Dear Parents,
I hope you are well. We come to the penultimate newsletter of the school year. We welcomed our new reception parents on Tuesday morning and all the children had their moving up day on Monday. We look forward to the Platinum Fair on Saturday from 11-3pm.
There are some fantastic enrichment activities that have been happening in the last two weeks. Please also look at the attachment from the careers week and the news editors. This was independently produced by the children- across the week they attended a variety of events to report on.
Summer fair-wear your own clothes day on Friday 5th July and staff raffle.
A reminder that tomorrow is 'wear your own clothes to school day'- the payment for which is to bring a bottle for the tombola. Collection points will be outside the school office.
Volunteers have been selling staff raffle tickets all week, and they will also be on sale at the fair itself with school staff running the stall. Attached are the various prizes on offer.
Woodland Area - parent and child walk through
Parents and children are welcome to walk through the woodland area after school on Friday 19th July from pick up time. Many thanks to Mrs Hay for all the considerable time and effort she has spent creating this with her family. £6,000 of PSA funding has been used in various different areas.
Staffing
We say goodbye to further staff members at the end of this year. We wish them all the best in their future endeavours and thank them for all their efforts.
Mrs Nicola Hope-Evans is finishing her one day a week role with us to move into other areas within teaching. She has had a long association with the school for over twelve years, predominantly teaching in KS1 and Reception. As well as her positive personality, we will also miss her glittery footwear!
Miss Demi Martens has been working in Reception and KS1 over the past three years as a teaching assistant and is off to university to study to be a video games artist. She is going to keep in contact with the school and be on our supply list.
Mrs Suzanne Normann has been working across the school for the past four years as a teacher assistant, predominantly in KS2. She is moving to be a higher level teaching assistant in the independent sector. She continues to aspire to be a teacher and has covered our classes many times.
Sports Days - KS2 Thursday 11th July & R/KS1 Friday 12th July
We anticipate a 9.30am start to these events. There will be 1 hour of rotation of activities followed by an individual race and class relays.
If you have siblings in the same sports day, you will have to spread yourself out between different activities during the rotation.
Please can I ask you to stay behind the boundary rope and because of our safeguarding policies, do not come over to your children. Ideally, dogs will not come to the common, but if they do, please make sure they do not mix with any children.
We will announce the winners in an assembly the following week in order to save time, and we can also ensure our points totals are accurate!
Moving up Morning and Mixing
I hope the children enjoyed the opportunity to meet their new teacher/s.
For those with children in Years 2 and 4, it was also an opportunity to meet new classmates and there were activities in the sessions to help everyone get to know each other.
I have received quite a few questions regarding the mixing this week.
A reminder as per previous communication: (https://www.sheenmount.richmond.sch.uk/parentportal/newsletter/?id=128) classes will only be mixed once moving forwards-at the end of year 2 (Year 4 were mixed this year due to missing this because of COVID).
I hope moving forward, as parents/carers become more used to the system and appreciate that the school and process is child centred, they will see that change and making new friends and keeping your old ones is a life skill. Our first mixing last year with the current Year 3s went incredibly smoothly, both when the classes were announced and for the children in the time since; they are richer for the experience.
Just to provide some context, plenty of schools do not have a policy i.e. it could happen at any stage and they do not send the form home in order for parents to fill in with their children. Some do not even ask the children at all. We are giving you a voice and my reflection on this week and my past experience is that, despite any concerns you may have, the children will adapt and thrive.
Sports Mark from School Games-Gold!
You may recall that last year we were successful in getting our bronze school games sports mark. This year, we have achieved gold! Many thanks to Mr Brown and Miss Lawton for all the work they have done over the year in providing the evidence for us to meet the criteria in gold!
School Events
Theatre experience
Year 4 have been having their unique all-day experience at Putney Theatre where they end up performing a play- all in one day. 4BZ went earlier in the week, 4S are there today, and it's 4H's turn next week.
Sports Tournaments
Year 4 & Y5 athletics- 16 children from these year groups went to St Paul's last Thursday for a locality athletics competition. It was to mirror the borough sports event that happens for them in Year 6 at St Mary's university track. Each child competed in a 50m sprint, 400m run, vortex throw and standing long jump and then a relay.
