I hope you all had a wonderful summer holiday. We are all really looking forward to welcoming the children back to school on Monday to start an exciting, engaging and successful year ahead!
Staffing Update
We welcome Miss Jasmine Goodman, our new Reception class teacher, joining our teaching team this term. We welcome back, Miss Rebekah Hester. Miss Hester has been on an amazing year’s sabbatical travelling the world! We also welcome Ms Natalie Broome and Mr James Kemp. Ms Broome and Mr Kemp are trainee teachers joining us for the Autumn and Summer term. Ms Broome will be based in Year 2 and Mr Kemp will be based in Year 4. One final welcome is to our new school caretaker – Mr Mike Simpson. Mike is local and lives in the village. I am sure you will all make Mike feel very welcome.
Age Group Teacher LSA
Nursery Mrs Verity Lewin (EY Teacher and Leader)
Danielle Adams, Sharon Napthine, Karen Dempsey O-Toole, Julie O’Reilly, Lizzy Pleydell-Pearce and
Melanie Broxholme
R Miss Jasmine Goodman/Ms Clare Russell Ms Sally Lee
Y1 Mrs Tessa James Ms Paula Parsons
Y2 Miss Hannah Strong Mrs Hannah Hunt/Mrs Katie Towey Y3 Mrs Natalie Gibson/Ms Kate Madden
Y4 Mr Ben Hookes (School Improvement Lead)/Ms Clare Russell
Y5 Miss Rebekah Hester
Y6 Mrs Sam Simpson
School Improvement Leader – Mr Ben Hookes will be continuing his work as a school improvement leader to support the leadership across the school.
Specialist Subject Teacher – Mrs Naomi Overney, as a specialist Maths Teacher, will be teaching across KS2. Team teaching with class teachers and taking groups of children for specific interventions. Mrs Overney will be supporting teaching and learning across the school as well as teaching Spanish in KS2.
Subject Specialist Teachers – Ms Clare Russell – Art/Music, Mr Tom Poole – PE Coach, Mrs Natalie Gibson – PE lead and Mrs Naomi Overney – KS2 Spanish, will work across the school on specific days/afternoons teaching their specialist subject to specific year groups.
SENDCO – Miss Annie Challacombe will be the SENDCO across both Combe Martin and Woolacombe School. KS2 SEND LSA – Mrs Katie Towey will be working as a specialist SEND LSA. She will work flexibly across the school to meet the needs of children with SEND.
Admin – Mrs Vicki Reed
Morning and After School Leader- Sally Anne Shannon
Kitchen Team – Karen Turner – Kitchen Manager. Lauren Witt and Victoria Wright- Kitchen assistants. SEND 1:1 – Mrs Becki Jenkins
Student Trainee Teachers – Ms Natalie Broome and Mr James Kemp
Expedite School Caretaker – Mr Mike Simpson
Expedite School Cleaners – Allyson Draper, Gemma Daglish and Leanne Paterson
Headteacher – Mrs Gail Holmes. As you are aware, I have returned as the substantive Headteacher for Woolacombe School. I am really excited to be back full time and to work more closely with parents and the community. I will have a regular teaching commitment to support the teaching and learning across the school, so I am also looking forward to working with all of the staff and children more closely this academic year.
Curriculum C360
This year we will continue to work together to implement our shared vision to enable our children to be inspiring change makers through our C360 curriculum.
Character Education
At the foundation of our provision for our children is our ‘Character Education’. Our character education enables our children to explore the moral, civic, intellectual and performance virtues (qualities) we want them to develop and experience through a caught, taught and sought approach. By embedding the character virtues into all aspects of school life our children can truly live out the school values of believe, belong and become. If our children believe in themselves and have a sense of belonging, they will become our vision of inspiring change makers of the future.
We will share the weekly core Character virtues we are focusing on each week so that you can talk with your children about them. We start the term off by exploring the performance virtue of ‘Motivation’.
I will also be sending out a google form to ask for your input into what you believe are the 6 core virtues we want to focus on as a school.
Community
Parent Welcome Meetings
Teachers in Years 1-6 will be holding parent welcome meetings next week. These meetings will be an opportunity for you to meet your child’s new class teacher and also for the class teachers to run through the class timetable, curriculum and expectations etc. Please note are not holding a Reception parent meeting straight away because we met parents in July and we like to settle our new starters into school first so we will meet with Reception parents in a few weeks.
