Monthly Archives: July 2019

Head’s blog – 19th July

We have had a fantastic week of celebrations this week, starting with Willow showcasing their cornet playing. As brass is part of our Forest Heritage, this learning was funded by the HLF. The children have improved so much and are lucky enough to continue with the cornet in September for another 10 weeks funded by the Wye Music Society.

We had so many celebrations, we had to do it in two parts today! This morning we issued all of the awards for Reading (Tickled pink) and Behaviour for Learning (Pink Pips) badges.

Bronze Award – Reading
Silver Award (+1) – Reading
Gold Award – Reading
Book token winners
12 Pink Pips
Bronze Award – Pink Pips
Silver Award – Pink Pips
Gold Award – Pink Pips

Then in church this afternoon, we announced the winners of the Sports Day trophy and the attendance cup, as well as celebrating lots of other things including attendance.

Wyndham – Sports day Trophy
Sports people of the year: 2018-19
Joce – Attendance cup
Willow – 100% attendance all year
Head’s Award
Goodbye Poppy (& Dewi)

I offer my sincere apologies to Oak class who were missed off the attendance awards. Parents have been sent this, but to share with the rest of the community, these children got 100% all year: Max, Theo, Olly and Jenson. The lucky winner of the £20 Amazon voucher was Theo and for Willow was Kaiden. The Oak children who got 100% for the summer term are: Harry, Rory, Lily, Norah, Max, Theo, Jenson and Olly. They are all owed a bar of chocolate and the winner of the cinema tickets was Norah.

Thank you for all of the support that you have all given this term. Also, a huge thank you to everyone who works at Clearwell. They all work so hard to ensure the children have the best experiences possible. I hope everyone enjoys a well earned rest and we all go and make some memories with our families.

Good luck to our year 6 children who head off to pastures new.

Head’s Blog – 12th July

We have had a real varied and interesting week this week, supporting our tag line, “A small school providing endless adventures.” On Monday, a surprise awaited the year 4, and a few year 3 children. We were off to watch Five Acres perform Annie. The performance certainly inspired a number of our budding actors and gave them a taste of what is on offer at Five Acres, should they choose to go there for their secondary education.

Wednesday had our usual welly walk for most children with the exception of year 5s who spent the morning at Dene Magna watch Chris Bradford perform; what a performance! He taught us some Japanese terms, such as Bushido which means the way of the warrior. Chris also gave us a demonstration of Samurai sword technique. We have bought three of his books for our Ripping Reads for children to read independently or to share with an adult at home.

The sun kept shining for us, which was lucky for us as Sports Day had arrived. Rob, from Prostars, has been preparing the children for this and they performed superbly. The four different stations of Field Events (Welly wanging, long jump, shot put and javelin) were situated around the track. The children were superb with the furthest junior “wanger” threw it 15.5m and the infant “wanger threw it 13.2m. The memorial hall committee donated celebratory mugs to be awarded to these lucky winners. This was followed with by the track events of running and the obstacle race, which included the class sack race component.

Every single child in the school placed in at least one event, this makes me so proud because it shows us that the events gave everyone a chance to shine. Some of the overall winners included:

Kaden – Top scorer in the school

Charlie – Second highest scorer in the school

Harry – Third highest scorer in the school

Every single child who participated accrued points for their house, irrespective of the place they came.

The parents did the obstacle and running race this year and we also had our “toddler” race. A great time was had by all! The support given to the pupils was great as were the children, thank you.

The year 5s have had an extremely busy week, yesterday they spent the day back at Five Acres as part of the transition offered by the school for potential students. We work closely with all of our local secondary schools to ensure that our children can make an informed choice about their future and be prepared for life after Clearwell. They had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed their day.

We had a fabulous afternoon celebrating 100 years in Clearwell at our Annual Garden Party organised by the Governors. The country dancing children showcased their dancing, followed by Oak class reciting their acrostic poem about Clearwell. I loved Paige’s memories of her dad’s life at Clearwell, which I will post on our website soon.

Willow class played Hot Cross Buns on the corner and then recited “Vorest Ship” written by Keith Morgan. Then we were in for a real treat when the whole school sang.

An event like this does not happen with lots of support from everyone. Thank you so much for everything, we may be small but we are mighty!

Our Celebrations

Our Stars

Head’s Blog – 5th July

Being a teaching Head is a challenge but so rewarding. This week has really shown what a fabulous community we have at Clearwell. We have had children representing our school at the Forester’s Forest event, sharing the learning that the whole school has been doing about 100 years in Clearwell.

The children were amazing and spoke so knowledgeably about all of the things that they have learnt our local heritage. I am so proud to be able to lead a school which educates the future about their past.

With the annual Governor’s Garden Party coming up next week, we had another non-uniform day today in exchange for a bottle. Thank you for all of the donations. As ever, everyone was very generous. Raffle tickets will be on sale from Monday at £1 per tickets. Lots of hampers and prizes up for grabs.

Coleford Garden Centre donated lots of bedding plants and compost for us to use during our Ground Force day today. We had a number of parents and Governors come to help prepare the grounds for the party. Again, all of this shows how supportive our local community are of our school.