File - Heron Hill School

www.heronhill.cumbria.sch.uk
@heronhillschool
HERON HILL PRIMARY SCHOOL
NEWSLETTER NO. 8
4th MARCH 2016
Dear Parents and Carers
Heron Hill School has the chance of winning a grant to develop a project, and to win it we need your vote! Please see
below for more information about ’The People’s Project’ on Border TV and the ’Pride of Place’ bid. Some of our
pupils, staff and grandparents joined in with the launch of the project at Milnthorpe School and were filmed by Border
TV; they are going to be on the television tonight!
As part of Heron Hill’s duty to ensure our pupils are taught British values and protected from extremism, we have
prepared a short leaflet explaining how the school approaches these issues. This leaflet will be distributed with the
newsletter today and spare copies are available from the entrance hall.
Peter Hicks
Border TV: The People’s Project - Please Vote for ‘Pride of Place’
Heron Hill School pupils will be on Border TV news today - for a good cause! Our school is part of a joint project
called ‘Pride of Place’ which would like to win up to £50,000 in Border TV’s ‘The People’s Projects’ public vote. ‘Pride
of Place’ has made a short film and all the films made by the community groups hoping to win the public’s vote are
now available on-line and have been shown on Border News over the last few nights - the ‘Pride of Place’ film is
being shown in tonight’s programme beginning at 6.00 pm. The 3 projects with the most votes in the Border TV
region will be offered funding of up to £50,000. Voting takes place until Sunday 13 th March.
We need you to vote for the ‘Pride of Place’ bid. Voting is now open on The People's Project plus the film is online.
Have a look at https://www.thepeoplesprojects.org.uk/projects/region/border
Further Information
The ‘Pride of Place’ intergenerational project, run by local arts charity Kendal Windows on Art (KWoA), encourages
older people to get to know their younger neighbours better through sharing stories, memories and interests across
the generations. As KWoA project co-ordinator Nicki Smith says “It’s important that our local older people are valued
and are at the centre of their communities, inspiring the younger generations.“ KWoA would like to develop new
creative activities for old and young not just in Milnthorpe (based at Milnthorpe Primary School) but also in Kendal,
with project bases at Heron Hill and Stramongate Primary Schools and in Windermere, at St Cuthbert’s Primary
School and Goodly Dale Primary School.
For the filming, children and older people from St Cuthbert’s and Goodly Dale schools in Windermere and
Stramongate and Heron Hill schools in Kendal were invited to meet children and older people based at Milnthorpe
Primary School and join in intergenerational creative activities. “I don’t know who was more excited when the filming
started – the children, the older people or the KWoA artists!” said Nicki, “Everyone involved can’t wait to see the film
on ITV and we hope it will encourage local people to vote for our ‘Pride of Place’ project.”
You can see the Heron Hill report about being filmed, on the project blog at www.kwoaprideofplace.blogspot.co.uk
Dates for your Diary
Tuesday 8th March
Thursday 10th March
Sunday 13th March
Monday 14th March
Monday 14th March
Wednesday 16th March
Wednesday 16th March
Wed 16th/Thurs 17th March
Friday 18th March
Friday 18th March
Saturday 19th March
Monday 21st March
Tuesday 22nd March
Thursday 24th March
Friday 25th March
Monday 11th April
Spelling Meeting for Parents, 2.30 pm
Fairtrade ‘Big Brew’, 3.15 pm-4.00 pm (see back page)
Last chance to vote for ‘Pride of Place’ (see above)
Sponsored Skip Week begins
Year 5 Enterprise Event, 3.15 pm. Bring some money, help Year 5 businesses make
some money for good causes!
Y3JH Last swimming lesson
Year 5 ‘Real Adventure’ Parents’ Meeting, 5.30 pm
Stay and Play at Nursery
Sport Relief Day
FoHH Disco
Sponsored Swim
Year 3/Year 4 Dress Rehearsal, 2.00 pm
Year 3/Year 4 Production of ‘The Pied Piper’, 2.00 pm and 6.00 pm
End of term, 2.00 pm
Closing Date for September 2016 Nursery Applications
Return to School
learning together, playing together, growing together
WORLD BOOK DAY PHOTO GALLERY
Everyone is a Winner
You excelled yourselves this year with many
wonderfully creative costumes representing the
top 50 children’s books. Our judges had a very
difficult time choosing just a few winners, but
choose they did and the top costumes are here,
along with general pictures from the day. Good
effort everyone!
Family
1st Lawson Family (Alice in Wonderland)
2nd Connor and Mia Lees (Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory)
Reception
Ollie Shaw (The Tiger Who Came to Tea)
Year 1/Year 2
1st Tyler Ogilvie-Booth (Lord of the Rings)
2nd May White (Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory)
Year 3/Year 4
1st Abbie Ireland (Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory)
2nd Chloe Procter (How to Train Your Dragon)
Year 5/Year 6
1st Nathan Halhead (The Lion, the Witch and
the Wardrobe)
2nd Harriet Hunter (Toad of Toad Hall)
Spot prizes for effort: Willow Brooks (Alice in
Wonderland), Max Wilson (The Hungry
Caterpillar), Lily Parkin (Alice in Wonderland).
Staff individual: Mrs Wilkinson (The Gruffalo),
Staff group: Mrs Haddath, Miss Hildrew and
Mrs Scott (The Hungry Caterpillar)
Spot prize for creativity: Mrs Lehane
(Treasure Island)
Thank you to our governors, who carried
out their difficult judging duties with
diligence and care.
