Easter egg competition

Easter egg competition – deadline Thursday 28th March

Over the next few weeks at home – design and make an egg scene/person eg Prince William and Katie, clown, story character? It’s upto you! Maybe you can come up with an amusing name for your design. Be as creative and imaginative as you like but completed items no bigger than a shoe box please.

Please do not bring in your designs until Wednesday 27th or Thursday 28th March and make sure your name is on but not where the judges will see it. Easter egg prizes will be presented for the best ideas in each class.

The Race is on!

At the end of last year Class 3 hid a geocache somewhere on the Woolley Moor Trail. Geocaching is a a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enable devices; participants (geocachers) can take part by hiding their own caches for others to find or by hunting out those already set. When you find a cache you should sign the logbook; you can take something out of the cache to keep and leave another item behind. You should also log your experience on the geocaching.com web site.

Occasionally, you may come across  special items in caches which are called trackables. These are not meant to be kept, but instead geocachers move them from cache to cache logging their movements on geocaching.com using the unique code etched on them. The web site allows you to track the progress of these trackables as they travel the world. At the beginning of this year Class 3 set off two of their own trackables in a Travel Bug race against another school’s trackables. The winner will be the trackable which travels the furthest in 2013. Check out our Travel Bug Race page to find out how we are doing or have a look at the map display in the classroom. Our Woolley Wanderer is currently winning the race having already been up to Scotland and back! Our Falcon Flyer is not far behind and is currently in a cache in Cornwall.

Stretton Handley's trackables are in the lead!
Stretton Handley’s trackables are in the lead!

Red Nose Day

Red Nose Day at Stretton Handley Primary School

Well done children for your enthusiastic contribution to Red Nose Day; you managed to raise a grand total of £74 by paying to dress in red and guessing how Jessie J will grow her hair back!

Ofsted ‘PARENT VIEW’ website

Parent View is a website (www.parentview.ofsted.gov.uk) that gives you the chance to tell Ofsted what you think about your child’s school. Parent View asks for your opinions on 12 aspects of your child’s school, from the quality of teaching, to dealing with bullying and poor behaviour. There needs to be a minimum number of responses before any results are made public and displayed on the website. Inspectors will consider Parent View when making inspection judgements. We could receive an Ofsted inspection at any time and it would be great, if those of you who would like to, or have already given, positive feedback to us in person about the school and activities etc, would take a few moments to complete the survey on the website. It is designed so that there can only be one response from a particular e mail address. (Details available on the web site)

As stated on the website, this survey is not designed to receive complaints about schools and schools can raise concerns with Ofsted about Parent View if someone posts something inappropriate. If you have any concerns or worries about your child or about the school then, as usual, please come into school and talk to us so we can work together to sort things out. In the first instance you should speak to your child’s teacher and head teacher.

Please see separate letter sent out Friday 8th February for further details.

Derbyshire Times Video

The Derbyshire Times visited last Monday to take a whole school photograph and to record a video of the children singing and performing “Shine”. A copy of the photograph can be viewed and purchased here.

NB links have expired.

Young Bronze Sports Ambassadors

Our Young Ambassadors

Last week three of our children attended a Young Bronze Ambassador Conference, in Chesterfield, run by the NE Derbyshire School Sport Partnership. The role of the Young Bronze Sports Ambassador is to bring the inspiration and magic of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to other young people in their School.

The children listened to an inspiring talk from an Olympic Games Maker  and took part in Boccia session (a Paralympic sport) led by two Young Platinum Sports Ambassadors from a local secondary school. Finally, after a presentation on how to set up a School Sport Organising Crew, the children got together in a brainstorming session to decide how they were going to start to take on an active role in the selection of sports in their own schools. It is hoped this will lead to new sports competitions taking place within the school and eventually between schools.

We are a top performing school!

Praise for Stretton Handley CE Primary School from the Minister of State for Schools

Dear Parents, Governors and Children,

I am delighted to inform you that at the end of term I received a letter from Rt Hon David Laws MP, Minister of State for Schools praising the

“…excellent performance of the pupils in the 2012 national Key Stage tests as published on the 13th December 2012.”

The letter goes on to say –

 “The overall percentage of your pupils achieving Level 4+, combined with excellent rates of progress in both English and mathematics place you amongst the top performing primary schools this year…..

I would like to congratulate, your staff, governors and pupils for their hard work and success, and to thank you for your leadership in continuing the drive towards the highest standards of educational achievement.”

As I am sure you will agree, this is fantastic recognition for all the hard work and effort of everyone involved in the life of the school. I look forward to continuing to work in partnership with all of you to ensure that all the children get the best possible start at Stretton Handley Church of England Primary School so they are prepared for the next stage of their education and for their future success.

Nativity – Derbyshire Times

A photographer from The Derbyshire Times visited on Friday 14th December and took photographs and a video of some of the Nativity performance – ‘The Magical Christmas Jigsaw’. Watch out for editions of the newspaper for the photos and there will be a link on the Derbyshire Times website to the clip.

Update: Our nativity photo is in the 20th December edition of The Derbyshire Times. The photo can be purchased from this link and the video can be viewed here.

Nativity Backdrop

We also have some school photos taken prior to the performance.  If you would like to purchase prints of your child please call at the office to view the proofs. Prints cost 40p

WANTED! Book List

Horrid Henry by NH Class 2
Horrid Henry by NH Class 2

We would like to create a list of books to buy to enhance our school reading library and we need your help. We want you to make suggestions for books that you would like to read or books that you would recommend to others. Perhaps there is a particular book that you have enjoyed and you would like to read more by the same author. Maybe you would like the next book in a series e.g. Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Perhaps you have some really good recommendations that you think other children would enjoy. Send us your ideas. You could do some book reviews for the web site and school library too.

Click on the comment bubble above to add your suggestions.