Week beginning 10th January 2022
Happy New Year to our school community. We hope you had a great break and those of you that were ill with COVID or otherwise, have made a swift recovery. It has been lovely to welcome the children back into school this week and we look forward to another exciting term of learning and fun.
We do, unfortunately, still have children and staff isolating in line with government guidelines. If this is you and you are usually entitled to free school meals, please do reach out to us as we are able to support families with food packages during the child’s time away from school. In addition to having COVID, we do not want any families to have the added stress of worrying about access to meals for their children. We are in a position to help, and want to help, if this is something you require.
This term we welcome Miss Ingram, a final year student teacher from the university of Roehampton. She will be working in Class 4 with Miss Smallwood until April and we are sure you will give her a warm welcome. Miss Ingram is an ex-pupil of The Hayes and it is our pleasure to welcome her back in the capacity of student teacher. We are proud of the work we do to encourage new recruits to the profession and hope, as the national picture improves, we can welcome even more students into school to learn from our staff.
We would also like to let you know that from Monday, we welcome Miss Langan back to Rainforest and would like to express our enormous thanks to Mrs Lishmund who has been covering the class in her absence.
This term we have four class assemblies scheduled. To ensure the safety of all, these will now be virtual. The assembly will be recorded by in school and uploaded to the relevant google classrooms to enable parents to view these events. Class 3 will be leading our first assembly on the 13th January, followed by Class 10 on the 19th January, Class 4 on the 27th and Class 9 on the 2nd February. We will text parents to let you know when these are available to view. We will review this position at half term and let you know if future events will continue to be virtual or in person. In other virtual assemblies this term, the children will be thinking about Martin Luther King Day, Empathy, Global Belly- Laugh day, Chinese New Year, Safer Internet day (further details on this event to follow nearer the event), Love/ St Valentine and the importance of talking (as part of children’s mental health week).
For those of you with a child at home due to start in Reception in September 2022, please can we remind you that the deadline for primary admissions applications is Saturday 15th January 2022. Guidance on how to complete this can be found here on the Croydon Council website: Apply for a primary school place: step by step | Croydon Council . If you are new to our school, a virtual tour can be found on the school website.
Clubs: further to the letter at the start of the week, Miss Slade has been back in contact with Public Health with potential mitigations to enable as many clubs to take place as possible and safely. You might remember that cases at The Hayes rose significantly towards the end of the December half term and as a result of this, we met the threshold where we had to contact the Local Authority’s Public Health Team in one particular class. PHE work with Boroughs and individual schools and as you can imagine, each context is very different. Some classes in other schools had to work from home because of the numbers of children within the class with Covid or because there was not enough staff to teach classes, we were not advised to do this. Each situation is different and this is what makes it very hard – we cannot necessarily follow the Government Guidance (this is England’s Guidance, not local which can change from school to school). It is complicated but if the PHE strongly advise us to do something, it might not make us popular but it is something we will do.
At present we are still not allowed to mix year groups, particularly in classrooms. However, outside and in the hall, we can with some safety measures which have been discussed and agreed with the PHE:
Football: Year 1/2; Year 5/6 and Year 3/4 can take place outside, however, the children cannot change indoors together (different year groups) and they cannot come indoors together. Therefore, all footballers will get changed in the classroom before they go outside. Parents will need to continue to collect their children from the gate. If the weather is torrential, football cannot come into the hall.
Netball: Year 5/6 can take place outside, however, the children cannot change indoors together (different year groups) and they cannot come indoors together. Therefore, all netballers will get changed in the classroom before they go outside. If it is torrential rain – this club cannot take place.
Dance: can happen for Years 3-6 in the hall with the following actions:
*Main door to outside is open, alongside the internal doors for ventilation.
*Children will get changed in their own classrooms before entering the hall.
*Children will wash their hands/use hand sanitisers before entering the hall.
*Each year group will dance within their own year group, positioned in the four corners of the hall – to create distance between children. The teacher will be in the middle of the hall.
*Each child will have designated circles to stand on to encourage them to stay within their own space.
*Limited class size.
*Children to be collected from the foyer door (and they will line up in their year groups).
Gymnastics: can happen with Years 1/2 in the hall with the following actions:
*Children will get changed in their own classrooms before entering the hall.
*Children will wash their hands/use hand sanitisers before entering the hall.
*Each year group bubble will stay at each end of the hall.
*Each year group bubble will have one coach that will teach them for the whole session.
*Warm ups would be done on the spot.
*Doors will be open for ventilation.
*Children to be collected from the foyer door (and they will line up in their year groups, distanced).
Mini Tennis: Reception in the hall (one-year group). This will continue as usual.
Drama will continue as it did today for the next two weeks.
We cannot continue at the moment with all indoor clubs at the moment, because we do not have the availability in the hall to spread the classes out. However, up until the Drama club performance (with Junior Choir) which is the end of the month, junior choir will meet on Tuesdays, in the hall with the following measures:
*Main door to outside is open, alongside the internal doors for ventilation.
*Children will wash their hands/use hand sanitisers before entering the hall.
*Each year group will be positioned in the four corners of the hall – to create distance between children. I will be in the middle of the hall, conducting.
*Children to be collected from the foyer door (and they will line up in their year groups, distanced).
Finally, you will also receive today a curriculum map from your class teacher to show ‘what we are learning this half term’.
We look forward to working in partnership with you over the coming year and thank you, as always, for your continuing support.