Dear Parents and Carers

I hope that you are all well.

I often say that one of the things I love about working in schools is that no two days are the same. I get bored quite easily and could imagine I would find it a challenge to work somewhere where you did the same thing each day. This has been such an eventful year I'm almost beginning to wish that there were fewer surprises!

I now realise that I was a little naive to think that the COVID case we had in the springtime was going to be the last one this school year as you only need to look at the news or to read the updates from the Local Authority, to realise that COVID has not gone away and that we need to be as vigilant as ever to make sure that we keep COVID out of school.

These last two weeks we have seen the highest number of positive COVID cases in our school since the first lockdown began in March 2020. Thankfully, due to the kind understanding of parents and the team spirit of staff, we've managed to navigate our way through all of these challenges and keep children and staff safe. I can only imagine how challenging this would have felt if parents had been difficult. Instead, on the two occasions that we've had to close bubbles in the last ten days, parents have been amazing, and I want to take this opportunity to thank them for how quickly they were able to change their plans and to pick up their children. 

Thankfully, as you will know from the letter I sent home today, the positive LFT test a child had taken yesterday has been overturned by a negative PCR test which means that all children can return to school on Monday. As we are now tantalisingly close to the end of term, I'm hoping that we will not have any other reason to close a bubble or a team within school. I'd like to ask you to do all you can to make sure that your children stay safe out of school so that we can avoid bringing COVID back into the building.

Even with everything we're having to deal with relating to COVID, things in school continue as they would in any year and I enjoyed reading the children's reports last week. It reminded me of what brilliant children we have in school and how talented my staff are. There were lots and lots of examples of children being praised for the way that they follow the PRIDE Code and make use of our Learning Toolkit every day in school. I'm also excited that this year we're going to share your child’s report in a brand-new way!

Historically, we would have to print hard copies of the reports, put them in envelopes and then hand them out at the end of the day. Last year we emailed you the reports as your children were not in school. This year, you will receive your child’s report via the Parent Portal area of our school website! A letter has gone out today explaining how the parent portal works and we will make sure that you can access it before we share your child’s report on Tuesday the 13th of July.

The Parent Portal is a brilliant addition to the way we communicate with you. Not only will you be able to see your child’s report, but you will also be able to see letters that we send home to you as well as your child's up to date attendance data. Moving forward, we hope that you will also be able to use this area to access the calendar for your child so you will know what they're doing in school and we also hope that we can use the parents evening booking system. This way, we can bring lots and lots of separate things all under one roof.

We hope that this is going to work brilliantly from the moment we go live. In reality, there might be a couple of gremlins we need to iron out and I hope that parents will work with us to do this as we believe the Parent Portal will be a significant improvement to how we communicate. We are one of the first schools to use this part of the e4education website. 

We are also thinking carefully about how we can make next week's transition day work well. Given the high rate of COVID in our local community, I think that we will have to change our plans slightly and come up with a shorter event where the children can at least meet their new teacher to hear a little bit about next year. I hope that all children will have at least one parent that will be able to join our Transition Evening Zoom meetings next Wednesday where you will have an opportunity to hear from the two teachers in your child’s new year group.

As I work my way through the long list of things on my To-Do List, I'm looking forward to putting the slides together for the end of year’s Honours Award and to hearing why each of the two children has been chosen from their class. I've already seen some of the names and I know that the children are going to be overjoyed. I will also send out the Annual Parent Questionnaire next week and hope that most of you will take the time to complete it. I was amazed by the high number of returns that we had last year and touched by the many kind comments we had from parents. In a year when we haven't been able to welcome you in school as often as we would have liked and conversations have happened through masks at the school gate or via telephone or email, the many kind words and emails we've had from parents this year praising us for how we have coped during this challenging year have lifted not only my spirits but those of the staff. 

Thanks again for your continued support. It means more than you can imagine, and we are all looking forward to a great final two weeks of term.

Kind regards,

Mr Eardley

Head Teacher

^{Photo by Michal Janek on Unsplash}

Each week, we publish the latest achievements of the children at Orton Wistow Primary School.  You can find out the weekly results for:

• Attendance
• Class Dojos
• Dojo Masters
• House Points
• Reading Champions
• Shining Stars
• Times Table Rock Stars
• Golden Mile

OWPS Displays

At Orton Wistow Primary School, we update our displays regularly throughout the year.

The displays enable us to showcase the children's work and provide a stimulating environment as the children and staff walk around the school.

This year the teachers and teaching assistants have pulled out all the stops to create some fabulous displays.

Foundation Stage

The Foundation Stage displays reflect the learning they have been doing about life cycles. As part of ‘Word Wednesday’, the children also learned new vocabulary and enjoyed the story of ‘What the Ladybird heard.’

Year One

The Year One displays showcase the fantastic work that the children have created as part of their 'Oh I do like to be beside the Seaside' topic. The Elephants and Iguanas used their senses to create a Flip-Flop poem and demonstrated fantastic concentration skills when making paper plate seagulls, lollipop stick beach huts and bubble wrap fish to create a seaside landscape.  During the Power of Pictures, Year One also studied the artist Degas and focused their learning around his 'Beach Scene' painting. The Elephants and Iguanas did an amazing job of collaboratively creating their own Victorian Beach Scene. 

Year Two

The Year Two displays showcase their learning about the Power of Reading texts The Dark and The Bee Who Spoke.

Year Three

Year Three has two displays showcasing their topic The Tudors and their work on the English text called The Tin Forest.