The Day Felicity and Millie Met
School Governor Jacqui Cottam’s vintage car Felicity had a visit from a similar Nissan Figaro called Millie. Millie’s owner
is the Chair of Governors at a school in Harrogate, who heard about Heron Hill and Mrs Cottam through the car owners’
club. Year 3 had a chance to see both the cars together on the day their stories about Felicity’s adventures were
published in ‘FiggyWorld’ car owners’ magazine.
A few of our Gardening Club
members were invited to plant fruit
trees in the grounds of Kendal
Leisure Centre. Look out for 3
varieties of apples and a pear tree
bearing fruit in the autumn (in a year
or 2).
Choir: BBC 10 Pieces Platform at the Brewery Arts Centre
Our 34 members of Heron Hill Choir took part in this exciting event on
2nd March, along with five other local schools and the Brewery’s ‘Step Into
Theatre’ group.
Inspired by Mozart’s Horn Concerto in E flat and based on our school
Language of Learning, the choir gave an excellent performance of our
very own composition ‘The Heron Hill Anthem’, also featuring trumpet and
flute solos by Imogen Munro and Daisy Walton. Ellie Wallace then led the
South African call and response freedom anthem ‘Thule Siswe’, which the
choir sang with great enthusiasm and energy. They then joined the other
groups for a grand finale in which teamwork and self-belief were
celebrated through the performance of ‘Find the Striker’ and ‘Believe’.
The children performed brilliantly and we are very proud of them! Well
Some choir members relaxing in the
done choir! Professionally-filmed DVDs of the event are available at a
green room after their performance.
cost of £8 each. Please let the office know if you would like one.
World Book Day in Nursery
Nursery celebrated World Book Day with a visit from the
librarian from Kendal library. She read stories, shared books
and sang songs related to our transport theme.
Luca Robinson (Cat in the Hat) and Logan Shaw (Tigger from
Winnie the Pooh) won the prizes for their costumes.
Park and Stride
While the roadworks on Romney Road are disrupting traffic along Burton Road, we understand it is more difficult getting
out of the Leisure Centre car park, but we do encourage you to persevere. The fewer the cars travelling down Hayfell
Avenue, the safer the pupils are.
REMINDER: A follow up Spelling Meeting for Parents will take place on Tuesday 8 th March at 2.30 pm. All
parents are welcome.
Year 5 and Year 6 Mathletics
In a recent major study into Mathletics, the University of Oxford found that pupils regularly using Mathletics
outperformed non-Mathletics users in Key Stage 2 SATs in terms of attainment and progress. Our teachers
frequently report big improvements in pupils’ ability to quickly recall number facts as a result of increasing
participation on Mathletics so we know it really helps to build children’s confidence and mental recall.
With this in mind, at the beginning of the spring term, we challenged every Year 5 and Year 6 child in each maths
group to gain a bronze/silver maths certificate each week. Participation increased dramatically and pupils were
treated to a gold or silver coin when every child in a class gained a certificate (1,000 points or more). The children
really encouraged each other to join in and worked as a team to ALL gain certificates each week.
For the remainder of the term, we are running our Mathlete of the Year competition, which is in its second year now.
The children will still aim to gain their certificate but also compete with one another for the highest score of the week.
Our first winner was Ashleigh Elvey with an incredible high score of 77,760 (over 2 weeks, as it was half term) and
this week, Callum Wilkinson scored an amazing 50,000 points!
Congratulations to other high scorers, including Charlotte Kinley, Isabel Matthews, George Cottam, Dexter Westwell
and Shauna Coates, all of whom have been top 5 winners.
Keep playing Mathletics!
Michelle Wilkinson
School Council News
On 22nd February a selection of School Councillors walked to the Town Hall to attend a Fairtrade
event being run by The Queen Katherine School’s 6th Form. We were welcomed and split into
separate year groups, meeting fellow councillors from different Kendal schools. For our first activity,
we drew around a member of our group and wrote words describing what might happen to your body if
you did not eat. Paying Fairtrade famers a decent amount for their products could help massively.
After this exercise, we played ‘The Yes and No Game’; we had our very own passports and went anticlockwise around the hall, guessing the country of origin of randomly selected products and collecting
the countries’ flags in our passports.
Finally, after having a vast amount of fun, it got even better as we were all kindly given a chocolate
bar for attending, before walking back to school in the glorious sunshine!
Reece Irving, Year 6
Please come to our
Fairtrade Big Brew
Thursday 10th March
3.15 pm-4.10 pm in the hall
Come and have a Fairtrade cuppa and a
delicious Fairtrade homemade cake. There will also be
hot chocolate, juice, tuckshop products and competitions!
Please bring along your friends, relatives and neighbours
– all are welcome.
Heron Hill School Takes on an Advisory Role
Lip Salves and Cough Sweets
The Local Authority (Cumbria County Council) has recently
approached Heron Hill with a request to support another school.
Please can we remind you that children are not
allowed to have lip salves, Vaseline, hand
creams or cough/throat sweets with them at
school. If we find these on your child we will
take them away. If your child needs these, make
sure they are given before and after school and
ensure they have plenty of water with them to
drink during the day.
Over this spring and summer term we have agreed to share our
expertise, good ideas and experience with the school, which is
located in the South Lakes.
It is always nice to have our good work and reputation
recognised.
learning together, playing together, growing together