Flourishing!
Thanks go to the Rev Harriet Every who stepped into the Reverend Paul's shoes to lead our Easter Service. With rain lashing down and wind taking limbs off tress we made the decision to hold the service here at school rather than at St Michael's. Harriet is a great new friend for the school. We will be invoting her back oftern I think. The children sang beautifully and I loved the Year Fours poem. They did a terrific job. Thanks also to the many parents and carers who came along to celebrate with us - it was lovely to have a hall full of people, we are so grateful for the love and support that the school recieves from the community.

Easter Acrostic - by Hawthorn Class
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Easter is a time of happiness and sorriw
As bright as the morning glow of the sun after the darkness of the night
Sadness and joy
Time to consider the life and sacrificae of Jesus
Enjoy life filled with love and forgiveness
Respect Jesus' commands.

Festival of Hope Football
Huge congratulations to our team who represented us beautifully at the Festival of Hope football tournament at Okehampton College earlier this week. They behaved impeccably, passed precisely and made a real impression on the competition. We think thatoverall we may have come second to Exbourne Primary but we really don't mind about the result - it was a terrific day. Special mention to MAx who scored the only goal in the sweet vitory overr our old rivals Okehampton Primary.

School Lottery.
Our Primary School Lottery had its first draw last Saturday night.
Thank you to everyone who has bought tickets already.
The lottery is drawn every Saturday night at 8pm so it's not too late to enter. This is a fantastic way to raise money for our wonderful school as well as being in with the chance to win some money for yourself!

Easter Themed Drawing Competition

A message from our friends at Whiddon Down Village Hall.

The hall committee are holding a drawing competition to celebrate the coronation.
Children might like to get busy over the Easter break and create a piece of art to celebrate the crowning of our new king.
Why not work on this over the holidays. I'm sure they will give us more details including where to send entries and what we might stand to win after the break!

Fantastic Mr Fox
Years 5 and 6 started the earliest preparatory work for this years production. Following on from last year's success with A Midsummer Night's Dream, our friend Lydia Frater is back again to direct the production. 

Every child in the school from Early Years through to Year Six will be in the show which, weather allowing, will once again take place in our beautiful auditoreum.

One reason for last year's huge success once the invlvement of the whole community. Parents, grandparents and members of the community who don't currently have a child at the school came together and worked to help the children rehearse, to prepare the set, costumes, tickets, refreshments, to make sure the amphitheatre was as trim as can be and safe for our children to perform in. We could not have done it without them.  After the Easter break we will start putting feelers out for people who would like to be involved - whether that's volunteering to take part in a costume workshop, to help out on the night, to come into school to help pupils rehearse or whatever other role they are fitted for.

Mealtime Assistant Vacancy
We will very shortly have an advertisment up on the trust jobs page for another Mealtime Assistant. This role involves coming into school a little before lunch break to help set up and to get the smallest children into the hall. The assistant would then go outside to supervise playtime. They wil also be asked to facilitate play for the children. After the end of break they stay for a few more minutes to help clear and clean the hall.
I will message when the advertisement is live. The candidate must be compliant with all safeguarding regulations and will have to have a standard DBS check and undertake safeguarding training. They will have a full induction before starting the job.

Easter Bingo - a message from the PTFA

​Dear Parents and carers. 

The PTFA are holding a bingo on Friday 14th April in The Jubilee Hall, Chagford. 
Doors open at 6.45pm eyes down at 7.30pm.

There will be excellent prizes and meat hampers to win, a cash flyer, raffle and refreshments will be available. 
Children are welcome. 

We are asking for donations for raffle prizes. If you could spare a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates or something else suitable to put in the raffle we would be very grateful.
Any donations can be taken to the school office by Friday 31st March. 

Many thanks in advance.

The PTFA Committee.

Festival of Hope
For the second year, every school in Dartmoor Multi Academy Trust has taken part in our 'Festival of Hope'. Bringing together puipils from all our schools fro sports, arts and celebration. 

