Newsletter 5th November

PTFA News - Autumn Festival and AGM

Thank you to everyone that came along and supported our School Autumn Festival. We had a wonderful day and raised a brilliant £1178.61 for the school. 
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Huge thanks to those parents, grandparents and friends that helped on the day, Jill Millar and Ralph Mackridge for the loan of the Apple Press, A.L Martin and Sons for a great deal on their delicious Old English sausages, Thomas’ Bakery for a discount on rolls, Pam of The Fruit Loop for lovely English apples at cost, Julia of Beachwood Bakery who did her very best Prue Leith and judged our Cracking Chagford Cake Scoff and provided winners’ vouchers, Max H and Lucy for setting up their fabulous fruit kebab stand and a few very generous families who donated all the food, drink and prizes. It felt very special to hold an event in our fabulous school grounds again for such a joyful occasion. 

We need you! To keep running our School PTFA successfully, raising money and putting on events such as our wonderful Autumn Festival, we really need more helpers. There are many ways to be involved without signing your life away to the PTFA! Baking a cake, donating a prize, helping at events, designing posters, sharing ideas….

The PTFA is holding its AGM on Wednesday 10th November in the school hall (or outside of the weather allows) straight after school pick up at 3.45. Children are welcome to come to play together/read/draw etc. and there will be cake! We are hoping to get through our AGM business and move fairly swiftly onto Christmas plans. Everyone is very welcome to come along and hear about how the PTFA has helped the school already this year and our future plans. If you can’t make it but would like to be involved in any way, please email Chloe ([email protected]) to join the PTFA contacts list. Thank you!

Volunteering at Chagford Primary School

Are you interested in volunteering time to support at Chagford primary School? Perhaps you would like to offer to hear children read, running or helping to run an after school club or to help supervise at lunch time. During the pandemic we haven't been able to invite parents and carers in to play these roles but we think now the time is right to get going with volunteering again.
We will be sending a form out on paper for people to express an interest in volunteering. We will need anyone who is going to be working with pupils to have a full DBS check. There is a cost to this which we will happily met but as it is not cheap we will need to ask the people whop we get checked to make a regular commitment - perhaps two hours a week.
Look out for that form and do consider if you would like to come and help out and what you might be able to offer.

Read Write Inc 'Book Bag Books'

We have had difficulty getting Beech Class children's book bag books changed as often as we should have. We would like to apologise for that and we think we now have a better system running and this problem should not present itself again. Do please let us know if your child's book has not been changed in a week - our school values are community, challenge, care and we absolutely want to be challenged to get this right.

The Read Write Inc Book Bag Books are an odd sort of book. They exist to help the child focus on and practice a particular sound and a particular spelling pattern. If the story in the book is about a frog who sat on a log and made friends with a dog then that book is really all about 'og' and we want the child to read that book till they are absolutely confident with the sound and spelling patter 'og'. That means the sometimes (ok - quite often) the RWI books aren't absolutely thrilling in terms of plot development or character - those aspects of reading aren't the point of them.
Of course, we want all our children to have a love of reading and, for all their many strengths, the RWI books won't do that by themselves. Every child needs a mixed diet of 'phonically decodable' books which build their skills and confidence in reading - that's what the Read Write Inc books do - and exciting, funny, engaging, interesting, silly, moving books which build the love of the holistic aspects of reading.

I think of the Read Write Inc books as the equivalent of practicing my scales or learning to use a tool. Practicing the C major scale or how to use a file is not exciting of itself but it's a necessary part of building towards playing in an orchestra or making an amazing sculpture. And, of course, there is a great satisfaction to learning to do something really well, even if it is just playing a scale or using a tool. I see children who are immensely proud that they can read to me from the RWI Book Bag Book even if, in terms of literature, it's pretty thin stuff - they are looking at marks on a page and turning them into sound and meaning, and that is pretty amazing of itself.

We ask that you read each book that comes home a few times - at least three - until the child is really confident and no longer stumbling over it - particularly the sound and spelling that book is focussed on. We also hope fervently that you'll be spending some time every day enjoying great books together. Poetry books, story books, non-fiction books, funny books - all sorts of books. We need both sorts to build a confident passionate reader.

​If you'd like us to run a workshop on reading with your child just say - we would be very happy indeed to do so whether for a handful of parents and carers or for a whole throng.

Clubs

With covid restrictions increasingly lifting we are able to increase the range of clubs we are offering to pupils.
You will have received a letter inviting children to sign up for an after school choir club with Mrs Armstrong on Mondays. Mr Finch will be starting Samba Club after school on Thursdays and you will receive a letter to sign up for that very soon. We have our Saints Sports Club on Mondays and Craig's Football Club on Fridays. We also have more clubs coming along soon. Our ideal is that every child in the school will be able to access a club that appeals to them each term. If you have an idea for a club you'd like to offer please let us know and we will see if we can work to make it happen.