Kemball School Spring 2020 Newsletter Hello Everyone, Well I never thought that we would be ending the Spring term like this, with the whole country on lockdown, worried about catching a potentially deadly virus. These are indeed very scary times. This virus is very serious otherwise the Government would not be taking such extreme steps to protect people from catching and spreading it. With this in mind, as you know, we have made the decision to only open to certain pupils whose parents are either key workers or where, in conjunction with social care, we have identified that children will be at a greater risk by not coming into school. We made this decision for the following reasons: In order to provide a safe environment for our students, we need high ratios of well trained, medically competent, experienced staff who understand your children. With staff illness and their own vulnerabilities I can’t guarantee the same high student to teacher ratios that we need to safely meet the needs of the students. Concerns about the potential risk to the health of our children – if we take the government advice, by the very nature of our school, our children have underlying health conditions that make them vulnerable. Government guidance has identified having a learning need as being a vulnerable category. The Government have seemed to forgotten that having an EHCP won’t protect your child from catching the virus or bringing it back to their family. We are unable to keep a social distance in a school – our students are sociable and have no concept of personal space – we are unable to socially isolate Your child is having close 1:1 personal contact with our staff, particularly if they need physical management, feeding and personal care. Other than gloves and plastic aprons we have no personal protective equipment. Staff working with your child are going home and mixing with their families – many of which are also key workers. They may be having limited social contact but they are having to shop for their families. Some people have no symptoms with this disease and therefore we cannot guarantee that there is no risk of the virus being carried by staff. We can’t ensure that key staff who know your child well are going to be in school everyday In summary our advice is to continue keep your child at home where they are safe and protected. All the staff at Kemball genuinely care a great deal about your children and we are extremely worried about any of them becoming ill, especially as the NHS resources are so stretched. This is extended to our parents and families. We know that having a child with additional needs is tough but we also know that all our parent/carers will continue to do everything in their power to protect their child and their families. We will continue to keep in touch with all our families and aim to telephone everyone on 20th April. We can then plan the contact and support that you would like. If you would like to contact the school then please use the school email address. This is checked constantly and all parent/carers emails are passed onto me so that I can respond directly. Thank you everyone for the donations of Easter Eggs. As we were unable to do the raffle we felt that the best thing to do was to take the Easter treats to the local food bank. We thought that this was the best thing to do given the circumstances and hope that they will help families through these particularly hard times. The road ahead is very uncertain, no one knows when this will be over. Stay strong, stay safe and take care – see you on the other side Lisa Music Our trip to Lichfield Cathedral On Tuesday 10th March 2020 I was lucky enough to have the privilege to take 12 members of our choir to Lichfield Cathedral to join in a concert with 4 other special schools in Staffordshire. The event was organised by Music Share, a singing outreach project involving Lichfield Cathedral School and funded by the Music Hub. Their leader Cathy came into school to teach us 7 songs to sing at the concert. These ranged from traditional African songs to Radio Gaga. Some of the songs were sung in parts which meant the children were in groups and had to continue to sing their part of the song while other groups sang a different part. There were lots of words to learn but the pupils were fabulous and all of them knew every word by the time of the concert. The pupils were very excited about the trip and finally the big day arrived. We set off from school after lunch, armed with our packed tea, on our journey to Lichfield Cathedral. When we arrived, we had a practice in the cathedral with the pupils from the other schools before being shown to our ‘Green Room’ where we had our tea and a bit of a break. After this we went in to the cathedral for the Evensong Service which is held each day. We listened to the Cathedral choir sing and the organ play then two of our pupils read a prayer as part of the service. After this we had some time back in our Green room before heading over to the Cathedral for the concert. The concert was nothing short of fabulous! There was a large audience of family and friends of the pupils and staff from the schools. All the pupils sang with such enthusiasm and joy it made the whole cathedral an incredible place to be. During the concert an opera singer sang 2 short songs for the pupils and a drummer from Jamaica played the thumb piano and the djembe drum. The pupils taught the audience one of their songs – Mango, Mango, Mango so everyone could sing together. The concert finished at 8pm – it had been a long but very enjoyable day. Our pupils were truly amazing from start to finish and I can not say how proud I am of them all. Thank you to the parents of the pupils for your support in allowing your child to attend and helping them to learn all the words. It was great that so many of you were able to come to the concert – thank you and I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. I want to thank Laura, Emily, Lisa and Helen for for their support and help to enable us to be part of such a great experience. If it happens again – which I truly hope it will – I will definitely be wanting to take our choir again – and who knows maybe next time we may even be able to take 2 minibuses full of pupils! Lorraine Spring 2020 Doulton 1 We have been working hard in Doulton 1 in the Spring term, in our topics of The Jungle and In the Garden. We have enjoyed physio, swimming and tac pac where we have been determined to succeed with our targets, programs and play. We explored the Jungle in January and February. Our sensory story was the Animal Boogie where we all met Jungle creatures including shaking bears, stomping elephants and leaping leopards. We explored the story using all of our senses and really enjoyed the actions of the song. In music we worked with Lorraine to share The Three Bears story in which we walked through the woods to explore rhythm, beat and lots of different instruments. After half term we explored our In the Garden topic. Our sensory story was Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt where we found out about the plants, creatures, seasons and weather in the garden, but also the world in the soil where the insects were tunnelling and sleeping. We enjoyed using props, lights and music to bring the story to life. Lorraine worked with us in music to share the creepy crawly calypso. In maths we focused on shapes, measures, measuring times and number. We enjoyed 2 RE days to find out about Creation stories from different religions. We learned about The Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Sikh beliefs. As part of the RE days we really enjoyed a visit from the animal lady where we met honey bears, a snake, a spider, a turtle, an owl, a gecko and a millipede. World book day saw a library’s worth number of characters from all of our favourite tales including Peter Rabbit, Red Riding Hood, and a T rex from Dinosaur Roar. We made Unicorn fairy cakes and garden brownies as well as sharing Sugarplum the Unicorn and Superworm stories. We had a visit from a Science boffin during Science Day. We saw lots of experiments and found out about chemical reactions. We even made our own slime! We look forward to coming back to school, and in the meantime hope that everyone stays safe. Thank you to everyone who makes sure that pumps and suction units are fully charged and for all of the requests for care supplies which are met. It really helps us to take good care of your children. Thank you for all of the support, donations and gifts throughout the term. Karen, Clare, Chelsea and Gemma would like to wish you all a very healthy and happy Easter. Spode 1 Dear Parents/Carers, It has been a fantastic term in Spode 1. The children have been making some amazing progress, and I know I speak for all of the class when I say how proud we all are of them.