Welcome to our primary school.

"This is a good school which is helping pupils successfully to overcome barriers to learning and become ambitious for their future."

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Mrs. C Lorne - Headteacher

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Miss. A Lacey - Deputy Headteacher FS &KS1

Ms. C Shenton - Deputy Headteacher KS2

Mrs. A Pattison - Assistant Headteacher for SEN/Inclusion

Mr. A Greenall - Assistant Headteacher for Learning

Head teacher's update

Dear Parents / Carers,

This is not quite the start that any of us would have wished for in the new year but, nevertheless, myself and the staff hope you managed to have some sort of Merry Christmas and we wish you all a safe and Happy New Year!

As we are at the start of another lockdown, I wanted to take the opportunity to reassure you that we, as a staff, continue to do everything we can to support not only your children but you as parents and carers aswell in these challenging times of home learning. As a parent of two children myself, even as someone in the profession, I appreciate how the practicalities of juggling and fitting things in is one thing but so is the mood/motivation and well-being of your children. Something we all appreciate as a huge factor is that children are not robots but prone to the same ups and downs that we all have along this rocky road! So, we won’t lose sight of this in supporting you all when you’re trying to do your best with home learning.

However, I think it is also important to point out that the expectations of schools is different this lockdown compared to last year.

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What’s different with remote learning for me as a parent/carer this time?

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The Government made it a requirement that schools produced their own mini curriculum of lessons for learning IN ADVANCE for bubble closures and lockdowns, ready for September 2020 onwards.

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This meant that most staff meetings we used in Autumn, to plan this remote curriculum, so that it ran alongside the curriculum we plan for and teach in school. The learning that is being built around each week from September in class now has its own ‘twin’ available for any pupil who was learning at home for 1-5 days that week. This is the ‘twin’ Remote Learning that has been available from September and will be continued to be planned for ‘parallel’ to the curriculum taught in class all the way through until July! This might help you realise how much extra work we as teachers are putting in to cater for both the children in school learning and the children at home who are self-isolating and learning remotely.

Because we’re producing a ‘twin’ curriculum of activities, if children are working remotely at home, the activities have been tweaked/simplified to help parents support and sit alongside, where necessary due to their age and level of independence, as we don’t expect you to be teachers- that’s our job! That’s why we want you to continue to use class dojo to communicate with staff so we can support you regularly as best we can.

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Lockdown means that most staff are planning as teams and supporting their classes from home BUT we do still have children in each day, e.g children of Critical Workers. Therefore, although we have the huge challenge of being a massive school and trying to personalise/feedback to children, we have Year Group teams where staff will support children across the year group bubble when their teacher may be teaching on site for that day. Please bear this in mind as staff can’t be in two places at once but are desperate to be able to offer as much support for learning whilst the children are doing their activities remotely at home without burning the midnight oil every evening!

PARENTS/CARERS:

I know this is obvious (from the above) but it is now VITAL that all parents/carers commit to doing their best WITH US by participating daily in the remote learning activities. We have a duty and expectation from the Government, like attendance, that we contact children/families who are not participating and we would rather use all our time supporting you. THANK YOU to our fantastic families who have demonstrated really high engagement in remote learning when self-isolating this year, when a bubble has closed and now during the lockdown. YOU ARE AMAZING and like us we don’t want the children to miss out on chunks of learning from now on, on top of the loss of education they had last year!

THANK YOU to all the families who have expressed thanks to what the staff are striving to provide and also given us feedback on what’s been working particularly well as this helps staff in their planning week by week.

So...

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We’ll work hard at ensuring the Remote Learning activities follow the curriculum the children would have been following in class and support you via Class Dojo etc.

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You, as Parents/Carers need to continue to do your best in making sure your children are having a go each day and flag up to us any challenges with that.

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We’ll all work in partnership and take things 1 week at a time during this lockdown knowing we can only control the things we can control. If we’ve all done our best what we can be proud of as that’s exactly what your fantastic children deserve!

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I hope that the above has been helpful in giving you an up to date understanding of what ‘Remote Learning’ is intended for during lockdown.

Stay Safe, stay in touch and best wishes,

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Mrs C Lorne

Catton Grove at Christmas!

Usually, our Christmas celebrations include inviting parents and carers in to see Carol Concerts and Nativity performances. Let's not forget the Christmas Fayre, craft mornings and plenty of other activities that we enjoy together as a community. Things are a little bit different this year, but we are really keen to share how we have been celebrating!

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So, instead of popping in to visit, we invite you to sit back, relax, gather the whole family and watch our fabulous film 'Christmas at Catton Grove'. We have included songs, poems, jokes, readings, drama, and lots of special Christmas messages from the staff...including one or two surprises!

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The video can be streamed below. There are 38 minutes of fun to be had as we journey from Caterpillars Nursery all the way to Year 6, with some extra messages and scenes in between each year group.

Thank you to all the pupils and staff for taking part.

We wish you all a happy, peaceful and fun-filled Christmas. ENJOY!

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