Newsletter - 6th November 2020

​Dear Chagford Families

Thank you for your understanding and support in helping us run smoothly and safely during this second lockdown.

We really appreciate you wearing face masks at drop off and collection, and observing distancing from staff and each other. I am aware that some families have had to organise child care as we are not able run morning or after school clubs at the moment, we hope these will be able to resume in December, I will of course keep you posted about this. If you need to come to the school office, please make sure you are wearing a mask and only come in one at a time. As far as possible, please communicate with us via email or by phoning the school office number 01647 432412 and leave a message if there is no answer.

And now for some lighter news!

In Print
We are featured in the latest Whiddon Parishes magazine! Do see the November – December 2020 edition, pages 23 and 44, then of course read it all!  Congratulations to Charley, Ember, Rosie and Aly for their Back to School article written collaboratively in Journalism Club, and congratulations to Emily for her Christmas picture featuring on the back.

Christmas
Talking of Christmas, we will of course be having lots of pre-Christmas celebrations and events in school. The staff have their thinking caps on as to how to mark this important time of year, while observing all of our safety measures. Lisa Rowe is concocting a plan for a whole school event – but it will be weather dependent and will require a lot of preparation and risk assessment, more details later this term. For now, please save the date Thursday 17th December afternoon and evening and pray for good weather. 

 Remembrance Day
St Michael’s will be holding a Remembrance Service at the Church this Sunday. It will be different from last year of course but Rev Paul and the team are working hard to make it a meaningful and interactive service while observing the Covid restrictions. It would be wonderful to have the school represented. If you are attending, please could the children wear school uniform and they will be given a role. I will be leading a school assembly about Remembrance on Monday and we will be observing the silence on Wednesday at 11am.

Thank Yous
As always, I have lots of thank yous!
Our school PTFA are really working hard to support the school in these challenging times. Thank you again for organising the Pumpkin Trail, but also the Bingo on the 23rd October. Chloe has been working with me and the staff to plan and deliver an exciting project to solve some Christmas gift issues while raising money for the school. More about this from Chloe next week!

A big thank you to our socially distanced gardening group who worked hard on Wednesday tending the front beds and sharing expertise and planning for the spring.

Behind the scenes the Three Hares governing body are working hard on many aspects of leadership and development, including fundraising, ethos and compliance. A huge thank you to them all, but specifically Mel and Emma who have put in an enormous amount of time and energy to support not only our school, but North Tawton and South Tawton.

Website permissions
We are really keen to get some new photos on our school website and on our class blogs. There are many parents who have not given permission. If you do not want your child’s image on the website, that is fine and we will of course respect your wishes, however, I suspect many of you are happy to have photos published. We have several families where older children have permissions, but not younger ones, and we have several others who I know from conversations are fine with their child being on the website but haven’t officially given permission.

To give your permission for photos, as well as to update contact and medical details, please sign up for SIMS Parent. You will have received an invite from the ‘system’ but if you cannot find it in your inbox, clutter or junk files, please contact Miss Jackson: ([email protected]) and she can resend the invitation. If you would rather, we can provide a form for you to fill in and return but the electronic method is preferable. 

School Leadership Meeting Update
Following our keenly attended parent and school leadership meeting back in September, we said we would update parents on our plans and actions. This was scheduled for Tuesday 10th November 6pm. Our plan was to have the option of joining in person or on line as we did before, this will now have to be on line only. Please look out for an invite to teams to join the meeting.

From the PTFA
Pumpkin Trail
Thank you to everyone who took part in our ‘Spot the Pumpkin’ trail! We had over 70 forms returned and had nearly £100 in donations. Huge thanks to our local businesses who were keen to get involved and bring some joy to the town. The four prize draw winners are:
Alec S
Joseph B
Emily L
Jamey MG
Congratulations! We’ll be in touch about getting your prize to you.

Moorland Grocery and The Green Man Cafe were joint winners of the favourite window as voted by trail participants.

Thank you to all who organised this and to all who took part. What a fun way to get out and engage with the town, I know the children, and parents, enjoyed this.

PTFA meeting – 8.00pm Tuesday 17th November

We have a PTFA meeting scheduled for Tuesday 17th November at 8.00pm via zoom (link below). Please feel free to join, anyone connected to the school is very welcome. If you can’t make the meeting but have any ideas for fundraising or events please do get in touch by emailing [email protected]

We would like to run our popular Christmas Raffle this year so are looking for prize donations! If you have anything (prize item, voucher, service) you’d like to donate or have contacts who may be willing to donate a great prize, please get in touch. We are also in the process of making up a Chagford School canvas shopping bag with the children’s selfportraits on, they will be ready to purchase in a few weeks and I can tell you there are some great pictures!

Topic: Chagford School PTFA Zoom Meeting
Time: Nov 17, 2020 08:00 PM London
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/7826764157?pwd=eVM3bk1mVW55V1hGcVNoeldtd2lsUT09
Meeting ID: 782 676 4157
Passcode: jJaL0c

Small Art Works Auction
A while ago now, Georgia Munday and I spent some time going through the gift aid forms from the Art Auction and chasing up postcodes of those we didn’t have. I gave all the information to Sue Bifani who kindly put it into some sort of order and submitted it to HMRC. We’ve just heard back from them and I’m thrilled with the news that we are due to receive £1586.31 in gift aid from the Auction which will go directly into the School's Art Fund. Best wishes, Ione.

All the very best
Tara Penny
Head of School

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