As the Home Learning programme becomes embedded in to our daily routines and normal school life is beginning to feel like a distant memory, our attention at St Faith’s is firmly turned to the likely opening of the school on 1st June. Senior staff are working flat out to re-design the timetable, re-configure classrooms and re-plan routines to ensure that the school is ready for the likely return of Foundation, Year 1 and Year 6 after the half-term break. The safety of our community is our number one priority as we formulate a new way of working in school. We should be in a position to provide preliminary information to all parents early next week, so that you have an insight in to what school life will be like when the children return. Needless to say, I can’t wait to see the children back and hear the familiar buzz of St Faith’s life around the site again.
75th Anniversary of VE Day
Following on from last weekend’s VE Day celebrations, this week’s Pastoral Spotlight, written by Mr Critchley, focuses on the evacuation of children during War World War II. A whole host of pastoral information, resources and assemblies continue to be posted on the VLE Virtual Community Page, so if you have time, please do take a look if you haven’t done so already.
Read Mr Critchley’s Pastoral Spotlight
Chicks!
As is customary, Mrs Bates is putting her incubators to good use and this year is hatching out guinea-fowl and pheasant chicks. While we don’t have the usual privilege of seeing the hatching in action in the Pre Prep, Mrs Bates has been kind enough to share the process with her Foundation class through photos. Eight chicks have hatched in total so far with a few on the way. But as Mrs Bates herself says, ‘You know the old adage – never count your chickens before they hatch!’ We all look forward to seeing more photos as Mrs Bates’ new family grows up.
Home Learning
Our teachers continue to be delighted with both the quality of work being submitted and the variety of methods our pupils are using to submit their projects. Mrs Oxborough was particularly pleased when she received the following video from Alice after tasking the Year 5 pupils with designing a five minute audible timer. Alice cleverly used Engineering and Computing knowledge to design, build and test a Raspberry Pi based device, and then took her project one step further by making a video explaining how it all worked.
Victoria in Year 3 also took to video presentation like a kangaroo to water, to demonstrate to her tutor, Miss Brereton, the knowledge she had gained in researching Australian animals.
As I have mentioned before, whilst home-learning is far from ideal, it may well prove to be a real boost in developing pupils’ independent learning and creativity. We continue to be grateful for the huge effort parents are putting in to support their child’s learning. We will be sending out a survey to all parents over half-term to obtain feedback, which will inform the future development of the Home Learning programme.
Interactive Book
The next instalment of Mrs Davis’ interactive book is now available on the VLE. Those who have been following the story closely will spot some clever similarities with the type of education you are all now experiencing. For those wishing to get involved, this week Mrs Davis is looking specifically for illustrations of Rudy Reindeer’s house and what the ‘KrissEd’ lesson might have looked like on the ‘versatelly’. If none of that makes sense to you, it’s clearly time to start reading or listening to the story!
Podcast
To help you all keep in touch with the school and our staff, this week’s podcast is now live and can be accessed here. In this edition, Mr North interviews none other than European Rugby Player of the Year 2019 and Old Fidelian, Alex Goode. So sit back, listen and enjoy!
And Finally
Many of you may recall that last weekend I fully intended to participate in the Run for Heroes challenge, kindly sent to me by Harriet in Year 7. Well, to be honest, long distance running has never been my thing so I decided to get on my bike instead – and enjoy a very pleasant 25km around the Cambridgeshire countryside, on much quieter roads than normal!
Whatever you are doing over the next couple of days, I wish you a very pleasant weekend.
Nigel Helliwell
