‘Mayflower Primary School ensures children learn in a safe, caring and enriching environment. Children are taught how to keep themselves safe, to develop positive and healthy relationships, how to avoid situations where they might be at risk including by being exploited.’

http://mayflower.j2webby.com

Wednesday 6th February 2019

TERM DATES 2018/19

School closes: Friday 15th February School opens: Monday 25th February

School closes: Friday 12th April School opens: Monday 29th April

School closes: Friday 3rd May School opens: Tuesday 7th May

School closes: Friday 24th May School opens: Monday 3rd June

School closes: Friday 12th July School opens: Thursday 29th August

ATTENDANCE

Mayflower School’s attendance target for the Academic year 2018/19 has been set

once again at 95.2%+. Unfortunately, we did not meet this target last year, and I am

hoping that we can all work really hard to improve attendance at Mayflower School for

this academic year.

At present, our attendance at 31/01/2019 stands at: 96.1%, which includes the

Nursery. If we exclude the Nursery, it stands at 96.9%. This is a great improvement

on this time last year and I am confident that you will all help us to sustain this by

sending your children to school every day.

Class attendance figures for January 2019 were:

10th January 17th January 24th January 31st January

F1 am 93.3% 97.7% 93.8% 94.6%

F1 pm 72.3% 78.4% 87.2% 92.8%

LA 87.5% 92.7% 89.7% 92.7%

AK 95.8% 95% 92.1% 90.7%

AB 97.4% 99.7% 97.3% 97.7%

KM 97.5% 97.4% 95.5% 94.8%

RMC 93.8% 98.3% 97.3% 96.3%

AJ 91.3% 94% 96% 97.3%

PA 99.2% 99% 97.7% 96.0%

LG 97.5% 99.3% 98.7% 96.0%

KW 94% 94.5% 95.8% 96.5%

CR 98.4% 98.7% 96.1% 97.4%

PV 97.1% 97% 98.7% 98.7%

SD 97.1% 99.3% 98.7% 97.0%

RC 96.4% 98.1% 97.6% 94.3%

CS 96.9% 97% 97.5% 91.5%

BW 94.6% 98.1% 95.2% 93.8%

Our trophy winners for January were:

Foundation Key Stage 1 Lower

Key Stage 2

Upper

Key Stage 2

10th January F1AM KM PA PV/SD 17TH January F1 AM AB LG SD 24th January F1 AM AB & RMC LG PV & SD 31st January F1AM AB CR PV

Congratulations to all of these classes for their fantastic achievement of winning the

trophies in January.

SINGING TROPHY

The singing trophy for January is going to The

Mayflower Choir for their amazing dedication and hard

work preparing for Young Voices. You should all be very

proud of yourselves.

LETTERS TO PARENTS

There are many occasions when parents tell us that they haven’t received letters that we

send via their children. In view of this and to help the school’s carbon footprint, we are

going to move away from paper copies and send information electronically.

Please get in touch with the school office if you have not yet given us your e mail address.

Thank you

CHILDREN’S ABSENCES

If your child is absent from school for any reason please ring into school and report it by

leaving a message on the “Absence Line”. Please give your child’s name, class and reason

for the absence. Saying they are unwell is not a valid reason.

If the office does not receive such a call or message a text will be sent out. You can ring

and leave a message or speak to the office staff. Should the office not receive a

message/call then your child will be given an “unauthorised absent mark”.

It would also be really helpful to the class teachers if you could try to make any dentist,

doctor or hospital appointments after school or in the holidays if possible. This will

minimise the disruption to the class of children coming and going in the middle of lessons.

BAGS 2 SCHOOL

A big thank you to all of our parents for bringing in so many

bags filled with unwanted clothes for recycling and

reusing. We raised £144 from all your wonderful efforts.

Thanks too to Mrs Riaz for making all the arrangements.

FRIDAY ASSEMBLY

A big thank you to Year 4 for their wonderful Friday assembly all about noise! The assembly

had EVERYTHING! Songs, Poems, Science, Jokes and even … ukuleles! Well done to all of

the Year 4 team for pulling such a wonderful performance together.

