Monthly Archives: October 2019

Head’s Blog – 25th October 2019

We have placed our poppies with pride on our new railings. We have had so many comments about them already and really want our children to remember the men and women who have fought in wars whether it be the World Wars or any other conflicts. We will be selling poppies and other related items after half term.

As requested by the children, we ran our first film night of the year. I am not sure how much of Matilda they actually watched but they enjoyed their hotdog and pop corn all the same! Thank you to Miss Webster, Mrs Stirrup and Mrs Williams for organising it and staying with the children.

As most of you know, we have had a SIAMs inspection. This is the diocesan equivalent to OFSTED. The inspector enjoyed his day at Clearwell and we loved showing off how fabulous our school is. Thank you to everyone who took time out of their day to talk to him. The report will be out in a few weeks time and we will share it with you as soon as we can. He was able to report everything that we knew already about our school, which is wonderful.

On Welly walk this week, the children gave their thanks to God and dressed the ash tree that they visit every week. Miss Warr asked the question “How do you think we should take care of the nature around us such as plants, rivers and animals?” The children responded with answers such as, “not littering; feeding the birds; keeping everything tidy; not chopping all of the trees down”. Mrs Griffiths spoke to the children about how beautiful God’s creation is, and how important it is to protect our world. Miss Warr read out a prayer that she had written, thanking God for the wonderful world we live in, and asking Him to remind us in our lives to look after the great things that He created.

More of our optional homework

Fire Awareness

We were very lucky to have one of our local firefighters and first response team come to talk to our children today to teach them how to stay safe. The children had a wonderful time as well as learning lots of useful information. Thank you Kat for coming.

Pumpkin Carving

Winner
Winner

Our Celebrations

Head’s Award
Housepoints – Joce
Attendance – Dunraven

Head’s Blog – 18th October

We started the week by visiting Masjid E Noor, a large mosque in Gloucester. We were all welcomed and educated about the Islamic faith. This included a review of what the 5 pillars of Islam mean to a Muslim; the history of Masjid E Noor – including the migration of Indians to Britain post WWII to help re-build Britain and make it “Great” again; the clothes that some people wear to pray in; prayer time and the importance of cleanliness when praying. We had the opportunity to use the washing facility and try on different traditional clothes. Imam Hussan was inspirational and informative, we would definitely recommend this visit.

Our newly formed Worship group led Worship on Monday, with Millie planning to share her passion to protect the world that God has created. She planned a quiz and even gave out prizes, first prize being a poster “Save the World” created by Rory. At the time of writing she has already told me the next worship has been planned for Martin to deliver and asked when can this happen.

On the return to school, years 5 and 6 spent an hour with PC Greg Steer where they had the opportunity to learn and ask questions about Internet safety. He even found time to play football with one of the children – great for building relationships with our children, thank you.

We had our Harvest service on Wednesday where both Oak and a Willow class had the opportunity to develop their ability to communicate confidently with the congregation. I am always proud when all of the children participate, we even hade one child join in who was visiting to see if he wanted to join our school – so impressive. I was overwhelmed by the amount of food being brought into school for the Forest Food Bank and cannot thank all of you enough for this. We never know when we or members of our family or friends will need support and this goes to show that when we are in a position to provide support, we do just that.

Mrs Thomas baked the harvest loaf which will all shared, including parents, reminding us of our recent worship about sharing our kindness as there is plenty to go around.

We have had more applications from people to join our school and are getting closer to 50! Who would have thought that this would happen, we were 35 pupils in September 2017. It just goes to show that the hard work the entire team puts in is becoming well known and more and more people want to come to Clearwell. We have had lots of people visiting us for September 2020 entry, exciting times ahead!

Our Celebrations

Housepoints- Joce
Top Learners
Christi-Angels

Impact of war homework

Once again the children have excelled in their independent learning.

Head’s Blog – 11th October

We all know someone who has experienced mental health issues and as a school we like to educate the whole child, so when Miss Warr asked if we could participate in the National Awareness day, how could we say no? She put together resources for all of us to share and the children took part in numerous activities during the day supporting their understanding of mental health and their own mental well being.

As part of our worship today, Mrs Baird from the Forest Food bank came in to explain what a food bank actually does. She talked us through the whole process and even got a couple of volunteers to pack the bags ready to deliver to someone in need. We took the opportunity to thank the many volunteers who work at the food bank as well as the people who are in a position to donate. If anyone is in a position to donate to the food bank then please bring food into school and we will give all of it to the food bank after our Harvest Festival on Wednesday 16th October. Everyone is welcome to join our celebration at St. Peter’s at 2:00 p.m.

Our independent learning

The independent learning is still coming in thick and fast. The children never to cease to amaze me with their creations, especially as it is all voluntary! Their compulsory homework is reading, spelling, grammar and maths! Well done everyone, keep up the good work. What you are doing is a great start to being life-long learners.

Our Celebrations

Our Christi-Angels
Top Learners
Attendance – Dunraven
Housepoints – Joce

Head’s Blog – 4th October

We had a wonderful start to the week when a number of key stage 2 children, families and staff went to watch the Merchant of Venice at the Stratford on Avon. We had a wonderful time even if we didn’t understand all of the Shakespearean language. To compensate for this, we read the child’s version in class today and the children acted out a couple of scenes each using dialogue from the production we watched. These will be posted in Seesaw.

Our children have been attending the Forest of Dean gymnastics centre every week and are making good progress. It is so exciting when someone achieves a new skill.

We were blessed with the weather again this week. The children were building dens using the bracken as well as cooperating with each other and developing a range of skills. On the way home there were a number of children upset at the sight of a dead squirrel. Mrs Griffiths took the opportunity to talk to children about their feelings and emotions. It is so important that we give children the time to express themselves.

Our vision

We took the opportunity to discuss with the children whether or not we live out our vision. We were really pleased with their responses and wanted to share them with you.