Newsletters
Please keep up to date with all the news happening in school at the moment and click a headline to read more.
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Week Beginning 1st March 2021
Mon 22 Feb 2021Welcome back to the second half of the spring term to all of our families be it virtually or in person. We hope you enjoyed a restful half term break and an enjoyable first week back. I am sure many of you are delighted that Mr Johnson has announced that all children can return to school from the 8th of March, as are we! We can not wait to see you all and welcome all of the children back into the setting.
Whilst this is great news, we must remember that the virus has certainly not gone away, that many of us are still awaiting our vaccines and that there are high risks that remain, so I must remind you that when bringing your child/ren back to school: the one way system remains, as do drop off points, the need to keep a distance from one another (2m) and not to congregate on or just outside the premises. Also, just as we are used to in shops, the expectation that whilst on our premises you must wear a face covering, unless you are exempt, very much remains. Please help us to protect each other. Thank you.
If during this lock down, your child has experienced anything you think we may need to be aware of such as a bereavement of a close family member or, they are experiencing anxiety about their return to school, please do make sure you email their class teacher to inform them so they can be aware of any emotional needs and support them in the transition back to school.
Early next week, all parents and carers will receive a letter which outlines further details regarding the wider re-opening of The Hayes. The children will be required to wear uniform as usual and can come to school in PE kits on PE days. There will be no swimming in the first week back. There are very little changes, however, the letter will outline any changes and also expectations.
For those of you who borrowed a school device (laptop or ipad) please can these be returned to the office on 8th March. Many thanks.
So, all being well, next week is the last week of home schooling for many of you and to make sure we end on a high, we will be celebrating Book Week and have a whole host of fun activities planned for your children, including a cake baking competition and some ‘masked reader’ fun. Your children are also invited to dress as a book character on Thursday if they wish…we can’t wait to see their wonderful costume ideas. More information coming your way very soon. Our enormous thanks go to Mrs Randall for organising this fun event, we are sure the children will enjoy it.
Thank you for your ongoing support and see you all very soon.
The Hayes Team
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Week beginning 8th February 2021
Fri 12 Feb 2021We start this week’s bulletin with a huge congratulations to everybody for surviving this last half term. You have made it and have now earned, what we hope will be a restful and relaxing half term break, starting today. We would like to thank everybody in our community for their combined efforts to keep the children’s education going but also for looking after them and caring for them during what we know is a very strange and unsettling time for so many.
Our celebration assembly today recognised these achievements and, whether a photo was shared or not, the message was very clearly a well done to ALL! Each and EVERY single child and their families. This was not the half term that any of us had hoped for or expected but we have come through it and are all keeping everything crossed that we may have some positive news very soon about a potential date for the wider re-opening of schools to all children. Those of you at home, we really do miss you and cannot wait to welcome you back as soon as it is safe to do so.This week we also celebrated e-safety day, which, in the current climate, is such an important focus for our children. If you feel that you would like to learn more about this yourself, please do book a ticket for our up and coming virtual parent workshop called ‘Keeping children safe online during COVID-19’. Tickets are free and you can register for this event using the following link https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-hayes-primary-school-keeping-children-safe-online-during-covid-19-registration-138446550359 . This event will take place on 31st March at 6pm via Zoom. When you register, a link for the zoom meeting will be emailed to you.
The second half of the spring term begins on TUESDAY 23rd February for the children as Monday the 22nd is an INSET day for staff. We have lots of fun activities planned for the children and we are especially looking forward to World Book Day which is taking place on Thursday 4th March so…costumes at the ready!
We will also be hosting parent/teacher meetings. As you will be aware, during our autumn term meetings, we faced some technical difficulties due to the number of people trying to access the system at the same time. So, this term we have added more dates to hopefully overcome this unforeseen hurdle. For children in Early Years and Key Stage 1 (Yrs 1-2) you will have the opportunity to meet virtually with your children’s teacher 16th or 18th March and children in Key stage 2 (Yrs 3-6) your dates will be the 23rd and the 25th March. Please put these dates in your diary and more details will follow after the break.