Mr Frewin has been very busy indeed ferrying children to various sporting activities including a great day of indoor athletics at tanistock College.

The Festival of Hope is great idea. It is achance for our childen to come together and to encounter each other and become aware that they are part of something bigger than the one school that they are in. We hope that year by year, the festival will be  more recognised by the staff, pupils and families of the trust and become something to look forward to.

Festival of Hope Art Exhibition
Children from Year Four travelled to Okehampton College to see the Festival of Hope Art exhibition featurng art created by pupils from every school in our trust.
The children enjoyed seeing how different schools had responded to the prompt of depicting 'Hope'. Many of the pieces drew on the book 'Window' by Jeannie Baker and imagined a world in which people took action to repair our environment.
As well as viewing the exhibition, the children had a workshop with an artist in residence who painted an amazing owl live infront of them then let them take the painting back to school - it has quite the stae! The childen also got to design and make their own shoes! They showed us theri work with great pride.

Our Reading Journals
Why do we have the reading journal?
Acquisition of language has been proven to develop much more strongly through reading that through the comparatively much reduced vocabulary of conversational language.
As a result we hold with the belief that frequent opportunities to read are essential for the development of basic reading skills, vocabulary and comprehension.
We no longer have access to the Accelerated Reader programme but our library books will continue to be coded as per AR as this still enables the children to pick books that have been analysed to ensure a smooth progression in difficulty.

The exact content of the journal will change slightly with the next print run but the essentials are as follows:

• Each page represents a new week. Please date the top of the page. Your child should have their reading level recorded at the top of the page.

• We expect that children read at least 5 times per week but there are extra slots for our very keen readers.
• KS1 5x 15 mins with an adult.  It is most impactful for you to coax your child through tricky words to keep the fluency of reading going and to stop and discuss what is happening and ask questions about what has been read.
• Years 3 and 4       5 x 20 mins with an adult. Again, coax you child through tricky words and stop to discuss the story, tricky words or content of the text.
• Years 5 and 6       5 x 20 mins - half an hour.  Children will probably be reading independently but it is still more impactful if you can read together and discuss the text.
• What to record - Please record the date of the read, the title of the book and the pages read ( e.g. p 11 - 23). Then initial the appropriate column.
• Adult reading volunteers will also use your child's journal to record 1:1 reads that have been done in school.
• Each week ( different teachers will have their own preferred time for this) the class teacher will monitor the home reads.
• When a book has been finished, the class teacher will hear your child read a short passage from the book, question them about the content and judge whether they are ready to move on up to the next level.
• As previously, you child is free to choose a second book from the library which is of a different standard to their current level but which they choose for specific interest purposes.

We also wish to use the journal as a means of brief home/school communication so if you have a quick question, please pop it in the journal and ask your child to pass it to their teacher.

,Changes to the Daily Routine
Starting after Easter, we will make a change to the way we run our morning routine.

We expect children to be arrive at school between 8:40 and 8:50 a.m. Our day starts at 8:50 and we do expect all pupils to be on site by that time.

After Easter, instead of gathering on the playground and lining up before entering the school building we will send children straight in. All children should therefore, be in the school building by 8:50. This means that teachers can complete registers by 9:00 and get on with the day. The gate will be closed sooner than it has been and children arriving after that time will enter school through reception. Children arriving after the gate is closed will  be marked as late. 

We love to hear the children singing together and it's an important part of how we build a sense of community. We will continue to sing every day but we will do this in Collective Worship in the afternoon.

