December 2016
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Headteacher’s Update — Mr Kevin Day - December 2016 Dear Parents, Governors and Friends of the School, Welcome to the December newsletter, although it feels like only a few weeks ago that I was writing the first one of the school year! The long term seems to have flown past so fast. The teachers and learning support staff are currently ensuring that the children are learning and making the best progress possible, whilst balancing this with the inevitable Christmas practices and managing a school full of children who seem to get more excit- ed every day! Highlights in the past few weeks have included the school annual carol service at High- bury Church, the students (and staff choir) were in wonderful form in every respect. I received many compliments from the families who attended about the students singing, behaviour and smart appearance. Thank you to Miss Lentel for organising this visit and to Richard Cleaves and Highbury for hosting. Almost 50 parents and carers attended this year’s Primary Nativity and witnessed a col- ourful production with wonder- ful acting, confident narrators and absolutely wonderful sing- ing. Very well done to all in- volved and particular praise to the Senior Director, Mrs Hall. Belmont enjoyed Christmas Din- ner this week with 150 children, staff and guests squeezing into our hall. It was a lovely occasions and once again all the students were brilliant and much to my de- light we had every single student involved so very well done to all of class 1 who were bold and brave to join in with the whole school. School site and facilities; In the New Year Belmont will start to enjoy our two new secondary classrooms. The secondary corridor will re-open giving access to a host of new facilities including: New student changing rooms New toilets for both boys and girls New school office and meeting room PAGE 2 Headteacher’s Update (Cont’d) Primary children will also be benefitting next year with some new toilet facilities and a brand new primary playground. We also have given priority to this facility by using some funding for sport and play equipment to make our social times a learning experience as well as fun! What next for Belmont? Belmont remains committed to helping pupils develop as far as they can physically, socially and emotionally in addition to the other important areas like literacy and numeracy. During 2017 we hope to make considerable progress with two projects to help our students develop confidence, communication skills and independence. The first is the development of our onsite Forest School. We hope to develop this facility on our grounds to offer more opportunities to children, stop the travel time and costs and also to offer the provision to other schools and groups in the future. This project is being led by Mr Fry so if you want to help us or know more let him know. Together with the school governors staff have also Identified our future goal to assist our chil- dren with cycling skills to keep them healthy, active,safe and independent in the future. We have ambitious plans to secure funding for spe- cialist bikes and facilities and to work with the community and Bettridge School to share and build provision. Mr Shand is leading this work and will keep us posted on progress in the new year. The project has had a nice start with a bike donation from Luke Evans and his Dad. Thank you very much! As I write the newsletter, we have enjoyed a few very warm days for December and whilst I hope this lasts it’s very likely to be cold again in the new year so please continue to check the ‘adverse weather’ arrangements on the last page of the newsletter for what to do should the weather take a turn for the worse. PAGE 3 Headteacher’s Update (Cont’d) Dressed for Winter? January is often the arrival increasingly colder weather; it is timely to remind you to make sure that your child always has a warm waterproof coat in school. A hat, scarf and gloves are also a good idea for our younger children to help keep warm. All named please! Our lost property container is, as always, overflowing. We do value outdoor play and fresh air so expect the children to be outside at playtimes unless the weather is very extreme. Thank you for your help here. Clubs and sports Many of you comment on how you value the extra curricula activities that we host, I can confirm our plans to continue with this in the new year with Drama Club on Mondays and Multi Sports Club on Tuesday. Both these clubs run until 4p.m. and cost £3 per session. Staff news We are pleased to be welcoming Mr James Grover in January who will lead and teach English across the secondary school. A big thank you to Mrs Sally Reid who has stepped into the English role during the past few weeks. We are looking forward to welcoming Mrs Petrova, Miss Essex and Miss Record back to school in February, following their maternity leave but have to say a tem- porary farewell to Mrs Hanna as she starts her maternity leave at the end of Term 3. Friends@Belmont A BIG thank you to The Friends who contin- ue to do a great job of supporting the school, the successful Belbucks café was in full operation last week and the committed team also organised a sales stall for parents after the Primary Nativity and the icing on the Christmas cake was organising for San- ta to visit and issue goodies to all students (even the odd naughty big boys in second- ary!) Thank you to all the Friends@Belmont who have had a great 2016. Reminder School finishes at the normal time of 2:55pm on Friday and the new term will start on Tuesday 3rd January 2017. As we get closer to the start of 2017 I would like to thank you all for your brilliant efforts and support during this year. It’s a privilege leading such a wonderful school with committed staff and governors, interesting children full of personality and supported by many lovely families. On behalf of all the staff and governors we wish you all a Happy Christmas and a Peaceful New Year t Kevin Day Headteacher PAGE 4 NNEWSEWS FROMFROM CCLASSLASS 11 Hello from Class 1! What a busy term it’s been for everyone. We are now all famil- iar with our new class and school routines. We are working and playing well as a group, having fun with our friends. We have enjoyed our Literacy topic - poems and rhyming words. The Gingerbread man was a very big hit with the children, and they loved the rhyme - ‘Run, run as fast as you can you can’t catch me I’m the ginger- bread man’. We acted the story out with the children taking it in turns to be the gin- gerbread man. Lots of the children have made fantastic progress with their reading- we are very impressed! In Maths we have been brilliant at making and continuing repeating patterns and we have been ordering and sorting objects by size. We are now enjoying the build up to Christmas with Nativity play rehearsals; the children are joining in really well and love singing the songs. It’s been a great term we would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas, have a good break. PAGE 5 News from Class 2 Class Two have been very busy this term. In literacy we have been learning all about poetry us- ing animals as a focus. We have learnt how to use similes and alliterations. One of our favour- ites was ‘a gorilla has hair as curly as spaghetti’ or ‘how a sneaky shark swims slowly!’ In Numeracy we have been looking at money, addition, subtraction and 3D shapes. In DT we have been designing and making rainforest animal masks. We enjoyed a morning at Bournside school to take part in multi sports all the children represent- ed Belmont very well. We have been busy practising the Nativity and have all coped really well with the changes in the school day. Children have been able to learn songs and lines and are looking forward to the big performance and their chance to shine. In Thrive we had a special visitor Mr Shand who needed to come and relax in Class 2. The chil- dren really enjoyed his visit. We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year, see you in 2017. Mrs Hall and Mr Langton News from Class 3 PAGE 6 This term has been an extremely busy one for Class 3. The pupils are continuing to work hard in all subjects and putting in a lot of effort towards getting their positive points and silver cards. In Literacy this term, the focus has been poetry where the children have been making up their own funny poems. Numeracy has been all about shape and symmetry with lots of exploring, cutting and sticking to find out the properties of a variety of shapes. In DT the class have been introduced to the skill of sewing and are well on their way to creating a lovely piece of needlework. Other subjects such as Art and RE have included a Christmas theme; learning about the light of the world and in music the children have been working extremely hard learning new songs and perfecting their singing voices for the all important Primary Nativity performance on Friday 9 December.