools to assess carefully the children’s progress and attainment in early reading. As we know, synthetic phonics underpins our learning by combing the letter sounds (phonemes), with their corresponding written form (graphemes). As children learn to blend the sounds together orally. The results indicate very positive outcomes and we will report these formally in the coming weeks.

We are equally proud of our year 2 children who have continued to work so hard this year as they build upon their progress to reach the learning goals they deserve. A huge well done to the children.

Notices

We are, as always extremely grateful to our parents and carers for your support and generosity in raising much needed funds from the weekly cake sales and this makes a huge difference to the wider curriculum that enriches our school so much. These sales are hugely popular and most weeks we see the cake sell out fast. To ensure that every child has a chance to buy a cake, we ask that children only buy one cake each please.

Coffee Morning - don't forget, everyone is welcome to join Miss Holland, the School Nursing Team and Bristol Parent Carers for coffee, biscuits and a chat on Tuesday 17th June at 9am.

Weather – with the changeable weather lately, it has been tricky to predict if the children need sun-screen or wellies! It does look like some warmer days are ahead and therefore please ensure that your children come to school with plenty of water, sun hats, sun-screen and as always, my weekly plea for all uniform and belongings to be clearly named.

With the weekend just around the corner, thank you for all of your support this week and I wish you a restful two days ahead.

Warmest wishes

Mark Oldfield

Headteacher