St James E-News
14th January 2021
Welcome to the St James Primary School's E-News, a weekly roundup of the latest goings on at the school.
Latest Headteachers Blog
Dear Parents,
Thank you to everyone for completing our survey about the remote learning, we've had a fantastic response. Whilst the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, we are thankful to those of you who have made suggestions for improvements or changes. We are keen to make our remote learning as supportive as possible. We are sorry that setting up Teams has been a challenge for some of you, but I hope that things are starting to settle down and everyone is getting into a routine. If you are still experiencing technical difficulties, please do contact Heidi Gunner our Bursar who will be happy to support you. And please look out for our Teams Top Tips document which we are sending out today.
Understandably, some of you are struggling with juggling siblings or work commitments and we want to help. We have set work according to government guidelines, but having said that please do contact your child's teacher in the first instance if your child is finding it difficult to complete the work. Children in Y3-6 should be able to complete most work independently, but if they are having difficulties the class teacher will be happy to support them. Children in YR-2 have been given a mixture of activities and teaching sessions but please do speak to the class teacher if you have any further questions.
One clear message that has come from the survey is that some of you are finding the number and length of class meetings difficult to manage, especially if you have more than one child in school. Teachers are looking at ways of reducing the length of meetings if everything is not relevant to the whole class, and making one of the meetings in KS2 optional. Some of you have asked if meetings could be at 8.45 or 9am, but because there are siblings across the school, we have had to make sure that class meetings don't clash, hence the different timings. Now that we have got remote learning up and running, class teachers will be looking at supporting children in small group work as appropriate throughout the week.
You know what is right for your family and we will always be happy to discuss specific problems and try our best to adapt the learning where we can. Your feedback from the survey has shown that 85% of you feel that the learning is appropriate, but some of you have said that the amount of work to be completed is a challenge. If this is the case, I would really urge you to contact the class teacher and discuss what learning they feel your child needs to do each day to make things more manageable.
I just want to finish by thanking you for the huge amount of supportive feedback you have given, which I will be sharing with staff later. We are in this together and we will get through this together, so your encouragement really helps. We have been hugely impressed by the engagement and hard work the children have shown over the last two weeks and know this is because of your efforts!
Have a lovely weekend,
Valerie Elliott
School Notices
- Families Surrey West Online Magazine - normally produced as a hardcopy, this magazine for parents in our locality is now available online. It contains a raft of activities that maybe very useful at the moment! Please click here to access the Jan/Feb issue of the magazine.
- Many of you contributed to the Christmas Gift Appeal by West Surrey Domestic Abuse Outreach last December. Please read the thank you message from Abbie in the Parent Portal.
Letters this week
The following classes have had letters uploaded to the Parent Portal this week. Note: You will need to login to view this area.
- Whole school
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School Meals
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