It Was an Absolute Pleasure to Share the School's Vision with Those

It was an absolute pleasure to share the school’s vision with those parents who came along a week ago to our special evening. It was an opportunity to share, not only the school’s educational vision but also how our plans for the site will support future initiatives to extend and enrich our children’s learning. I was delighted to be able to acknowledge how far we have all come already on our learning journey and how the changes to the curriculum, introduced over the past four years, are bearing fruit with a more challenging, engaging and innovative timetable. But equally how we, as a school, as a community, as a Board of Governors, cannot afford to be complacent and sit back as if all our work is done. In education, it never is. Each year there is always a new group of children, a fresh classroom dynamic and the task of tailoring the learning to the needs of those new children, begins all over. I am excited to be the Head of Hazelwood at this point in its illustrious history and am really looking forward to delivering its future vision. This vision includes a new Upper School Certificate (loosely based on the Duke of Edinburgh Award) to be introduced from January 2015. The children will receive recognition for acts of leadership, for commitment to clubs inside and outside of school, for mentoring younger pupils and for becoming involved in, and promoting environmental issues. It will further boost the opportunity offered to our older pupils to boost their self esteem and to extend the boundaries of their own comfort zones in the pursuit of a well-earned bronze, silver and gold award. A new Computing Curriculum is being developed which will be rolled out across the school in September 2015. This initiative recognises that it is now not enough to teach ‘ICT’ as children these days are born within reach of a keyboard and an i-pad. Instead we will be looking to introduce the children to the worlds of programming and coding, allowing them to get to grips with how computers work and how to harness their capabilities for the expansion of their own learning. We will continue to be a three form entry school with no more than twenty children in any class (our building plans are not about increasing pupil numbers above this ambition). Our commitment remains to invest in teaching assistants across the Lower School and we plan to move forward with our Year 7 scholarship stream to ensure that all our children give of their best in Senior School scholarship exams through focused and inspired specialist teaching. Next Wednesday and Thursday, Moya Slade will be on both sites taking photos of the school at work and at play. Please can all children be sent to school looking extra smart. And whilst we celebrate and make best use of the fabulous facilities we already have, we also recognise the need to bring a pocket of the Wolfs Hill campus up to scratch and to bid a timely farewell to the much-loved, and well-trod, Cedar and Veranda teaching blocks. At the tender age of 35 years, the plan will be to ‘blow’ these buildings over in the summer of 2015 and to begin work on a year-long project to replace them with a most stunning and inspirational building of classroom learning for the Lower School (Years 3-5) and for the school’s humanities subjects. There will also be a Lower School Art Room and a whole school Music Room housed beneath the graceful curves of the roof. I am delighted to say too that the new building will house a 450 seat auditorium which will allow the whole school to meet together on weekly and special occasions in order to promote our growing sense of community, to hold assemblies and to host external visitors and speakers. The new building will nestle into the hill and through use of glass, cedar cladding and soft landscaping will mould with and reflect the sense of outdoors which pervades the site and encapsulates our motto Spiritu Inspiratus.. There will be outside learning areas directly accessible from the classrooms on the ground and lower ground levels. The above architect’s images of the new build will be on display at our forthcoming Open Day in November if anybody would like to take a closer look. We await news of our planning application. But we cannot build such a legacy without a degree of disruption. We have however managed to design a building which keeps this disruption down to under one whole calendar year. All being well, we will be opening the doors onto our new light-soaked atrium in August 2016 ready for learning as usual in September. I for one cannot wait. There will be a fuller information leaflet coming out to you around half term but I hope this has given you all enough of a flavour of what the school’s vision is all about to instill in you the same sense of excitement and anticipation that is currently coursing through my veins and those of the staff and Board of Governors. I so hope that each of you will be part of our vision and that your children will make their unique contribution to the school’s future history. For a list of emails/letters/texts sent home each week please see the ‘Notice Board’ further down the Nutshell. News from The Larks On Tuesday next week Oak will be visiting the theatre in Dorking to see ‘Room on the Broom’. They have been enjoying their theme of ‘stories, this half term and a visit to see one of their favourites performed will be a fantastic end to their topic. There has been some super work emerging on the theme of stories, from detailed paintings of ‘The tiger who came to tea’ to witches broomsticks and potion making inspired by ‘ Room on the broom. Oats have been used to form letters and make porridge and we even had furniture designed for a teddy bear! Mrs Weeks will be away from The Larks from Monday 13th to Friday 24th October and she will be working for the second week of half term (Monday 27th to Friday 31st October). The Grassy Mound is growing! Thanks to our wonderful small team of staff and parents the tiny mound grew and grew last Sunday morning as more and more wheelbarrow loads of soil, some tyre steps and an eight foot ladder were added. We are so delighted with the end result and can’t wait for the turf to arrive next week. Once this had been laid by Gary, our maintenance man/gardener, we hope to have it fully in use within a month. Many, many thanks to the parents who helped us: Mr and Mrs Russell, Mr and Mrs Meadon, Mr and Mrs Collinson and Mrs Townsend – we could not have done it without you! In addition, while the grassy mound was being created, Mrs Week’s partner Steve kept himself busy by digging Skylarks a huge new sandpit! This is now being lined and edged by Gary and will be ready for digging in very soon. “Time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labours” Could we please remind parents again to keep their children at home if they are unwell as we have had a number of quite poorly children in the rooms this week. Whilst we fully understand the pressures on working parents, failure to do this ultimately has a negative effect on everyone. Our staff work extremely hard to prevent the spread of infection and we have been praised this week by the Health Protection Agency for our high standards of infection control. However, despite this, more children and staff may become ill, which will affect the quality of everyone’s experiences. Thank you for your co-operation. News from Hazelwood The rain clouds stayed away on Saturday morning to see the Hazelwood U9 team progress through to the main cup final as group winners following two wins and a draw against Hawthorns, Royal Russell and Elmhurst respectively. A close match up in the semi-final was settled by a brilliantly worked team goal by Hazelwood to seal the victory over Reigate St.Mary's one goal to nil. The weather gods weren't on our side as the clouds rolled in for the final against Elmhurst. This didn't deter the boys though as they put in a battling performance against Elmhurst but simply couldn't find the back of the net. At the end of normal time the score was tied 0-0. The dreaded penalty shootout loomed and unfortunately, this wasn't to be our day and we lost 3-2. The final result aside, it was a fantastic achievement reaching the final and the boys were truly deserved winners of theirs medals. I'm looking forward to seeing more silverware come their way in the future. I also wanted to pass comment on how proud I felt to be a "Hazelwood Parent". Not only did all the boys play some brilliant football as a team and in such good spirits, but I thought their behaviour both on and off the pitch was exemplary. Congratulations to all. Happy Harvesters Thought the Nutshell might like to see that the harvest box that was bought at the end of last week’s Harvest Festival went to very good use. Wonderful produce - the butternut squash and carrots were used the next day to make a yummy soup.

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