Please see the timetable below for the day and time of the meetings next week. The meetings will be held in your child’s classroom so you get to see the classrooms too.
| Wednesday 7th
Thursday 8th Friday 9th September September September |
|||
| 2.30pm –
2.45pm |
Year1 | Year 2 | Year 6 |
| 2.45pm
3.00pm |
Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 |
Parent Open Mornings and Parent Workshops
We will be holding regular open mornings/parent workshops this year. I would like
to welcome parents into school to communicate and share with you the school
vision, values and priorities for the year ahead and also an opportunity to hear your
views and discuss ways forward together.
It is really important to me that we work together as a community to get the best
for our children. This opportunity has been missing the last few years and I would
like to ensure we start working more closely again as I know we can achieve so
much more by working together collaboratively.
Parent Open Morning/Workshop Dates September 2022
– Parent open/coffee morning – Friday 16th September 9.00am – Teaching School Room
– Social Emotional and Mental Health Workshop for parents – Tuesday 20th September – 2pm-3pm – Teaching School Room – Reception and Year 1 phonics and Early Reading Workshop – Monday 26th September – 6pm – Reception Class – Parent open/coffee morning – Friday 7th October 9.00am – Teaching School Room
PTFA – we need your help now more than ever!
We need to re-establish our PTFA and annual fundraising events to support raising much
needed funds for the school. Over the years the PTFA have worked tirelessly to raise a huge
amount of money to develop and enhance the provision at school and improve the school
environment. For example just before the first lockdown the PTFA raised over £30,000 to
complete the first phase of the adventure trail.
The last two years of lockdowns have meant we have had limited opportunity to plan and run
PTFA events and we have also lost lots of parents from previous year 6 children who have now
left the school.
We therefore need to recruit and re-establish a new PTFA committee who are ready and willing
to work together to help fundraise for much needed funds.
I would like to hold our first PTFA meeting on Wednesday 21st September 2022 at 6.30pm in School.
School Garden
Thank you so much to our fabulous garden club parents who sourced this lovely shed, raised the
money to pay for it by selling ice creams , collected it from Ilfracombe AND today, they erected it
and painted it!
Brilliant team work, thank you Marie, Jo , Steve, Mark and Simon
Uniform – School Second Hand Uniform Sale – donations welcome
We have gathered together lots of unclaimed, unmarked or donated school uniform
and will be offering it to anyone who needs it after school on Monday.
Small donations welcome !
Academic
We finished the year on a high with our Year 6 children achieving some great results in their KS2 SATS. I would like to congratulate all the staff, students and parents as despite two years of significantly disrupted learning they still achieved significantly above the national average combined across all subjects in reading, writing and maths. We are so very proud of them and wish them all the very best for their next steps as they move onto Secondary School.
Next week the class teachers will share the curriculum topic focus for this coming term through the arranged parent meetings, class letters and information shared on Dojo. Please look out for the C360 topic webs, like the one below, to find out more about your child’s learning through our C360.
Morning and After School Club
We have had to increase our rates for morning and after school club this year due to the increase in costs. We have not increased the rates of morning and after school club for a number of years and unfortunately due to increased running costs, like with everything, it has meant we have been running at a loss and we simply cannot afford to keep running this service without an increase in rates to ensure it is sustainable longer term.
Please click on this government link to find out more information about support for childcare and possible funding available to support childcare costs. https://www.gov.uk/get-childcare
Free School Meals
With the cost of living rising, now may be a good time to check if your child may be entitled to a free school meal. This is different to Universal Reception and KS1 free School meals which all Reception and KS1 are automatically entitled to. Please go to https://www.devon.gov.uk/educationandfamilies/school-information/school-meals/ and follow the links where you can get an instant decision.
A few important reminders…..
Attendance
As you are aware, we as a school have the
responsibility to regularly monitor the
attendance of its pupils and report back to you if
your child falls below the national average. To
help you keep track of your child’s attendance
we will be sending you monthly attendance
letters. By law it is the parent’s responsibility to
ensure that their child attends school regularly
and it is also important you understand the
negative impact of low attendance on your
child’s education. You will be sent this image,
which is taken from information designed by the
Educational Welfare Officer and shows the
percentage and number of days in education. A
warning system of Green, Amber and Red has
been used to make the impact clear.