Lastly, thank you to all those who provided feedback on our remote offer. This survey is now closed. There were some suggestions for improvement which we will explore further but we also received an overwhelming amount of supportive comments and messages of appreciation to all of our teaching staff. Thank you, as always, for these.
If your child has been in school this half term, please may I remind you that if they receive a positive COVID test during the break you MUST inform us as we will still be supporting the test and trace agenda and may need to let other children in the bubble know they need to isolate. If this is the case, please email head@thehayesprimary.croydon.sch . Thank you.
Wishing you all a very happy and safe half term.
Take special care, The Hayes Team
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Week beginning 1st February 2021
Fri 05 Feb 2021Week Beginning 1st February 2021
Well done to all for completing another week of home learning. We are almost at half term and just want to say a huge thank you for the support you have shown to your children and the school at this time. You really are doing an AMAZING job. We know that home schooling is not easy and cannot wait to be in a position to welcome all of the children back to school as soon as it is safe to do so.
Today we ‘dressed to express’ in support of children’s wellbeing and mental health week and our assembly was based on this – we hope you enjoyed it. It is so important that we prioritise the emotional needs of our children and ourselves as we come through this pandemic. If you are feeling low and need to talk, please reach out to a friend, colleague, a family member or to us. We may be able to sign post you to services that can help you.
In an endeavour to support wellbeing and maintain positive mental health we have taken the decision to make Friday afternoon ‘screen free’ time. We know that working on a screen for a long time is not good for your eyes, so we thought we would give your eyes a rest for the afternoon. This means that, on a Friday afternoon, there will be no lessons set by the class teachers that require your children/ child to access a screen. There will be a list of suggested activities recommended by the class teachers but you are also free to choose a wellbeing activity that suits the interests of your family. We just ask that this does not involve looking at a screen. This could be, for example: to cook together or to take a walk, to play a board game or read, to spot nature or to sketch a portrait. The list is endless.
It is also important that whilst our children are spending increasing amounts of time on screens, we think about how to keep them safe in a digital world. On Tuesday the 9th February we will be celebrating Safer Internet Day and the theme this year is ‘Together for a better internet’ as such, you will notice activities to remind your children of the importance of e-safety.
We have also organised a zoom parent workshop entitled ‘Keeping Children Safe Online during COVID-19’. This meeting will cover critical issues for parents to be aware of and practical steps you can take to help your children stay safe and develop healthy tech habits. The meeting will be led and run by Digital Awareness UK and Vodaphone and will take place between 6pm and 7pm on Friday 31st March. Please do sign up for this event using the Eventbrite link below.
We are sure you will be pleased to hear that half term begins on Friday 13th February 2021. The first Monday back (22nd February) is an INSET day so we look forward to welcoming you back, albeit virtually for many of you on Tuesday 23rd March.
Please do take care, stay safe and keep up the brilliant work.
The Hayes Team -
Week beginning 15th January 2021
Fri 05 Feb 2021Happy New Year! We hope that you and your precious family are safe and well and that you enjoyed your family time over the Christmas break (which now seems some time away!)
Inevitably, we had a difficult and perhaps surprising start to 2021 with us now being in lockdown with schools in London and in many Boroughs moving to remote learning, due to increased transmission of the new COVID-19 strain. The First Minister confirmed that learners will continue to learn remotely and vulnerable children and children of critical workers will have access to on-site provision until February half term (to be reviewed by the government for plans after this). During his address to MPs ahead of the vote on the new Covid rules on Wednesday 6 January, Mr Johnson explained that the emergence from lockdown will be gradual, and likely to run until 31 March.
