Dear parents and carers,

Happy New Year! I hope you all had an enjoyable break and managed to find time to relax and be with loved ones. It always feels like quite a busy holiday with Christmas and New Year but it was time for all the staff and children to switch off from school for a while and rest before starting back yesterday.

Curriculum Evening - Wednesday 17^th January

We are looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible in school for this years's curriculum evening for parents and carers of children in Years One to Six. Please use this link to let us know if you are planning to attend or not: OWPS Curriculum Evening January 2024 (office.com)

New Year

Yesterday, it was great to see the children come back in to school smiling and full of enthusiasm. It wasn't long before children were starting their Spring Term topics and were back in to the swing of things. My assembly yesterday was about reflecting on the past year and then looking forward to the new school term. We sometimes use a technique called 'scaling' in the classroom to score a lesson, routine or outcome. Whatever you are discussing is given a score out of ten and you consider what small changes would improve that score. If the class agreed that an art lesson was a six, they would consider what they would need to change to make it a seven, gradually improving. I asked the children to consider the Autumn Term and how they would score themselves for subjects, behaviour, hobbies, friendships... and then to think about what changes they could make to move each score up a notch. Like the resolutions many of us make this time of year, the key is to return to the scores and regularly remind ourselves of what we are trying to achieve.

I wish you all the very best of luck with whatever you are going to try and accomplish this year, hopefully we can all improve our scores! 

Have a lovely weekend

Mr. Marks 

Headteacher

^{Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash}