We have had another busy and productive week, at school. It was great to see so many of you who were able to attend the ‘Meet the Teacher’ meetings.

A polite request – please could adults collecting the children not stand on the grass opposite the school office, when collecting from the year 4,5,6 exits.  We ask the children not to stand or walk on this grass in an effort to preserve it, now that the grass has regrown following such a dry summer.

The Home School Association, AGM will now be taking place on Tuesday 22nd September at 8pm and will be online.  If you would like to receive the link for the meeting, please request from info@chur-ascen.edlt.org.uk New members are very welcome to attend. We look forward to planning events and activities for the coming year.

Thank you all very much for your support in ensuring that all of our children are kept safe by ensuring the snacks and lunches do not contain any nuts.

This week, we started our “Bible in a Year” journey.  We started at the beginning – a very good place to start.  In our Collective Worship, we explored Genesis 1-2 – the story of Creation. We explored the 7 creation events and how everything that was created was ‘good’ until God created humans, which was ‘very good’. Christians believe that this shows the importance of God’s relationship with us.  We looked at pictures representing the story of Creation and thought about ways in which we can be good stewards of God’s wonderful world.

What a great couple of weeks we have had!  It has been so lovely to see all of the children, after the holidays and to welcome our lovely new reception classes to our school.  It has been great to see how quickly the children have settled to their new classrooms and teachers and how incredibly brave our reception have been starting school for the first time.

We have particularly enjoyed welcoming Ruth Blaney to school, who will be helping us to get started with our OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) project.  We are very excited to be working with OPAL to improve our play offer.  Ruth joined us in school and accurately identified what fantastically polite and respectful children we have here.  We look forward to inviting you into school soon, to hear all about our plans.

As a reminder to those sending in snacks and packed lunches – please ensure that no products that contain nuts, including chocolate and nut based spreads such as Nutella, are brought in to school.  Many thanks for your support with keeping all of our school community safe.

The school photographer will be in school on Tuesday 15th September – further details about timings will be sent separately.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend.

This week, we have focused on the big question, “what is the Bible”?  Over the course of the school year, we will be getting to know the Bible and what its contents mean to Christians.  We have already learnt all sorts of interesting facts about the Bible, including where it was written and how long it took.  We all recognised that it is a very complex text but we are looking forward to exploring its contents and what we can learn from it.

We have made it to the end of a particularly hot and uncomfortable summer term!  And what an end to the term it has been.

Well done, Sunbeam.  Despite some last minute extra house points in assembly, you were the clear house point winners, for this term!

We bid a very fond farewell to our lovely year 6 pupils.  Year 6, you have been an absolute pleasure.  As well as being a lot of fun, you have worked extremely hard and achieved some really excellent results.  We are extremely proud of you and wish you all the very best in the next phase of your education.  Thank you for a really lovely leavers’ service and end to the term – I will never be able to listen to Back Street Boys without thinking of you, again!  Well done and thank you, Year 6.  Good luck for the future.

There are some staff that we will also be saying good bye and good luck to, too.  To Mrs York, Miss Cottam, Mrs Sidaway and Mrs Shipley – we wish you all the very best for your next chapters.  Thank you very much for all that you have done to support and guide our school community. You will all be very missed but we wish you every happiness with your new roles.

I wish you all a very safe, happy and wonderful summer holidays.  We look forward to seeing you all on Thursday 3rd September for lots more learning, fun and adventure.

I am sure that all of those of you who have been lucky enough to see our Year 6 production, “Shakespeare Rocks” will agree with me that it was an absolutely incredible performance! I am blown away by the children’s confidence and talents.  Thank you so much to all of the staff and children who have worked so hard to give us such entertaining performances.  You were fabulous and we all thoroughly enjoyed it.

Well done to all of our reception and key stage 1 pupils for their super sports day, this week.  We are so pleased to have been able to carry out the main races before it became too hot! It was a lovely atmosphere and a privilege to see all of our children taking part and giving it their all. Well done, children.

