News article

News from Heathcote Primary School – March 2022

Read more great stories like this in the Parish Magazine.

Well, our first term after Christmas has sped by but it has been full of lots of exciting things and times. We continue to promote positive thoughts and healthy minds. Every day we encourage the children to join in mindfulness sessions and our older children participate in Relax Kids learning how their brain controls their emotions and practising strategies to relax our bodies during stressful or anxious situations. Even Scribbles our school dog has got involved and when he is not helping someone in the school manage their emotions he is sharing his ‘thought for the week’ in our weekly newsletter. I particularly liked his latest message: ‘Your dog thinks you are wonderful and you respond well to that. If you seek out what is best in people, you are more likely to receive the best back.’

We are continuing to teach the children about society and cultures and promote healthy living through sport. Coventry City Football Club (Sky Blues in the Community) visit us to deliver a series of lessons called ‘Premier League Primary Stars. The programme aims to inspire children to take part in sport, get them active and develop important life skills such as team building. Part of their programme is to teach the children that racism is wrong and how to be tolerant and welcoming to everyone. We love learning about different cultures and the children celebrated Chinese New Year in style with an excellent workshop where they did some dragon dancing, scared evil spirits away with their cymbals and told the story of the Chinese Zodiac through drama.

Talking of music, Year 2 have been combining their musical knowledge of The Beatles and learning how to be sustainable using recycled materials. They had an excellent drumming workshop with Paul from ‘Drum Runners.’ He travelled up from Bristol with a van full of barrels and bicycle wheels. The children spent the day participating in lots of rhythm games and learning new songs. The children had made their own junk material musical instruments including creating a bottle glass orchestra in Science to investigate what happens to sound and pitch of noise.

We have also celebrated NSPCC Number Day 2022. It was brilliant seeing so many children dressed in/as numbers for the day. As part of their daily learning, the children took part in work which involved maths in all areas of the curriculum. Reception completed some matching tasks, building on their understanding of the value of different digits. Year 1 linked their maths with their science work, collecting information about the amount of rain that had fallen and presented their findings in a bar graph! Year 2 played games that involved using number. Children were using dice, moving specific amounts of places and playing Uno! Year 3 used their English skills to wrote stories that involved numbers whilst Year 4 completed looking into natural disasters and finding the numbers which had been included in reports on the Khumbu icefall. Year 5 used their written division methods to solve problems and Year 6 created haikus, counting the numbers of syllables needed for each of the lines. They also used maths in their Geography lessons to create graphs to compare data about the climes of the Arctic and Antarctica. Numbers are fun and everywhere. We are always telling the children how important numbers are in our lives.

We sadly said goodbye to our long-standing Chair of Governors Dr Paul Wakeley. He has been with us since the school opened and been a huge part of our journey. He was able to be part of our first Ofsted inspection and we hope to share news of this with everyone soon. Paul has seen our school grow from 50 pupils to over 300 and ensured that the school continually reflect on their progress and provide the best education possible for the children. It does leave a vacancy for a community governor at our school and if you think you have the time and energy to be part of our school standards committee and help us continue to grow in our community we would love to hear from you.

Please contact Head2056@welearn365.com for further information.

‘Life is a journey with problems to solve and lessons to learn but most of all experiences to enjoy.’

Mrs Humphriss – Executive Head Teacher.