Key Dates
Monday 17th May
Year 1 workshop in school: Knights & Castles
Tuesday 18th May
Year 2 workshop in school: Great Fire of London
Thursday 20th May
Parent Council meeting
Year 2 class assemblies (available on Google Classroom on Friday 21st May)
Monday 24th May
Year 6 workshop in school: Crime & Punishment
Wednesday 26th May
Year 5 visit to Thames Young Mariners
Thursday 27th May
Year 4 class assemblies (available on Google Classroom on Friday 28th May)
PSA Committee meeting via Zoom at 7:30 pm
Monday 31st May – Friday 4th June
HALF TERM HOLIDAY
Tuesday 8th & Wednesday 9th June
Class photographs
Key dates for the summer term are now available on the website here. Please note that many of these dates are provisional and have been set in anticipation of government guidelines changing as planned. They are subject to change — please refer to the 'Key Dates’ section above and the online school calendar for the latest information.
Reminders
School uniform
Please may we remind you that jewellery, of any kind, must not be worn in school. This includes earrings. If your child arrives at school wearing earrings, staff will use their discretion to decide if your child should remove them during school time or cover them with micropore tape. If your child has long hair, please ensure it is tied back for school. Any hair accessories worn should be small and simple.
Our school uniform policy is available on the website here.
Travelling to school
With lighter mornings, your child may be walking to school on their own. If this is the case, please email the school office at: office@fernhill.rbksch.org to let us know so that we can be sure they arrive safely.
Attachments
Year Group Newsletters
TTRS Parent Guide
Making a Contribution to the Fern Hill Voluntary Fund
This week we welcomed a coach from Skipping Workshops into school, to teach different modern and traditional skipping skills to the children as a fun, healthy and creative way to exercise. To encourage the children to keep skipping, a series of videos illustrating the various techniques they learned are available on Skipping Workshop’s website. The speed ropes that the children used are also available to buy online here.
Thank you to those candidates who have nominated themselves to stand for election for the role of Parent Governor. Details of the candidates and how to vote in this election will be sent to you via email next week on Tuesday 11th May and voting will open later that day.
We've had great fun today taking part in Number Day, celebrating maths at school and raising money to support the NSPCC. A huge thank you to all the families who have donated via our JustGiving page. We hit our target and have raised £703 so far!
The children all took Buddy’s Key Challenge to solve ten exciting maths puzzles against the clock with Buddy, the NSPCC’s ‘Speak out. Stay safe’ mascot. Buddy spent lots of time moving around the school!
Today we launched one of our new maths learning tools, Times Tables Rock Stars (TTRS). We have used this platform in school with the older children for some time; it is engaging, competitive and they love it!
When it comes to times tables, speed AND accuracy are important — the more facts your child remembers, the easier it is for them to do harder calculations. Times Tables Rock Stars is a carefully sequenced programme of daily times tables practice to motivate learning. Each week concentrates on a different times table, with a regular consolidation week for rehearsing the tables that have recently been practised. It is interactive — wrong answers are immediately corrected on screen — and personalised, to ensure a pupil masters every multiplication and division fact.
Log in to TTRS here. Your child’s username and password are in the front of their Home School Notebook. TTRS is also available as an App for android on Google Play, for iphone and ipad on the App Store and on Amazon. A useful Parent Guide is attached below.
Next week, as Ramadan draws to a close, Muslims all over the world will be celebrating Eid al-Fitr. Mr Scott would love to know how our families celebrate Eid at home and explore with the children the different ways this holy festival is marked across the globe. If you are celebrating Eid next week, can you share your family’s experience with us with a short video, some photographs or even a slideshow presentation? You can send us your story via the school office at: office@fernhill.rbksch.org
Fern Hill Voluntary Fund — making a difference
Last week, Mr Scott sent a letter to all our families about the Fern Hill Voluntary Fund, a charity established in 2016 to supplement our school budget. Today we are relying on the Fund to help relieve some of the financial pressures we face as a result of the pandemic and to enable us to continue to provide a rich and varied curriculum for the children.
This term we would like to raise £15,000 to invest in resources that will benefit the children straight away and allow them to explore aspects of the curriculum that have been difficult to teach remotely. The list includes: whole class novels to enrich reading resources; musical instruments to support the music curriculum; cookery and Art/DT resources and equipment to provide a fully functional and dedicated space in which to teach these subjects; VR headsets to enhance learning across the curriculum and flipcharts to effectively teach modelled writing.
There are several ways you can make a donation. You can make a single, one-off contribution, or set up a regular payment, and you can donate by debit or credit card through one of two online platforms — KindLink or ParentPay, by standing order or bank transfer directly into the Voluntary Fund bank account, using childcare vouchers or by cheque or cash. Please see the attachment below: Making a Contribution to the Fern Hill Voluntary Fund for further details.
Donations are of course voluntary; there is no obligation to contribute to the Fund but any amount, however small, is very welcome and will make a difference. Thank you.
Year 5 Bikeability — 1st June – 4th June 2021
We are pleased to confirm that we will be offering Bikeability Levels 1 & 2 training for children in Year 5 over the May half-term break. A registration form has been sent to families via ParentPay and if you would like your child to attend the training please complete the form no later than Thursday 13th May. There is limited availability so we will allocate places on a first come, first served basis. If you have any questions, please email the school office at: office@fernhill.rbksch.org
TEAM POINTS
The overall winner this week is COOMBE
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Kingston
162
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Coombe
182
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Richmond
156
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Hampton
160
Inspiration 