Year 5 cricket 
18 children from Year 5 went to the borough event for their year group's cricket tournament on Tuesday. The boys won over half their matches and just missed out going through to the semi finals by 7 runs, whilst the girls team won two of their 5 matches. Well done to all involved and thanks to Mr Brown and Miss Stannell for taking them. 
Mobile Phones
Following on from my previous communication and endorsing local and national campaigns around no smart phones for under 16s (https://www.sheenmount.richmond.sch.uk/parentportal/newsletter/?id=124_ I sent a separate communication to Year 4 and Year 5 parents last week.
The message was this is a collective decision for you as parents - I can not enforce this, but I absolutely endorse it. We hope that parents will take this stance moving forwards in order to support their children as they navigate independence and devices. We understand the value of simple phones for safety on the journey to and from school, but we have to consider the value of smart phones. https://smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/schools-guide
Second Hand Uniform Sale
Thank you very much to all those who helped with the second-hand uniform sale-special thanks to Maria Burgon who has helped to run this for the past few years and has written the below.
The summer pre-loved uniform sale was a huge success and we raised an incredible £685!
With thanks to all the parents who donated their pre-loved uniform and to all of our wonderful parent volunteers; Clare Mellor, Lisa Bennett, Marysia Prior, Lizzy Kaimakamis, Tildey Large, Sarah Beill, Calli Louis, Ana Berkes Pastor, Christine Silveria.
Because of your excellent donations we were able to put on a uniform sale for our new reception parents, at their introduction morning. We raised a further £315 for the school.
Thank you,
Maria Burgon
Summer Reading Challenge
We had a whole school visit from Richmond libraries last week to promote the summer reading challenge. For further information, please see here-
https://www.richmond.gov.uk/summer_reading_challenge
Year 6 Financial Literacy
For the past three weeks year 6 have been learning about how to manage money. Two visitors came in to tell us about the three stages of money which were:
Trading- We learnt about what people did before money was invented. People traded their food and supplies for better and more useful food and supplies and even tools. Soon after a bank was invented and people used sheets of paper to say: I OWE YOU. The bank we know today evolved and originated from this bank.
Pocket Money- We learnt different ways to earn and manage pocket money; we created our own pocket money system. We included: how much money you get given, any chores you must do, any rules or restrictions and any other points you would like to make.
Investing -we learnt how to invest in five different companies all at the same time. We bought and sold the companies at different times to earn more money. Investing is when you put money into a company, hoping that they will pay you back while having a better company.
Thank you to Chris Hawkins who came in during our Careers Week to teach us about this really important subject and in such a fun way.
Matilda and Flora (6S)
Colet Club Maths challenge
Last Friday, thirty pupils from Year 5 and 6 visited St Paul’s School to compete in the Colet Club Maths Challenge. We competed in teams against five other schools to solve challenging maths problems. There were two different types of challenge. The first round was a crossnumber (a crossword but with numbers instead of words) and a shuttle relay. For the crossnumber, half of the team did across and half did down. We had to keep running back and forth to the other half of the team to give them the answers that they needed to start their questions! Here is an example of the cross number question: The square root of 225. In the shuttle relay the answer of the first question was needed to answer the second question etc. Try this one: Pass on the value of the first square number after the eighth prime. We had fun and are proud of our results. We were awarded certificates and hope next year to win!
Henry- “I really enjoyed the shuttle relay because we could only communicate using paper.”
Tomas- “My favourite part was the crossnumber because half of our group had half the questions to work out our answer.”
Elodie- “I loved the shuttle relay as although it was a maths challenge you had to work quickly and efficiently. It also worked on our communication skills.”
Lora- “I really enjoyed the crossnumber because our group worked well together and I liked how the other group helped us as well as us helping them.”
Reception tidy up
Thank you to all our parents who completed our reception painting that the weather meant we couldn't complete on a Sunday in early June. Mrs Kate Jeffery led the parents into providing some excellent colour into the area!
Spanish Food Day - July 18th
Our final specialist food day occurs on Thursday July 18th. The menu is below.
Have a good weekend
Best wishes
Tom Holmes - Headteacher
Maria O'Brien - Deputy Headteacher
