 |  | Sixth Form Bulletin | | | Mr Spanswick's Words Summer 8 |  | | Dear Parents and Guardians
It has been a bit of an unusual week.
Strange weather, an eerie return to premier league football, mysterious technology U-turns on track and trace analysis, curious rumblings from sports governing bodies... | |
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| | | Sites wide news | Taskmaster
With one more Taskmaster challenge left, please find the current standings in the leaderboard here.
Stay up-to-date
Please follow us on our social media pages (Facebook and Twitter) for latest news, events and photographs, most recently showing the welcome return to school of some year groups. |
| | | | | Divisional Updates | From Mrs Rogers, Head of Sixth Form
Mrs Rogers shares a short film clip with an update from Sixth Form this week. You can watch the full video here.
From the Senior School Heads, Mr Wilding and Mrs Heywood
Throughout this term, we have been able to stay in good contact at form teacher and head of year level with Years 7 to 9 at Senior school. We’ve not had the same good fortune, having to focus on the public examination groups for Year 10 and upward. To this end, we invite parents of boys and girls in Years 7, 8 and 9 to join Mr Wilding and Mr Richards on the next two Tuesday mornings from 10am to 11am for a video conference, during which we will be able to explain how we see next term starting and panning out over the following weeks, and hopefully be able to answer questions too.
Next week sees our ‘new Boys parents welcome’ event, a video conference to welcome them into the school. We would not wish new parents to know more than our existing ones currently do! You can find the event in the school calendars and in addition here is the meet link for the two Tuesday conferences (23 and 30 June).
Please see below our plans to permit parents of boys and girls in Years 7,8 and 9 to return their text-books to school in the last week of term. We will manage Chromebook returns in the week afterwards (13 July onwards), as all will still need their digital 'gateway' open until 12 noon Friday 10 July.
From Senior Girls
I have spoken much about the positive and negatives benefits of lockdown over the course of the last seven weeks and today for the first time since 20 March, assembly was delivered from the school hall with 15 pupils and key staff in attendance and whilst the rest of the school logged in as usually, it was lovely to get some normality back into the working week. I am pleased to share with you below some photos from our first week back with our Year 10 girls and key worker pupils.
 
My assembly this week was based on the ‘fear of missing out’ (FOMO) and while there have been numerous downsides to the current situation, there is one positive to come out of lockdown. That this has possibly been the longest extended period in our lives that we haven’t felt like we are ‘missing out’ as we are all faced with the same daily restrictions.
I questioned whether ‘FOMO’ had a place in the current social climate as presently there is no pressure to organise or attend social gathering or to envy exotic holiday snaps. And, do we appreciate everyday life and what we have around us more, rather than what we don’t have. The flip side is that we couldn't have coped without social media during this crisis, it has kept us in touch with work, school and our loved ones. The world has quite possibly changed forever and the ‘FOMO’ with my grandchildren has led to my recent decision to retire.
From Senior Boys
Knowing that we had Mrs Heywood’ s important news to impart during last week’s bulletin, I hung back a bit on the politics of that week. This week has been different; I was delighted on Thursday to be invited to speak on Radio 4's World at One news programme(listen from 7.10 minutes) about our school's reopening plans, and have already been gently teased for not being even more strident than I was on the poor quality of leadership of education provided at the top. We have successfully welcomed back Year 10 back to school, and their ‘time in house’ has enabled them to feel much braver and even more engaged once back at home on-line learning with us subsequently. We have in use both the hall, the maths corridor, and the Science labs in the afternoon.
Other Senior faculty news
- Please do join either Mr Wilding or Mrs Heywood daily for gate duty between 8.30am to 9am; we do hope to see some others on our daily watch.
- Senior Pupils Years 7 to 9: Please note the return of textbooks information for Tuesday to Thursday 7, 8 and 9 July - further information to follow next week with a form to book your slot.
- Notice to Year 10 pupils: We are planning your first set of mock exams in Year 11 to commence from Monday 5 October to Thursday 15 October. Whilst it is too early to give you your mock timetable, your subject teachers will make available their advice for your revision programme via your subject Google Classroom and the ‘Hub’ by the end of term, and you will receive an update briefing in the last week of this summer term.
From Mrs King, Acting Head of Junior Girls and Mr Richards, Head of Junior Boys
Planning, practice, personality, perseverance, patience and possibilities were all exhausted this week as we, as well as a cohort of Claires Court colleagues considered, cojittated, collaborated, crafted and created a realistic, robust, risk assessed, return to school.