Any updates, including restriction details can be found here News | The Hayes Primary School. Please know that we share your frustration and concerns – we know that it is an incredibly difficult job to make sure that your own work is done whist ensuring that your children are focussed and engaged. We are very proud of you all and the efforts that you are making as families to ensure that your children are learning at home. However, there will be times where you are all feeling frustrated for many reasons and this is natural – if this happens, please kick off your shoes, wrap yourself in a throw, watch a film, bake something lovely, read a book together –your well-being and your child(ren’s) is far more important than handing in online learning. In fact, if you cannot hand in remote learning for a day or two, please do not worry, just let your class teacher know – we do completely understand and are always here to help. It remains essential that we do all we can to keep each other safe at this time particularly given the increased transmissibility of the new variant. Over Christmas, this has unfortunately had an impact on our school community – with a number of staff and families who have been unwell with the virus or have had to isolate due to being a close contact with a COVID positive family member. We are doing all we can to keep everybody safe and well to ensure a continued provision of home learning and in school learning and ask for your support in this.
On this, if your child has a place in our Hub provision, please ensure that you wear a face covering at drop off and pick up and that you maintain a distance of 2 metres from others at all times. If you do not wear a covering, you will be asked to leave our premises unless you are exempt. We have staggered the drop off points and pick up times to assist with this. May we also remind you that if, at any point, your child develops symptoms (in the Hub), please ensure you book a test and keep them at home until you receive confirmation of a negative result. If your child tests positive, you must inform us immediately so that we can notify all close contacts and they can isolate as required by law. Thank you.
For those of you supporting home schooling- once more, thank you. We have made improvements to our practice since the last lockdown and thank many of you who have written to our teaching staff and the senior leadership team to acknowledge this. We hope that the introduction of Google Classroom, which enables twice daily live contact with your class teacher, will support you with home schooling by providing the children with a teacher-led, clear explanation of the planned learning for the day, a sharing of work and reading of a class book, in the afternoon session. If this has not happened so far in quite the same way, it will do from Monday. It is our expectation that your child is logged in for morning registration and those children who do not attend will receive a follow up call from a member of staff to ascertain their whereabouts. If you are having difficulty logging on please do contact us so we can help you to resolve these. Thank you again!
Next week, we will write to you about our Remote Offer, but in short, the government have stated that remote education provided should be equivalent in length to the core teaching pupils would receive in school and this includes prerecorded or live direct teaching time, and time for pupils to complete tasks and assignments independently. The Hayes is going to provide a mix of digital remote education: blended learning (a mix of face-to-face and remote methods), synchronous education: live (Google Meets); asynchronous education (when the material is prepared by the teacher and accessed by the pupil at a later date). This will be explained in a letter, next week.
The amount of remote education provided will be, as a minimum:
• Key Stage 1: 3 hours a day on average across the cohort, with less for younger children (EYFS)
• Key Stage 2: 4 hours a day.All of our staff are working incredibly hard during the normal school day hours and beyond to ensure that resources are prepared and feedback given, that Google Meets are a time for learning, reading of a story, answering questions and more besides (and if not, will be this week). Additionally, from next week, you will see an increase in prerecorded videos from experts, such as from Oak Academy or White Rose (KS1 and KS2’s maths curriculum) and anything active, for example, Joe Wicks or our very own CSSP (Croydon Schools Sports Partnership). From 25th January, you will receive more prerecorded lessons from your year group’s teachers, particularly in English and IPC (KS1 and KS2). The live streaming is current - Google Meets at the start of the day and end of the day. We will write to you again at the start of next week with our offer, in more detail.
Printer and Ink: there is no requirement to print the work uploaded to Google Classroom (GC). You can write answers on a piece of paper, take a photo of this and upload to GC or type on a Word document and upload to GC. Please do not feel you need to print off many pages of work. Hub: due to all children taking part in active learning during the day, please ensure your child is dressed appropriately, daily. For example: school PE kit or something comfortable for PE (ie: joggers, sweatshirt, etc) which is not the school PE kit!
