The Vineyard School Parent Portal

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Caring Curious Courageous

Enabling all children to learn and grow

Friday 13th January 2023

Dear all families,

Thank you to those of you who joined the parent workshop on our Positive Behaviour policy and Emotion Coaching, on Wednesday evening, which was led by Mrs Axbey. Here is the link to the slides. Our next workshop is on another extremely important topic - e-safety. This will be led by an expert from the borough- Mr Cowley. Please book your tickets here. As every day passes it seems that access to the Internet becomes easier for our children. Mr Cowley will demonstrate how easy it is for children to access inappropriate material - honestly it is easier than you would think. For most of us our children know more than we do. We really encourage you to come to the session if you can.

From this week, the year group news will include 2 or 3 key bits of new vocabulary. These are important words for your children to understand and be able to use. Please can you support your children by discussing these words at home during the week.

We have had a couple of questions about the decision at school to ban water bottles from the children's desks in the older year groups. The reason for this move is so the children have a clear workspace without any distractions. This will help many children with their focus during lessons. They are not being restricted from drinking water, on the contrary, they are being actively encouraged to drink during the day just at appropriate times.

Great news from the sporting side of school this week - the children who went to the dodge ball competition yesterday won. Thank you to Miss Foster who works very hard to ensure that we take part in the various sporting events that take place in Richmond.

If you have any questions or would like to meet, please contact headteacher@vineyard.richmond.sch.uk

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

All at The Vineyard

Parent workshops

E-safety- 26th January at 6:30pm- book here

Curriculum workshop (history, geography and art)- 3rd February at 2pm

Big emotions (Zones of Regulation)- 22nd February at 7pm

School Job Vacancies

We ae recruiting two lunchtime supervisors for the playground. If you are interested, please apply here.

Visitor Protocol

We have updated our visitor protocol which you will see around the school. Please see our protocol here.

Trips

You will have seen in the news that budgets are extremely tight for schools at the moment. Schools can't afford to pay for children to go on trips, so we have to ask for voluntary contributions from parents. Often the money we receive doesn't cover the cost of the trip and the school has to pay for the balance.

We are piloting a scheme where there is an option for those who can and would like to 'sponsor a child' and pay for them to go on the trip.

Trips are a really valuable way to bring the curriculum to life, but they are extras. We would never exclude a child from a trip but may need to limit the number of trips we offer if we can't cover costs.

Junior sports courses

Book now for spring term courses which include gymnastics, karate and judo.

Available at:

Whitton Sports and Fitness Centre, Teddington Sports Centre and Shene Sports and Fitness Centre

Please call 020 3772 2999 to book or visit their website for more information.

Are you looking for a reception place for September 2023?

The closing date for reception place applications this year is Sunday 15 January 2023.

Safeguarding

Interested in being a volunteer? Please sign up and attend the training on 8th February at 9am. You must attend the training before volunteering.

Here is some useful guidance for how best to support children to keep safe when using online software and games.

Here is some guidance for how to prevent and tackle child exploitation.

Did you know that the age restriction on the below apps is 13? We are seeing more and more issues in school with children's online usage. Please monitor the apps they are using and ensure they are age appropriate.

play-lh.googleusercontent.com/OS-MhSWOPtlUZLt0_UP5... Snapchat – Apps on Google Play

Healthy Snacks

It has come to our attention that some children are not adhering to our healthy snack policy. The only snacks allowed in school for break time are fresh fruit or vegetables or dried fruit (e.g dried mango not fruit winders/rollers etc). Cereal bars are also not permitted.

If children bring in a snack that is not abiding by the above rules, it will be confiscated and given back at home time.

Attendance

Please see below the attendance for this week. A reminder that our aim is 96%. Attendance below this figure will be flagged when Ofsted complete their inspection. You will have noticed that we have embedded a more robust system when it comes to attendance. A reminder that holidays in term time and absences around a school holiday will not be authorised.

Help needed!

We need table tennis balls so Y5&6 can play at lunchtime. These go missing very quickly so if you wanted to donate some, we would be very grateful.

Meet our school council and green team on this poster!

Assembly - caring

This week in assembly we talked about our value of Caring. From remembering how we try and look after the environment of the world, we thought about the school environment. How can we all care for this better, and which parts of our immediate environment can we impact? How does caring for the place where we work and socialise make us feel? What can we do this week to care for the world immediately around us?