Arrangements/safety at the beginning and end of the school day
It is really important that we ensure all children are safe when they are coming to school and when they are collected from school.
Parking
Please ensure that you DO NOT park on the zig zags and bus
stop area on Beach Road. These areas are clearly marked on the
road and must not be blocked.
When cars park in these areas it means that the island crossing
area is blocked from vision and it can force cars to drive on the
wrong side of the road to get past the inappropriately parked cars.
Please leave enough time to park appropriately and safely.
Gates
The Nursery side gate at the bottom of the steps of the village hall car park and bottom gate will only be open at morning drop off and after school pick up times. During the day these gates will be locked. All access to the school site during the day, between 9.00-3.00pm, will need to be via the main school gate.
End of the school day
We also politely ask that all parents leave the school site by 3.30pm at the latest. All the gates will be locked at 3.30pm for after school club provision. This is so the children in after school club can utilise the school site safely with all the external gates locked.
I hope the children have a great first week back to school. Please get to know your new teacher this week and I wish everyone a very successful year ahead.
Kind Regards,
Mrs Gail Holmes – Headteacher – Woolacombe School
Term Dates 2022-2023 Autumn Term
Term begins
Monday 5th September Non-Pupil Day
Friday 21st October
October Half Term 24th 28h October
Start of 2nd Half of Autumn Tern
31st October 2022
Last Day of Autumn Term
16th December 2022
Spring Term
Non-Pupil Day
Tuesday 3rd January 2023
First Day of the Spring Term
Wednesday 4th January 2023
Spring Half Term Break
Monday13th February 2023 – Friday 17th
February 2023
Last Day of the Spring Term
Friday 31st March 2023 Summer Term
First Day of the
Summer Term
Monday 17th April 2023 May Bank Holiday
Monday 1st May 2023
Summer Half Term Break
Monday 29th May 2023 – Friday 2nd June 2023
Non-Pupil Day
Friday 14th July 2023
Last Day of the Summer Term
Friday 21st July 2023
Key Dates for the Autumn Term 2022
Sept 2022
Term begins
Monday 5th September
Parent welcome meetings
Wednesday 7th Sept
Year 1 2.30pm and Year 3 2.45pm
Thursday 8th Sept
Year 2 2.30pm and Year 4 2.45pm
Friday 9th September
Year 6 2.30pm and Year 5 2.45pm
Friday 16th September
Parent open morning 9.00am Teaching school room Tuesday 20th September
Social, Emotional and Mental Health Workshop. 2-3pm Teaching School Room
Wednesday 21st September
PTFA meeting – 6.30pm
Friday 23rd September
Primary Sports Festival West Buckland – Year 6 TBC Monday 26th –Friday 30th
SEND parent meetings
Monday 26th September
Individual Tempest Photographs am and Class Photographs pm
Reception and Year 1 Phonics and Early Reading Workshop. 6pm Reception Class
Tuesday 27th September
World Languages Day
Wednesday 28th September
Nasal Flu Vaccinations
October 2022
Thursday 6th October
National Poetry Day- Theme Environment Friday 7th October
Parent open morning 9.00am Teaching school room Monday 10th October – Friday 14th October Year 5 Dorset Residential
Monday 17th – Thursday 20th October Parent Consultation Week
Thursday 20th October
Harvest Festival St Sabinus – TBC
Non-Pupil Day
Friday 21st October
October Half Term 24th 28h October
Key Dates for the Autumn Term 2022
Start of 2nd Half of Autumn Tern
31st October 2022
November 2022
Friday 11th November
Remembrance service St Sabinus
Friday 18th November
Children in Need
Thursday 24th November
PTFA Christmas Gift Evening TBC
December 2022
Thursday 1st December
KS1 Christmas Production 2022 – Village Hall TBC Thursday 8th December
Year 5/6 Christmas Production 2022 – Twitchen TBC Tuesday 13th December 2022
EY Nativity
Wednesday 14th December 2022
Senior Citizens Christmas Carols
Thursday 15th December 2022
Whole School Carol Service St Sabinus
Friday 16th December 2022
Christmas Dinner Day and Christmas Jumper Day Last Day of Autumn Term
16th December 2022
