Apologies for the late posting of this blog but I have been struggling to type this week due to a fractured hand after an unfortunate incident with an Ikea flat-packed wardrobe at weekend! We had to cancel parent forum on Tuesday due to my appointment at the fracture clinic – if any parent representatives have any burning issues to raise before our next meeting, please let me know either on the playground in the morning or by bobbing into school.
We had a couple of interesting meetings at school last week – the first of these was our staff meeting on Wednesday where Miss Beestin and Miss Bell fed back to the rest of the staff about a project they have been engaged with in school called ‘Talk Matters’ which is aimed at promoting quality speech and language in school. The project is led partly by the Speech Therapy team and we have already implemented some of their recommendations regarding a whole school listening code and a whole school speaking code. It was a stimulating meeting and all staff agreed that they would reorganise their classrooms to have table groups of 4 which research has shown to support the language development of less confident speakers. I’ll report back on further developments as they arise.
The second meeting involved Headteachers from local primaries – Yeadon Westfield Infants and Juniors, Hawksworth, SS Peter and Pauls and Rufford Park. As you are aware, the local schools are all working together to come up with a new assessment system for September 2015 to replace the current system of levels. Our task last week was to look at writing development and decide on key performance indicators for children’s writing. It was an involved meeting but we did agree in the end! We have another meeting coming up to discuss Science assessment.
Finally, Mr J and I met with a representative from West Yorkshire Sport to discuss Tranmere Park becoming a sporting ‘Centre of Excellence’ regionally. It was a promising meeting and we now have to fill in an application. Credit should go to Mr J and the PE team here in school as we were identified by the Local Authority as a contender for this prestigious status which is pleasing in itself.
This week, Governors have met to discuss school holidays for 2016 as Guiseley School have changed their Easter holiday dates for that year. Look out for a memo from school coming out shortly…