STORAGE CONTAINER

You might have noticed the arrival of a

shipping container in the KS2 playground!

We are planning to use this for storage to

enable us to release a room in school to

use more effectively for the children.

Keep your eyes peeled as we may well be

putting a call out for volunteers to help us

paint it!

VISITORS TO SCHOOL

Katie France – WOW

This year our school will be taking part in an

exciting project to encourage more children

and their families to walk all or part of the

way to school. Our school is being supported

with this project by Living Streets, the UK

charity for everyday walking, in association

with Leicester City Council’s Walking and

Cycling team.

The project is called WOW – the year-round

walk to school challenge. Pupils will log their

journeys to school in class each day and

those that travel actively all or part of the

way to school at least once a week will earn a

special WOW badge each month.

Katie came into school to present an assembly to introduce the project. We start on

Monday February 4th – with the first badges being handed out at the end of February:

Can’t walk all the way to school?

Please try and make the effort to park and stride instead. This involves parking a

few minutes’ walk away from school and will help make the approach to school

much safer and nicer for everyone travelling in.

Please avoid parking on the pavements, zig-zag lines, over junctions at which

families are trying to cross and away from the sections of road marked on the map

with a red cross.

Danni Kennell – Leicester City Air Quality Education Officer

Our Young Consultants had their first

meeting with Danni looking at the sorts of

things which might be affecting air quality

in Leicester.

They will be participating in activities

inside and outside of the classroom to

investigate local air pollution levels.

We’ll keep you posted!

Book Talking Sessions

A huge thank you to the lovely librarians at the Creative Learning Services who came in to

school to share some really exciting books with the children.

UK Kids Comedy Festival - Rob Gee, Comedian

Year 6 are once again taking part in the Leicester Comedy Festival by showcasing their

sketches at the Y Theatre on Wednesday 6th February alongside four other schools from

the city and county. To prepare us for this, Rob Gee, a local comedian, has been in to school

working with the children to get their sketches ready.

The Great Fire of London – recreated at Mayflower by Year 2!

With huge thanks to our parents for helping to create the Tudor buildings at home and

bringing them in, and to Mr Wilkinson, Mr Whitney and the Year 2 staff for all their careful

planning and risk-assessing of our Great Fire recreation. It was amazing!

TRIPS

Year 1 - Cat in the Hat

Year 1 thoroughly enjoyed their visit to Curve to see Cat in the Hat.

We’re reliably informed that they might just mention it their upcoming assembly

on Friday 8th February at 10am …

Art Day at Newarke Houses Museum

Mrs Stokes and Mrs Sidat took a group of 20 artists from Years 3 to 6 to Newarke Houses

Museum as part of our City Classroom membership offer. The children looked at the WW1

exhibition as well as the War art and then created their own wonderful artwork in response.

Keep your eyes peeled in the foyer areas for the display of their work.

Year 3 - UnitEd – The Leicester Schools Linking Project

The Leicester Schools Linking Project,

based at The St Philip’s Centre, forges

links between communities and enables

young people to meet others from a

different community who they may not

get to meet during their normal day to day

lives.

Through the simple act of working and

playing together, stereotypes and

prejudices can be challenged.

It provides our young people with an

opportunity to visit other areas of their

city and notice that people who may at

first appear different to them are

actually far more similar.

Our partners are Shaftesbury Junior

School in the West End of the city and we

are thoroughly enjoying getting to know

them!

Young Voices

This year was our 5th excursion to the

Genting Arena for our wonderful Young

Voices concert.

The children made us so proud with both

their behaviour and their fantastic singing.

Please scan the QR code to enjoy the video

of the lovely day we had!

INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITY

Staff CPD

Miss Patel and Miss Maguire attended a 10-day CPD course in Guadeloupe this month - “A

Classroom with a Door to the World”. They developed their understanding of intangible

cultural heritage in the digital age of globalisation and looked at migration and social

inclusion. They have returned to us enthused and excited to put their new learning into

practice.