Unauthorised Absence
Schools do not authorise absence for holidays within term time. We are simply not allowed to under national, county or trust protocol. It is our statutory duty to ensure that children are present in school to learn. Parents too have a statutory duty under the law to ensure children attend school regularly. When you sign up to send your child to school, one of the commitments you make is that you will ensure they attend regularly unless there are excpetional circumstances. Of course, for the vast majority of children, these exceptional circumstances amount to the ocassional illness - no one expects that your child will attend school if they are sick.
I think that, due to the pandemic, lots of families had postponed holidays that they wanted to fit in, often including visits to family around the world. This was understandable but we, as heads, could not authorise them. Sessions missed from these holidays are marked down as unauthorised absences. Other unauthorisable absences can include trips the theatre or to relatives for special birthdays. Any children who have missed more than 10% of available sessions is coded as a 'persitant absentee' and this raises concerns which we have to look into. Currently, in our little school, 16% of our pupils are coded as persitant absentees - this is a good deal more than we would expect.
One of the insruments we can use to show our intent in this area is fining parents who removing children from school for reasons that we cannot authorise. This is something that I have been reluctant to do in the past but which I feel I will have to do. I would always do this is consultation with the county Education Welfare Officers who can help families before it gets to that point.
Even though we cannot authorise holidays, we are grateful to have the absence form filled out so that we know where they are - if we know in advance that you are visiting family overseas for a week in April, we don't panic when your child is away and the phone unanswered.
​as a school, we would like to see the persistant absentee figure fall markedly over the next few weeks and we hope to see all pupils attending such that they can make really good progress.

Flourishing!
I've never known a school in England to make much of a fuss of St Patrick's Day but, here at Chagford Primary, it was quite the thing. Under Ms Simpson's valiant leadership, Year Five pulled off a masterfull retelling of the life of the Irish saint complete with an astonishing sea voyage, savage sheep and some brilliant fiddle playing from Benji Chambers.
Special commendatin has to go to Rafi who played St Patrick himself with great aplomb. Benji B as the Voice of God was another highlight.

The fun didn't stop there. On Friday, St Patrick's Day itself, the Year Five children made little St Patrick's day packages to share with all the children in the school. There were a lot of Shamrock stickers going around the school.

Bake Sale
A huge thank you from the PTFA for supporting our recent Bake sale. The total profit was a whopping £259.96.
We were overwhelmed by the generous donations of baked goods meaning that we had enough cakes to run the bake sale 2 days in a row.
We really appreciate everyone who baked, sent children to school with money and queued in the rain! Extra special thanks to Chloe and Harriet for running it too! 

Celebrating the Earth - Wildflowers
Join us at the church on Tuesday 21st March for the next 'Celebrating the Earth' event.
This will be a short family friendly event in an inclusive multi faith setting. We'll think about all the gifts we recieve from wild flowers.
Our children have been practicing 'Country Life' to sing at the event. I really do hope to see as many children as possible at St Michael the Archangel at 5:30. Do join us.

PTFA Lottery
The PTFA have set up a School lottery using 'Your School Lottery'. 
This is an exciting weekly lottery that raises money for schools in the UK. All schools supported by the lottery will benefit the UK and its residents.
Play the lottery, support your school - it’s that simple!
Tickets for the lottery cost just £1 per week, with a top prize of £25,000!
Each ticket will consist of 6 numbers and each number will be between 0 and 9. There will be a draw every Saturday night when a 6 digit winning combination will be picked. Match all 6 and you win the JACKPOT!
There is also a guaranteed winner for each school every Saturday which is drawn on a raffle basis, so there are two chances to win a prize.
A full list of prizes below:
Prize tierAmount
JACKPOT£25,000
130% of ticket sales

From every £1 ticket sold 40p will go to the school! Please know that your money is going back into your community and your school will benefit from your contribution.Many thanks in advance and Good Luck.
The PTFA Committee 

Flourishing
Well done to all our pupils for another busy and succesful week at Chagford Church of England Primary School.
A special well done this week to the pupils of Year Two who have dealt admirably with the absence  of their teacher Mrs Robertson. The children have had na very odd week learning alongside their friends in different classes and have done so with flexibility and good humour.
Well done also to the children and teachers in Year One and Year Three who have accomodated these guests!
Sadly, due to the weather and wisely cautious bus companies, the planned Cross Country competition to take place earlier this week was cancelled. We hope that will be rescheduled soon - our children love cross country and really excel at it.

