EASTER NEWSLETTER 2006

I am now back in school full time after a successful hip replacement operation and it’s great to be here!  Everyone, staff and pupils, have continued to work hard whilst I have been away and much has been achieved. Many thanks to Carole Hall who took on the role of Acting Head in my absence and continued to lead the school forward.  This newsletter shows you just some of the activities and achievements that have happened over the term.

Now that I am back I have been asked by Bradford Education to work with colleagues for two days a week on developing our new provisions for deaf children in Bradford.  This is an exciting time and it is vital that we are fully involved in the new developments so that we establish the very best provision for deaf children.

Our greatest news this term is that the Variety Club has accepted the money we raised in part payment for a new minibus which we are due to receive in June 06.  Many thanks to all of you who contributed to this fundraising including sponsors of the Kashmir Institute for Deaf children in Pakistan who made a generous donation.  We welcomed a visit from one of their teachers this term and look forward to further developing our links with this school.

Many thanks to parents for completing and returning the questionnaires for Annual Review meetings. It is very important that we are able to obtain your views on the school and your child’s progress to ensure that their needs are being fully met and they are feeling safe and happy. Please do contact me at any time if you have any concerns.

Sadly, restrictions have been in place over the past 2 weeks due to the sickness outbreak and we have not been able to go out of school or welcome others into the school. We will be holding an Easter Assembly on Friday, 7th April but are unable to invite parents due to continued restrictions. Hopefully the 2 week Easter holiday will free us of the bug and we will be able to continue as normal next term.

I wish you all a happy and relaxed break and look forward to a return to school on Monday 24th April.

Best wishes
Christine Roche Acting Head

Foundation Stage news

During this half-term we have been busy working with things that grow, such as cress and flowers. Pupils have been planting a variety of seeds and we are particularly pleased with our “sock heads” which are growing really well.  The children were really interested when one of our supply members of staff brought in two frogs to show the children. We were all really surprised to see how high they could jump! We worked with different coins in our role play shop as part of our topic on money.

Foundation Stage have had a lot of extra help this half-term with volunteers and work placement students and we say a big thank you to all of them for their help.  One afternoon we had a famous visitor in the department, Freda from Coronation Street. The staff and children had their photograph taken with her; maybe she will come to see us again and autograph them for us!

Danny Lane from Music and the Deaf has been coming into the department on Tuesday mornings once a fortnight to help us with some more musical activities. Eventually all these ideas will form a booklet to give out to all schools who have deaf children attending so it has been good to be involved in this project. All the children in the department have enjoyed the sessions very much and staff have picked up some useful tips. We are very grateful to Danny for including us in his work.

We thank all parents for their patience and help whilst we re-arranged our activities because of the “tummy bug”.  We have not been using sand, water or playdough for the last two weeks. Let’s hope that after the holidays we can all return to normal.