We are very sorry that we have had to send out communication that KS2 sports day has had to be postponed until the Autumn Term for years 3 – 5.  Year 6 will have an exclusive sports day on Monday and we hope that a shortened version of events will mean that we can be back in school before it gets too hot.

A huge well done to Evie and Isabelle, in our reception classes.  They have won the art competition hosted by the Diocese. Evie and Isabelle’s art work will now take pride of place in the Bishop of Worcester’s offices.

We also had the pleasure of inviting Canon Tim Reid to our assembly, on Wednesday where we were presented our Church and School Partnership Silver Award in recognition of the partnership of parish and school in supporting the community that we serve.

Children enjoyed their transition morning with their new teachers, this week.  It was helpful to learn everything that children wanted us to know about them, in the “what I want my teacher to know about me” activity.  They have been very interesting and a lot of fun to read.

We have had a lovely day in Weston Super Mare with years 1 and 2, today.  The children really enjoyed putting all of their knowledge about human and physical features, into practice.  Well done for your super behaviour and enthusiasm, year 1 and 2.  You were a pleasure to spend the day with.

This week, we revisited how we are feeling about navigating our way to the next chapter of education, whether that be to a new school for our year 6 pupils or to a new class, for all of our other children. We thought about where else Christians might find support and comfort regarding new challenges and the children identified the Bible as a source.  Recently, we learned about St Paul the Apostle and how, despite the adversity that he faced, he had written a very large part of the New Testament.  We were able to find the following words of support and guidance that Christians may turn to.

In Philippians 3:13 – 14, Paul writes:​
“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus”.

We are very much looking forward to seeing many of our children later, at the discos.

Key stage 1 and reception – 530 – 615pm

Key stage 2 – 630 – 730pm

Well done to our year 6 pupils who performed a dress rehearsal of their play, Shakespeare Rocks, to the rest of the school.  It sounded incredible – I am sure that families will very much enjoy the production, next week. We look forward to our families coming to watch the production on Monday evening and Tuesday afternoon. Details of tickets will be sent separately, by the year 6 team.

Some of our year 5 pupils competed in the Maths Quizmasters Competition, at Summerhill. The whole team did brilliantly and were incredible ambassadors for the school.  A special mention to Zeke who can recall Pi to 86 decimal places – wow! Thank you to the whole team, who represented our school so well.

We aim to start our Key Stage 1 sports day at approximately 930am, on Tuesday 7th July.  The school field will be open from 0850.  Please bring your own chairs and please could you remain seated behind the barriered area, for safeguarding purposes.

This week, we have been thinking about transitions.  We recognised that we will all have a mixture of feelings about moving on to a new year group and new class – we might be feeling excited and nervous, all at the same time.  We talked about strategies that we can use to manage those emotions.

I  shared one of my favourite books with the children, The Owl Who is Afraid of the Dark. We talked about the ideas, support and guidance of others had helped Plop to be a confident night bird and who we can talk to about our thoughts and feelings, too.

What a week!  Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to our children who have been incredibly resilient during a very uncomfortable week, in school.  Thank you also, for your patience and support.  It is very much appreciated. Huge thanks to our HSA for their quick thinking and action to get us more fans before there was a national shortage.  The ice pops supplied by the HSA have also been a very welcome relief – thank you!

Along with the rest of the nation, we are very much hoping that next week will be considerably cooler.  We kindly request that usual uniform expectations, including footwear,  resume from Monday, please.

As you will know from our previous communication, we have had to move both KS1 and KS2 sports days.  Weather permitting, Key Stage 1 sports day is now on Tuesday 7th July and Key Stage 2 will be on Monday 13th July.  We will aim to start as quickly as we can, following the start of the school day, at approximately 0930. We are very grateful for your understanding.

Due to ongoing issues with emailing, we will be moving over to a new system in September where all communication will be sent out via Arbor. We will also be moving over to Arbor for purchasing uniform and paying for school visits.  I will be writing to you next week, regarding actions that you will need to take over the summer to ensure that we are all fully set up for September. Please keep an eye out for further communication, next week.