Challenges: we are aware that, for some parents, there are challenges associated with home schooling particularly for those who are juggling this with working from home but, unfortunately, we are not in a position to offer spaces in school to children on the grounds that home schooling is difficult, as much as we would love to welcome all of our children back – it simply is not safe to do so. Additionally, the government’s message is also clear – stay at home because it is safer to do so! We really do understand but our first priority is safety and we must keep the number of children in our Hub low enough to ensure the children and staff in the classroom can distance from one another as far as possible. We are very much still open and staff are still working.
e are here to offer help and support with any challenges that you may face and if there are any specific issues you need help/ support with please do not hesitate to email your class teacher directly and she will do her best to assist you. If you or someone you love is struggling with their mental health during this time, the following services are available to you and accessing this much needed support can be as simple as sending a text. Please do reach out.
It is with sadness that Mrs Doble left The Hayes last week, securing a well-deserved promotion as assistant office manager at a local Secondary School - they are very lucky to have her. Whilst we are sad to see her go, we wish her the very best of luck in her new role and thank her enormously for her contribution to The Hayes which has spanned over the last 12 years. She has done so much for The Hayes – a tremendous Chair of the PTA, raising £1000s for our children, her excellent support to pupils as a teaching assistant was second to none and most recently her warm, welcoming smile as part of our admin team. We gave her a good send off and we wish her all the very best and much love. Xx
HUGE Congratulations to our Stars of the Week
*Rainforest: Olivia for being very brave and challenging herself with her home learning!
*Safari: Devon for listening well in class meetings and really challenging herself with her home learning.
*Class 1: Evie for writing a detailed letter to the witch and meeting her checklist targets.
*Class 2: Arthur, for writing a fantastic letter to the witch.
*Class 3: Charlie for writing an outstanding description of Peri the Penguin using adjectives, adverbs, similes and different sentence openers.
*Class 4: Isabelle for an outstanding effort with her home learning and writing a lovely fact file for her toy.
*Class 5: Parker for his fabulous travel guide about Cyprus.
*Class 6: Joshua for producing an amazing travel guide for Switzerland.
*Class 7: Hayden for using brilliant expanded noun phrases in his English writing. *Class 8: Byron for putting 100% effort into his home learning tasks and producing high quality pieces of work.
*Class 9: Dylan for a well written letter which offers a job as a crew member on board Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition.
*Class 10: Lois for being so enthusiastic with her learning and really trying her best. *Class 11: Luke for continuing to share his love for reading and for always put 100% effort into his work.
*Class 12: Gabe for your diary entry about Willie’s day at school, including feelings, conjunctions to link ideas and brackets and exclamation marks to vary your punctuation. Well done! -
Week beginning 25th January 2021
Fri 05 Feb 2021We would like to start this week’s bulletin by thanking you all for the amazing work you are doing at home to support the children with their learning. We have been so impressed with the quality of work we have been receiving, so a huge well done to your child/ren and of course to you.
We are now a month into remote provision and we know that some of our families are beginning to feel the strain. You really are doing a great job. Most importantly, you are keeping your children safe at home which is the main priority and managing to support their home learning too. You are all amazing!
You will have, no doubt, heard the Prime Minister’s most recent announcement that stated the earliest date that we can expect schools to begin to reopen is March 8th and we know that this will have caused some further worry for some families. Hopefully, you will have noticed that there has been an increase in the amount of teaching provided as part of our remote offer. This will total the government recommendations of 4 hours a day for Key Stage 2, 3 hours a day for Key Stage 1 and a little less for EYFS.
We have deliberately chosen for many lessons to be pre-recorded which enables families to complete the work at a time that fits in with your own work commitments and ensures that siblings, who may be sharing devices, are able to take turns one after another. This also allows parents to revisit any concepts that the children may be struggling with and to plan their teaching timetable in response to their children’s emotional needs. For example, if your child focusses better in the afternoon than the morning, the materials can be accessed at a time that suits them best.
