St Cecilia's News

Dear Parents,

We have almost made it through to the end of term and are just about to enter the last week of the academic year. It has been lovely to see Year 6 back with us today, so sad to see that Year 5 and Reception Classes have needed to isolate with just a few days to go.

It has certainly been a rollercoaster year for us all with so much uncertainty at each turn. We don't underestimate the challenges of home learning and the demands of keeping a family safe from infection. We have to recognise the challenges that our young pupils have faced in coping with the pandemic, it has been tremendous to see how they have shown resilience, good humour and care for one another at this time.

Thanks for all your support with our pandemic procedures this school year, it has been quite tiresome to line up outside the school and to visit so many gates to collect the family. We have felt equally frustrated as year groups have been called to isolate and appreciate your support for the school staff at these times.

In September we will return to our usual gates and times, we will confirm these with you before the start of term once we have the latest requirements from the Department for Education and the NHS.

Monday is a MUFTI non-uniform day for our house point and sports day winners - the school office has contacted you with details of the house for your child's year group. Well done to all of them on their achievements, in school this term and at Sports Day.

Term ends for our Nursery Classes next Tuesday, 20th July.

We close for Years 1-6 on Wednesday at Midday.

On the last day of term the children will be clapping out Year 6 from 11:40, they will then return to their classes before heading to their pick up points for collection at 12 midday. Year 3 children will be dismissed from the front playground, this will prevent them from mixing bubbles with Year 6 parents and children.

A final goodbye to Mrs Jordan, Mrs Nash and Mr Stephens, we wish you all well in your new posts and thanks for all you have added to St Cecilia's during your time with us.

Farewell to Year 6, it's been a real treat to have you with us these past 7 years. We had an amazing night with them a few days ago at the Y6 campfire, there are some photos below. We all enjoyed it so much we think that they have helped us to start a lovely new tradition for the school. Thanks to all those staff who helped us to get this event off the ground. We hope that the children enjoyed their good humoured certificates! We wish them all great luck in secondary school, they will be grateful to have you all and we look forward to seeing you at your play on Monday evening.

Best wishes for the summer holiday everyone, a chance for us all to restore and refresh, see you in September!

Vince Burke

Head Teacher

Go wild for reading with the Summer Reading Challenge!

For this year’s Challenge, The Reading Agency has partnered with WWF to create ‘Wild World Heroes’ which will inspire children to take action for nature and the environment. Join the Wild World Heroes for an exciting adventure in the fictional town of ‘Wilderville’. Through reading books, collecting rewards, and learning all about our planet, Challenge participants will help the Heroes make Wilderville a greener place to live.

With exclusive incentives to collect and plenty of brilliant books to enjoy, the Challenge is the perfect summer activity to build young readers’ skills and confidence during the long break from school. The Challenge is available in libraries across the UK this summer.

Children can also take part online through the official digital Challenge platform wildworldheroes.org.uk.

We are pleased to welcome Mrs Park to Year 4 in September. She was able to come along yesterday to meet with her new class.

Our Year 4 classes are getting a makeover this Summer with new electrical supplies and lighting, new digital screens and a fresh coat of paint! A lovely welcome gift for Mrs Park and our new Year 4.

End of Year reports have now been sent out to all parents.

Our report design for Years 1-6 now includes a box with expectation. Going forward, this is where you will find a target for your child based upon their prior level of working.

For children in Years 3-6 this is based on their Key Stage 1 SATs achievement.

For children in Years 1&2 this is based on end of Reception Year achievement.

Targets never go down from these assessment milestones but we often move them upwards.

Where, due to the pandemic, children have not been in school for the either of these assessment milestones, the expectation box will be coloured grey. It will also be grey for children new to the school or to the UK.

Going forward we will be using a mixture of prior achievement and the level of working this summer term to determine new targets for children from the Autumn term and you will see these in the Autumn term report published in October.

Please don't forget to download the report and save it to your own electronic system.

Are you interested in astronomy or work within the space industry? We will be celebrating World Space Week in October and would be grateful if you could get involved as a special visitor to class. Please get in touch with us via office@stcecilias.school.

We missed being at the David Weir Sports Centre for Sports Day this year and we naturally missed having parents with us and being able to celebrate the children's sporting achievements as a community. In the meantime the children loved their in house activities, led by Mr Stephens. We were blessed with good weather and lots of medals and stickers winged their way home. I hope that your child enjoyed the events.

We have been informed by Merton Pool that they are changing their offering for swimming to schools. From next year we are being allocated slots for KS2 only and therefore Years 5 and 6 will be swimming with a two week block of hour long lessons - ten hours in total. Our lessons are in April and May 2022.

Our younger pupils will not have swimming until 2022/23 at the earliest and it is therefore even more important that parents sign their children up for swimming lessons as soon as they can. Over the summer please make the most of reopened pools to support your child's swimming development.

Please find attached a copy of our term dates for 2021-2022.

We have also included an initial calendar of events for the Autumn term, all of these events can be found on our online calendar and they can change, please keep an eye on Class Dojo for last minute updates.

To download our Google Calendar to your device click here:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0?cid=c3RjZWNpbGlhcy5zY2hvb2xfcHZhazViZDZuZjRpZzJrOWo3N2ljODRrbWdAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ

We have also attached an initial calendar for the Autumn term with some of our important dates. Please note that our Year Ahead Meetings return early in September.

We have partnered with myschoolfund to raise funds for the school, I've included a video above which whilst targetted at school clearly explains the scheme for parents.

If you register with the programme, wherever you spend £100 it sends £2 back to your account and £1 to our school account.

Please register with the programme via the link below.

We will have more news on the programme in September but in the meantime we can all start saving! The scheme does not affect your Nectar or Sainsbury's staff discount cards.

You can check out their Privacy Policy here: https://myschool.fund/privacy-policy/

If you need to contact the school please use just the one email - office@stcecilias.school

London Road, Sutton, Surrey, SM3 9DL

Email: office@stcecilias.school
Website: www.stcecilias.school
Phone: 020 8337 4566