Who can believe that we have had such beautiful weather this week?!  Being in a Victorian school building at this time of year is certainly beneficial, we have been lovely and cool! With only a few weeks until the end of the school year, we have been busy preparing everything for the end of the year as well as putting plans in place for September.  Key events over the next few weeks include:

 

10th July – Sports Day

13th July – Garden Party

20th July – School Disco

25th July – Leavers’ service and last day of term (finish school at 1:00 pm.)

Goodbye Miss Cahill

This week we said goodbye to our trainee, Miss Cahill. In the short time that she has been at Clearwell, she has made a significant positive contribution.  We would like to thank her and wish her well as she starts her career in education with a class of her own.  We are all confident that she will be an excellent practitioner with a bright future ahead of her.

New Curriculum

If you read my blog regularly you will know that we have created a new vision for our wonderful village primary school. As part of our new curriculum, we will have an immersion task at the start of each topic.  We can’t stretch to a trip to Athens, so our first trip is to the British Museum to see Greek Artefacts.  The whole School will go and it is only £7.50 per child.  We are very lucky that Friends have donated £400 towards the cost of the transport to make it more affordable for all.  Thank you. We are all very excited about this!

 Learning about noise pollution

Willow have been learning about sound with Miss Harris and today they created posters to inform others about noise pollution.  The children were all being Createachauns again!  Miss Harris has left me with the task to select those that go on our WAGOLL wall and Brooke has instructed that I do not look at who did what!

Our Celebrations

 

 

We have out the finishing touches to our Clearwell Learning Behaviour posters. We are very pleased with them all and are already rewarding children for demonstrating these behaviours. Here are the winning designs demonstrating that they are “Creatachuans”!

 

We have started to incorporate the new curriculum drivers into our curriculum and today we hosted a debate in Willow and the children had to really think outside of their own beliefs.  I was extremely proud of them all. Parents are able to view the debate, in full, on Seesaw.

 

Our Celebrations

 

We have had yet another busy week in school with lots of adventures to be had.  KS1 have had a moderation visit by the Local Authority to check that we are assessing the children at the right level.  I am pleased to say that Mrs Stirrup’s judgements were all deemed to be spot on so thank you for your hard work preparing the documentation, with guidance from the Subject Leader Miss Cecil. The pupils who read to the moderator did really well and I am extremely proud of them.  A number of children did their phonics screening, which is national assessment.  Once again a lot of hard work and learning goes into determination phonics both on the part of the pupils and the staff, so thank you.

Mavis and Myfi continue to visit weekly to listen to our children read too!

Orienteering at Hartpury College

Ten of our Key Stage Two children were selected to take part in orienteering and other events as part of Active Gloucestershire.  They has a wonderful time showing resilience, determination and team work.  There were some exhausted children at the end of the event.  One of our year 6 pupils was given the overall award of Determination out of all of the schools there.

 

Country Dancing at The Speech House

The annual event organised by WGSP saw over 550 pupils, largely from the Forest of Dean (A school from the other side of Gloucestershire participated too!) take part in Country Dancing.  As always, the event was extremely well organised and lots of fun was had by all.  Parents joined in the dancing and even requested if they could come to the club next year so that they can learn the dances too! We may have been the smallest school there but I think that we had the most fun!

 

Curriculum Design for 2018

As I posted on the 25th May we have written a new vision statement for our school.  Over the last week or so, Willow class have been designing icons for skills that children will demonstrate when learning, these included: Independence, Creativity, Being Adventurous, Collaborating and showing Christian values.  They wanted to have Mythical Creatures as the theme. Here are the winning entries, I hope that I have got their names correct!

 

The first week back after half term has been as busy as ever! We have been notified that we will be part of the Tesco scheme which supports local communities.  You will be able to vote for us (using the blue token in Coleford and Lydney Tescos) from 1st July until the end of August.  If we get the most tokens then we will get £4,000  to invest in Computing equipment.  I will remind everyone nearer the time!

Year 6 Leavers’ Service – Gloucester Cathedral

As we are a church school all of our year 6 pupils were invited to attend. The pupils are reminded that even though they are moving on in terms of school God is always with them.  We made a donation to The Children’s Society.  They received a beautiful wooden holding cross that is unique.  We went out to lunch at TGI Fridays before the service and they had a lovely time. We now need to raise money for future years, hence the selling of lollies once a week.

We were fortunate to have one child to be selected to be a reader and she read beautifully.  The other children carried the banner and the candle.

 

 

Drumming

Alex Whiting has been in school this week and has worked with our pupils on a drumming workshop.  Some of you will know Alex as she plays the drums in a local band and is an excellent musician.  We welcome her back anytime!

 

Elderflower Cordial

Alex was also the only person tall enough to collect the elderflower on Wellie Walk this week!  Some of Willow were able to help cordial today. We are looking forward to tasting it once it has seeped and been bottled.

Our Vision

Willow have spent time today contributing to our new vision for school. They came up with lots of great ideas which we will share at a later date.

Our Celebrations