Year Four

The Year Four displays showcase the brilliant work completed with Jenni Cairns and the children's reports on the book, How to Train a Sea Monkey

Year Five

Year Five's displays showcase the work inspired by Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce and the work they have been doing on the topic of Earth and Space.

Year Six

The Year Six displays are based on the Pop Art work that they did for their topic British Popular Music - 1950s to present day, and the descriptive writing that they undertook about their Power of Reading text, The Dam by David Almond.  When he saw the Year Six display on Twitter, David Almond tweeted:

FOWS Disco Day

By Sophie Chambers, FOWS Chair

Given the current situation regarding Covid numbers, both the school and FOWS are in agreement that it is sensible to postpone our disco next week. Whilst this is disappointing, we have been working together to formulate a new plan for the children.

The last day of term (Tuesday 20th July) will now be a Disco Day! All children will have the opportunity to attend an outside disco during the school day, within their current bubbles.

Our usual DJ will be playing and FOWS will provide every class with drinks and snacks to enjoy as part of their disco. Dress to impress-no uniform required!

As you will all know, we’d normally be running this event as part of our ongoing fundraising efforts.

Although we won’t be charging an entry fee as usual, a donation sent into school with your child on the day and given to their class teacher would be greatly appreciated. We are hoping to be able to help fund the new bike shelters next year, with your ongoing support.

^{Photo by Greyson Joralemon on Unsplash}

A New Sculpture for OWPS

Children in Year Four had the privilege of taking part in an art workshop run by local sculpture artist Jeni Cairns on 15th June 2021.  Last week, she returned with the finished piece.

Jeni is an award-winning artist and garden designer and her work involves a variety of mediums and disciplines including metal work, painting, collage, sculpture, drawing, garden design and planting. You can learn more about Jeni and see her incredible designs by visiting her website www.juniperhouseemporium.com.

On the theme of the river, Year Four made prints of water animals. They watched as Jeni used her plasma cutter to convert these designs onto metal. Jeni then took the designs away to complete the sculpture.  She said it took 5 hours to cut each design out on the oil drums and then weld the drums together.

Jeni also worked with some Year Four children to create a fantastic display of the children's work, which is in pride of place in the school hall:

We are looking forward to exhibiting the sculpture in the school grounds.

Celebrating Success!

Congratulations to the following children for their extracurricular achievements...

This child from the Penguins is one of the mascots for the Peterborough panthers speedway team, as his dad is the club promoter. The panthers race at the showground most weeks and Charlie is lucky enough to ride his bike around the track at the end of the racing. Last week he even made it onto Eurosport.

Huge congratulations to Ryley we are so proud of him. What may come naturally to others has taken Ryley 5 years.  For 5 years he has been learning to ride his bike. He decided last week that he was going to get his bike out again and practice. We were so amazed within a day of dad and Ryley persevering on the grass, Ryley was able to finally get on the path and off he went. This has been a huge achievement for Ryley and just as we are he is immensely proud of himself.

During the lockdown periods both last year and earlier this year Olivia was involved in running some remote teaching sessions as part of a Code Club. In these sessions she helped teach other kids how to code both in Scratch and also in Python using Trinket (occasionally providing the odd joke or two as well). For more information:
https://medium.com/ingeniouslysimple/redgate-code-club-2-0-d295f311d908

This child from the Cobras attended grading last week and is now a green belt in Karate at Inspired Martial Arts. Congratulations!

If you would like to share your child's achievements with us so that we can celebrate their success, please complete the Celebrating Success form.  Contributions will be considered for inclusion in upcoming editions of the newsletter.

We look forward to hearing about your children's extra-curricular achievements!

Parent Portal

By Mrs Schneider, Digital Lead

You will now have all received an email inviting you to create a password for your Parent Portal account.

After you have created the password, you can log in to your account. Some parents have commented that the website defaults to creating an extra space when logging in their email, so please look out for this and delete the space if it occurs, otherwise the email will not be recognised.

 The Parent Portal can be accessed from the quick link at the bottom of the OWPS website homepage or by clicking on the following link: Access the Parent Portal.

A guide to accessing and using the Parent Portal can be accessed by clicking here.  Please do not hesitate to contact the school office if you have any further queries.

It is important that you create an account as your child/ren's Student Reports will be uploaded to your Parent Portal Account on 13th July 2021.

Sustrans Parent Survey

By Ms Porter, Eco Lead

We have been asked to share a link to the Sustrans Peterborough Schools Parent Survey. The survey will help Sustrans and Peterborough City Council plan for the future and to further promote active travel to families. The survey takes around 5 minutes to complete.  Thank you.

Public Health England Feedback

By Mr Eardley, Head Teacher

As you would expect, the Local Authority and Public Health England are working hard to make sure that any COVID case in a school does not lead to other cases. As we have had a number of cases in the last ten days, we were asked to take part in a 'Supportive Call' to go through what measures we have in place and how we have dealt with the recent outbreaks. I am delighted to inform you that we were praised for our approach and the report included the following sentences, 'The School has done a great job of isolating and tracing.' and 'The school is doing a brilliant job of outbreak mitigation.'

During the call, we were also described as 'Perfect', 'Amazing' and 'Brilliant'!

As you can imagine, I am very proud of this feedback and relieved that what we are doing is the right approach. 

Lunch Accounts

By the School Office

Please can all Year Six parents ensure that they keep a close eye on their child's lunch account and ensure that they leave school with a zero balance at the end of term. Thank you!

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^{Disclaimer: Orton Wistow Primary School does not endorse any products, services or activities that appear in the Community section of this newsletter, and is not responsible for any contract entered into by either party. Given the current circumstances, we would recommend all parents check with any providers regarding the status of these services, activities and clubs}