SKYPE Takeover Day

We were very lucky to be able to invite Mrs Keaveny into school this month. Mrs Keaveny

is a Deputy Head Teacher from a school in Coalville who is also an eTwinning Ambassador

AND a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert.

She set up the most amazing day, successfully arranging for 8 different SKYPE

experiences for the children from Years 2 to 6. All the technology worked like a dream

and the children were able to chat to teachers, children, authors and educators from

Poland, Bangladesh, Brazil, the Philippines, the USA and Hungary!

Our children’s curiosity and questioning was wonderful to see, and our geography skills were

certainly developed during the Mystery SKYPE sessions.

Thank you Mrs Keaveny!

Erasmus Plus KA2 – Thinking Allowed

Our 3-year whole-school Erasmus Plus KA2 project is in its

second year and we are now working on learning some of

the tools we can use for effective thinking.

We had our whole school Live Debate on the same day and

at the same time as our partner schools in France and

Finland in order to help us to develop our philosophical

thinking.

The children thought about the following philosophical

questions: “Do animals think?” and “What is happiness?”

SPORT

Gymnastics Year 6

Yoga Year 2

Yoga Year 5

Basketball Festival

Year 1 Festival

And finally….

It is always a pleasure to look back on all the amazing work the children have been doing in

school this past month and seeing their smiles, their enjoyment, their engagement, and

their learning makes me feel very proud indeed to work here! I think my highlights have

been the Great Fire of London, and the Young Voices concert, both of which I attended.

There were quite literally audible gasps of astonishment from Year 2 as all of those lovely

houses went up in flames. In many ways, this was our best opportunity to recreate what

the people of London must have felt at the time and using a multi-sensory approach will

certainly help them to be even more descriptive in their writing. Equally, with the Young

Voices, being at the NEC when the lights go down, the band swings into action, and the

thousands of voices from the children fill the arena, it is an incredibly moving

experience. As always, the children from Mayflower gave an outstanding account of

themselves and they also got to see the amazing Tony Hadley sing three songs for us! I

sincerely thank you all for allowing them to take part and I hope that next year’s choir are

looking forward to this very exciting, seminal event in January 2020.

This month, I wanted to focus on the Breakfast Provision that the school offers each

morning. I am very indebted to Mrs. Baptista and Mrs. Issa for their amazing work and I

know that for the families of children who attend, it is a service that they value very highly

indeed. Sadly we are still running at a loss so my keynote message is to urge you to use

this service. The very low cost is incredible and I know that our staff really want to see

this becoming sustainable. Please consider using Breakfast Provision for your child

and both staff have informed me that they would be more than happy for parents to come

along as well! I am sure you will all be amazed at the number of staff who have an extra

slice of toast in the morning, which is always a good way to start the day! Thank you, in

advance, for getting behind this initiative.

Next, more thanks from me for the vastly improved rates of attendance. This time last

year, our numbers were much lower and I can see how seriously you are all taking this

matter. Going forward, I hope that this very positive pattern will continue and that the

number of holiday absences continues to fall. As with all such matters, it is best if you

come and speak to us if you know that an absence is on the horizon and keep in mind, also,

that we will contact you if we have serious concerns about your child’s rates of

attendance. By working together, it is amazing what we can achieve and I thank you, once

again, for the support that you give.

To finish my little missive, I wanted to remind you that parents’ evenings are due to take

place during the week beginning Monday 11th February. Last term, we had a good, but not

perfect turnout. It really is very important for all parents to attend because your child

will not reach their potential unless home and school can forge an effective

partnership. We try very hard to accommodate all requests and can usually give you the

dates and times that you have indicated. We will also make appointments for those parents

who do not use the online booking system. Please remember these meetings are about us

celebrating your children’s amazing achievements. We want you to be as proud of them as

we are and we will also agree what we are going to do to help them make even better

progress during the remainder of the school year. Finally, as always, I will be there, as

well, so if you would like to see me about any matter, please feel free to stop by the

office! I shall look forward to seeing you all and sharing in your children’s considerable

success! Mr. Whitney – Head Teacher