Please always tend to your child’s emotional needs first. If a child at school became upset or distressed, we would not continue to try to teach them in that moment as an upset child is not capable of concentrating on their learning. We would stop, talk, listen and nurture. There may be times when this is also needed at home. We understand and encourage this even if this means a certain piece of learning does not get finished. This is OK. It is also OK to have a break from Home Learning for a day, afternoon or morning, if it is getting too much (please tell your class teacher though…). You could snuggle up under a duvet, bake- do whatever helps you to get through this time. Mental health – ours and our children’s must come first.
Please click on this link to get tips, advice and know where to get support for your and your child’s mental health during this time, if you need to. It is ok, not to be ok. We would also like to thank you for the many messages of support that we have received outlining your appreciation for our teaching staff. They are currently working extremely hard in challenging circumstances to consistently deliver in school and remote provision simultaneously. They are human too and some of them are facing their own anxieties and emotional challenges in relation to COVID which, in some cases, is linked to friends, colleagues and relatives suffering from the virus. Despite this, they continue to put on a brave face and maintain a sense of calm and optimism for the children.
Many of the staff have been required to quickly learn how to use new forms of technology to deliver their lessons which also has brought some stress and anxiety. With this in mind, please can I ask parents to remember to be kind in your correspondence with our staff. Highly critical messages that advise teachers how they should be organising their virtual classrooms or preparing resources can have a significant impact on the mental health and wellbeing of our staff at a time when they may already be feeling vulnerable. All of our teachers are qualified and experienced and like you, they are doing their best in very difficult circumstances. May I also ask you to refrain from emailing teachers late into the evening or at the weekends. They are not on call 24/7 and we all need to ensure they have some protected time when they can switch off from work and spend some time with their families- just as we hope you do. This allows them to recoup and prepare for the coming week. We thank you for your understanding in this matter.
We would like to introduce you to a new member of staff who has joined our admin team. Mrs Kikidis (pronounced Kick-ee-dis) joins us from a Sutton School. You will no doubt get to know her over the coming weeks as she is front of house, will be answering your phone calls and replying to admin emails. I am sure you will make her feel very welcome. She is looking forward to getting to know all of our Hayes families over the coming weeks and months.
For those of you that may be running out of reading books for your children at home, the Oak National Academy has a virtual library which is free to families to access. It has been formed with the National Literacy Trust and will provide a book a week from an author of the week. There are also audiobooks available for those who may prefer to listen to a story. This is a fantastic resource, which you can access using this link: Virtual School Library | Oak Academy (thenational.academy) Additionally, Jolly phonics e-readers is available for free and this resource contains phonetically decodable books available for children in Early Years and Key Stage One. This resource can be found here… Jolly Phonics e-readers now available! — Jolly Learning And, Collins Connect have also made a wide range of reading books available to parents also. This resource has 20-25 books available for each colour band. Use this link Collins Connect and enter the username: parents@harpercollins.co.uk and the password: Parents!21
Also, if your child has been working hard and you wish to take them on a ‘school trip’, there are a number of virtual museum tours available for children that you may like to visit. These include the Van Gogh Museum, The Roald Dahl Museum and story centre and the NASA Glenn Research Centre. Links can be found below. Enjoy! If you are collecting paper home learning packs, please can you return completed work when you come to collect the next pack, many thanks.
Lastly, next week is Children’s Mental Health Week and on Monday there will be a live assembly at 9:00am that the teachers will stream during the morning Google meet. We are encouraging all children to access this assembly. After the assembly, the children will have the opportunity to discuss and ask any questions. It is clear from the media that children’s mental health can be a concern during this pandemic and we are keen to remove the stigma that surrounds this and encourage children to talk openly about wellbeing.
The theme of this year’s mental health week is Self-Expression and on Friday the 7th the children are invited to ‘dress to express’. This means they can dress up in something that allows them to express themselves and let their unique personalities shine through! That just leaves us to say – have a very safe and relaxing weekend and if it does snow, please do send us your photos of yourselves and your children (and pets!), playing and having fun!
Please do take care, stay safe and keep up the brilliant work.
The Hayes Team