Staffing
We are currently recruiting a teaching assistant for an important role in our school. If you know of anyone in the area who might be interested in working as a teaching assistant, do please let them know that we would be very interested in having a conversation. We are currently advertising one fixed term position but we would also be interested in hearing from people with availability in the near future who might be able to work with us through an agency to provide support in the short term.

Support Staff Vacancies | Dartmoor Multi Academy Trust (dartmoormat.org.uk)

World Book Day
Last week we didn't manage to share our photos from World Book Day with you, so here is a gallery of lovely costumes and brilliant faces filled with bookish glee. We really did have a lovely day - thanks to our friends from The Bookery and to Chloe Brooks-Warner for their help to make the day a success.

Celebrating the Earth
I hope that your children have come home from school singing 'Country Life', our new song for the next Celebrating the Earth event at the church of St Michael the Archangel on Tuesday 21st March. This event will celebrate wild flowers and all the ways they enrich and prolong our lives. Celebrating the Earth events are not too long and always aim to be family friendly. We shall be practicing our song every chance we get and, hopefully, lots of children will come along to sing with us, to raise the roof and welcome the spring.
Children might like to practice by singing along with the Waterson Family here.
There's an odd word in there, the small birds sing upon their 'laylum'. I think that's a Sussex version of 'leyland'. A meadow, perhaps by a river, 

Mobile Phones in School
Can we ask all parents and carers to keep to our 'no mobile phones' rule in school. There are a number of parents who, for very good reasons, ask that we do not share photographs of their children online and it is important that we respect those wishes. I know how much parents and carers would like to share photographs from special events and assemblies but we ask that you refrain from doing so. When we upload photos to class blogs and to the website, we do our utmost to make sure that we do not share photos of pupils for whom we do not have photo permission. If there's a reason that you would really like a photo of your child, for example receiving a certificate or performing in assembly, let us know and we will try to get a photo that we know we can share with you.

All Kinds of Minds
'All Kinds of Minds' is a week of celebration of neurodiversity. We are all different, with our own opinions, things we like and things we don't like. The concept of neurodioversity takes that a bit further - our minds can work in different ways. While we used to think of traits such as ADHD and autism as things that were 'wrong' with people - now we've learned to understand and celebrate them as differences. Some of our greatest scientists, artists, musicians and leaders have been neurodiverse - for them ADHD and autism have been things that made their brains more amazing.
​
Creative challenge: What would your sustainable future look like?
In our video, we will set children a creative challenge inspired by the things the researchers have said about sustainability: to think about what children want their sustainable future to look like and create something that shares their thoughts. Responses can be anything creative, a picture, a photo, a poem, building something, writing a letter, making a model, etc.
Children can then take a photo of their response (or email a document or film) and submit it by 31st March using this Microsoft Form: https://forms.office.com/e/iBVTaqaiwi

Invitation to neurodivergent children: Join us on our Streatham campus (Exeter) on Saturday 15th April
We would like to invite any Key Stage 2 neurodivergent children known to your SENcos to join us on University of Exeter Streatham campus with their families on Saturday 15th April between 10am and 12pm. SENcos are also warmly invited.
We will create a relaxed environment with access to quiet spaces and outdoor areas. Children will be able to meet the team who put together the video they have watched, take part in a LEGO build, and hear a little bit about university life from Lily and Jack from the Student’s Guild, who are also neurodivergent. Children will be able to see an exhibition of responses received to the creative challenge and families can meet each other over refreshments.
Please would you discuss this opportunity with your children and their parents. It would help us plan refreshments if you could confirm numbers likely to attend by the end of term (31st March).

As a Church of England school, we retain our longstanding links with St Michael's, not only through our collective worships, but by participating in many community events which are orchestrated or hosted by the church.  We value our relationship with St Michael's very much, and would like to encourage you to attend this family-friendly service on Sunday 12th March in the Jubilee Hall.  It is a great way for your children to explore their own spirituality in a gentle way,  Coffee, tea, hot chocolate and pastries are available free-of-charge too....! Family Breakfast Church is held on the second Sunday of every month, starting around 09:30.