News & Stars from John & the PHS Team Friday 8th September

Hi all

It’s great to be writing to you all with the term having started, and al the pupils back in, with nearly a week gone already. It’s so good to see the children and students getting gout of their cars that morning, and so nice to see them in their classes again – and to see how much some of them have grown! It’s good to be back!

We had a training day on Monday, which was full of speakers, the curriculum, wellbeing and safeguarding kinds of topics, and then straight back into new classes and lessons on Tuesday, so as I write we have had three days to get to know each other again

I hope you’ve had a great holiday, and it will be good to see you at the school when those sorts of things start to happen again. We’re looking forward to an exciting term and year. There have been some changes in the school as I’ve shown below – there has been painting and a few exciting projects installed – and there’s been lots of painting!

Can I remind you as well that Eileen sends out a Family Liaison blog every week at this time, Maria does an Online Safety one, and if that isn’t enough there is the Foundation website and socials to look at, with all sorts on them, too

So, thanks for being with us for another school year – I hope it’s one that will bring great things for your son or daughter. All the best

J

😊 from John & the PHS Team 😊

Personal Development (PD)

Personal Development is still a priority for the school. Jo leads this group of areas that includes Wellbeing, Careers, Online Safety, Social, Moral, Spiritual & Cultural values, and a few other aspects. It’s great to have heads-up about what’s happening in PD – seems like it’s self-awareness! Jo’s talking about it here below

PSHE

Within PSHE this half term we will be covering the topic of “Self-Awareness” across the school. Use of the PSHE Association SEND Framework will allow the age-appropriate content to be delivered at the correct developmental for the child or young person.

Here is a closer look at what this will look like in your child or young person’s department:

• Key Stage 2 – People Who are Special to Us
• Key Stage 3 – Skills for Learning
• Key Stage 4 – Prejudice and Discrimination
• Post 16 – Prejudice and Discrimination

More information will be available when you receive your curriculum newsletter and I will be available at all curriculum pathway coffee afternoons to show you our PSHE curriculum and the resources we use, feel free to catch me for a chat. In the meantime if you have any questions please do not hesitate in emailing me at j.ferguson@percyhedley.org.uk

Literacy! With The Literacy Squad!

The Literacy Squad wasted no time in getting back into the full swing of things, and Philip has already started sending me things and getting things going. Here he is talking about a few things to look forward to

It has been brilliant seeing the pupils back in school this week and getting settled into a routine that includes some wonderful literacy and communication work!

There are lots of plans for Literacy in the coming year, but it is important to take things at a pace that is right for our pupils.

It can be tricky coming back into school after the holidays, especially if a lot has changed. With ‘Wellbeing’ as one of our key drivers, it has been important this week to provide our pupils with support however we can.

In our school library and our class libraries we have a lot of different stories and resources that staff and pupils can use to help understand their feelings and build on their resilience.

Me and my Fear by Francesca Janna, Everybody Feels Scared by Jane Bingham and The Huge Bag of Worries by Virginia Ironside, are only some of the lovely books that we can refer to.

Class 6PH (The Buzzards) have been listening to their teacher reading Help! I’m trapped in the first day of school by Ted Strasser. Which one student referred to as a “corny, American story with a Groundhog Day plot” (I was amazed that the whole class had seen Groundhog Day (1993)).

As the weeks, months, and the year goes on, we’ll have plenty of time to keep on supporting our whole population through literacy and communication.

There’s a lot to look forward to!

• The Literacy Squad

Safeguarding Update from Rebecca

There is a very skilled group of people who lead safeguarding at the school – although of course everybody is responsible for it – and Rebecca is the Safeguarding Lead. Rebecca is giving us a little update here, and can I recommend while I have you Maria’s Online Safety Blog, which is really helpful; a lot of this stuff is very hard for all of us as parents; it changes constantly, and it looks like it’s always going to, so it’s good to be able to access advice and materials

On our training day staff completed training on the updates to the new ‘Keeping Children Safe In Education 2023’ document, and how this applies to the children in our school.

One of the new updates is around how we use filtering and monitoring software within school to ensure that our children are not exposed to any content which is not appropriate  to them.  We use a system called Sophos to do this, and this is alerted to many words and phrases that may provide content unsuitable for our pupils to see.  These lists are updated regularly, and the words are tested by our online safety team within school, and within our IT team.  We ensure that we test all devices which belong to our school including iPad, Laptops and computers. 

This term we will be discussing this more within our Online Safety blog which our Online safety lead Maria writes, we will also be providing you with the opportunity to attend or watch a recording of, some training that we will providing on cyber security within the home and how you can help your young person to stay safe away from school.

If you have any queries of questions about this information, please contact Rebecca Fletcher our Safeguarding Lead or Maria Mawdesley our Online Safety Lead

Mark!

Well, I’ve talked about attendance here for a whole year! Thanks very much indeed for all the support you’ve given to us with your children in this regard. It’s been quite difficult at times, but attendance is just something that we have to be a rigorous as we can now, whilst being as sensible and fair as we can too. As I say, thanks for your support

Anyway, we have a new member of staff working on this with everyone know, and that’s Mark Oliver. Mark is our new Attendance Officer and will be working with as many people as possible to try and help. You may have already heard from him! If not hopefully you’ve seen him out the front at taxi time, or you’ll run into him at some point. Mark will be doing a really important job and working with many others in a crucial area, so it’s a good new post to have created

Class of the Week!

I can’t believe we have a Class of the Week already, who’ve settled down to work so soon! And this would be a new class too! Great stuff! Beth is going to tell us what is going on, as it’s her class…

Pupils in the Puffins class have settled in extremely well! We have started our new theme, People Who Help Us. In Social Communication with Danni they chose colours to make some hats which we will use to play Emergency Services. We also had our first Music Therapy session with Chris which everyone loved!

Beth is also a great photographer, and here are some of her pics!

The School!

So we now have this great pod in the part of our playground they call Tellytubbyland!

Ian Thompson of Recycling Ltd delivered the pod during the summer for free! Also, Mark & Ross of M.R. Fencing & Landscaping did some wonderful work making it accessible to all. So thanks very much to John Strachan and the guys for another lovely addition to out school. Here’s a few pics of it going in

Hellens & Rebound

Also over the summer we used the fabulous Hellens Foundation’s fund-raising money to put in a Rebound Centre. It isn’t totally and fully open, yet, so I’ll save that for another day – but it’s totally brilliant, and we’ll do something good when it does open…..huge thanks to Hellens

And finally…

We have a number of staff carrying out the Great North Run this weekend! Congratulations, kudos and respect to them! It’s a long way you know! All the very best to everyone doing it, and especially those from the school and across the Foundation!

All the very best to all of you at home, from all of us here at the school. Happy Start of Term!

Respect…Teamwork…Resilience

from John & the Team here at PHS