As we have continued to communicate to you all our offer during this period has been non judgemental, non prescriptive, achievable and constructed to provide nurture and encouragement for our boys and girls to achieve regardless of their levels. With a considerable amount of pupils returning to school on Monday we will maintain this approach and will continue to guide, teach, support and challenge those veterans of three weeks, the returners and the remainers equitably.
The phone calls we made to colleagues were joyous, the faces of parents in our drive through collection on Thursday were priceless and we hope that we continue to work in the wonderful collective spirit that we have all established over the last little while.
We certainly hope we will see plenty of smiles but there may well be nervousness, a readjustment of relationships and some ups and downs. We wish our final three weeks of term to be a place where all, young and old, can reacclimatise, settle back down, strengthen their bonds and accomplish everything in a spirit of kindness, tolerance, commonsense and respectfulness for which our School is renowned for.
A great team effort, and regardless of your location, situation or choice at Claires Court we are proud that we all matter, we all contribute, we are all listened to and we rely upon each other.
Other Junior faculty news
- If your son is interested in receiving individual chess tuition as from September please see here to complete a form.
- Please find a poster here for information for your son or daughter to take part in our Summer Festival of the Arts. Deadline for entries is Friday 26 June.
- If your son or daughter is unable to attend lessons due to illness or ‘absence’, please contact the school office via:
Junior Girls: girls@clairescourt.com or leave a voicemail message on 01628 327500 before 9.30am
Junior Boys: Juniorboys@clairescourt.com or leave a voicemail message on 01628 327400 before 9.30am.
From Mrs Wilding, Head of Nursery
As another week draws to a close I have to say that it’s been proof that children love all weathers! Yesterday, a day when the rain did not cease during the whole time the Nursery was open, Miss Green and Miss Bannister resolutely remained outdoors with their “bubbles” (their Claires Court Boat Club gazebo covers a rather larger than the other four groups have) and even in the moments of very heavy rain the children made the most of the situation. Not once did I hear any of them wanting to go indoors. Watching some of the boys deciding to fill small containers with the rain pouring off the roof of their outdoors ‘classroom’ so that they could give the thirsty toy dinosaurs drinks shows the skills of hand-eye coordination, measuring, and their great imaginations. They moved a builder’s tray to the uncovered area so that it filled with water and had toys swimming, splashing and filling with water which they then squirted everywhere! The sound of fun and laughter is infectious so thank you to the staff for braving the elements and making me smile from ear to ear!
On the subject of weather the forecast is for a big change next week so please ensure that your child has sun cream applied before arriving, to last the session, and named sun hats are brought in.
As always in Nursery the week has flown by and the children have been busy looking at the life cycle of a butterfly. At the beginning of the week it seemed as though Miss Kujawa’s group had arrived as children and left as hungry caterpillars as they were all wearing wonderful, story related headbands and other groups left with butterflies attached to their wrists, symmetrical paintings of these pretty creatures and prints or pictures of the life cycle process. On Sunday I am sure that you fathers will appreciate the efforts that your little ones have gone to this week.
The rotation of toys seems to be working very well and although the children do not have the vast choice which, under normal circumstances, they have in their indoor rooms they are really playing well with what has been put out for them. As a staff we are all toning up our arms carrying the boxes out and in every day so every cloud has a silver lining!
I must take this opportunity to thank our two cleaning staff, Ronnie and Surjeet, who are at our beck and call throughout the day. If they are not cleaning the toilets they are outside cleaning the equipment around the field and on the astroturf between group use which includes balls, hoops,tricycles, Little Tykes vehicles, scooters, climbing frames and tyres, the list goes on. It is no mean feat and they have risen to the challenge. What a team we have at Claires Court.
A big thanks goes to you, the parent body, for your recommendations. Your kind words to prospective parents are helping me as currently I am obviously not allowed to show people around our facility. I have dedicated from 3.30pm each day to host Google Hangouts for prospective parents and I am very busy with these. If you have not already done so please return the questionnaire for the sessions you require for your child for the autumn term to help me with the groupings of current children before I allocate spaces for the September starters.
Please continue with the daily washing of the clothes your child has worn for Nursery.
Have a lovely weekend and a great Father’s Day on Sunday.
With my very best wishes as always
Sheena Wilding
Other Nursery faculty news
- You may continue to contact the Nursery School Office on nursery@clairescourt.com or you can leave a voicemail on 01628 327500.
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| | | | | 1 College Avenue, Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 6AW
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