So here we are... Blog entry two in two days!

We started off our wonderful Wednesday with Swifts class assembly. They worked very hard and delighted us with their thoughts on Love, which they linked beautifully to the story of The Good Samaritan. Well Done Swifts and a huge thank you to the families that came to watch.

Also today, Mrs Jowers and I spent some time in Early Years looking at the opportunities children have to explore Mathematics outside the classroom. As well as number displays, counting games and shape finding we also had the privilege of counting woodlice (and their legs) as children linked Mathematical and Science skills.

Some of you may start to notice that our website is undergoing a little ‘make-over’, this is to make sure it is as accessible as possible and that it really highlights what an amazing school St Jude’s is.

Tonight the staff  have a Professional Development Meeting so the Senior Team can share the School Improvement Plan with staff.  We look forward to sharing this with the rest of the St Jude’s community in the very near future- so keep an eye out.

Until tomorrow….

Izzy Lewis

Welcome all, to the new Senior Team Blog!

It’s a pleasure to be given the opportunity to write a regular post to keep our families and friends up to date with the exciting things happening at St Jude’s.

I’m very pleased to be able to start this post by sharing our exciting new vision.

Last week the Senior Team had some time together to work on our new School Improvement Plan (that we will share with you very soon) and to talk about how we were moving forward as a school. We went right back to the start and spent some time looking at our vision and values statement. While we all agree that our four values of Love, Honesty, Forgiveness and Hope underpin everything we do, we decided that our Vision statement had become a little cloudy and needed a tweak so it was shorter, easier to remember and could become a starting point for all discussions. We came up with some ideas and shared a draft with the staff last week- after a final few adjustments I am pleased to present our new Vision Statement.

Vision Statement

Awe and wonder sit at the heart of the St Jude’s family. All adults and children work together to create thriving, independent, passionate people who have a fired imagination and a love of learning. We believe that we all learn best when we are happy, safe, valued and inspired to take on the challenges of God’s world.

We are sure you will agree that although similar to our previous vision, this is clearer and really promotes the sort of learning and learner that we strive for. With awe and wonder as our opening line, we are spending time with teachers and subject leaders planning to inject some real excitement into our curriculum- so watch this space…marvellous things coming very soon!

On the second of our SIT days, we were joined in the morning by Reverend Mike Duff of St Jude’s Church who worked with us as we evaluated the distinct Christian character of the school. Last week children bought home a questionnaire regarding this and we look forward to finding out what our parents and carers think are our strengths and areas for development. We also spent some time sharing our new Collective Worship plans and talking about how the Big Questions we ask each week are promoting deep thinking, shared viewpoints and spirituality. We hope you are enjoying the Big Questions also and feel they are a great family conversation starter.

Here is what some of our children thought about our first Big Question- “Is God always happy”?

Year R - "Yes, he's happy because he sent his message into a stone and I picked up the stone and it whispered into my ear-'he is happy because he's always got us'". 

Year 3- "Yes, because when people do things wrong it's not his fault".

 

Year 5 -  "God cannot be happy all the time because of all the bad things that happen in the world like rich and poor, homelessness, selfishness, disease and starvation". 

Our Big Question this week is- “What does love look like?” and as I write this I can hear Mrs Eldrid leading Key Stage one Collective Worship and discussing the children’s ideas about love, and … if I’m not mistaken I can hear whispers of The Beatles- All you need is Love, in the background.

What a great way to start a Tuesday!
Izzy Lewis

I am delighted to be able to write to you again through this blog, which will now be a regular feature of our communication with you. So to begin this new year (although we are two weeks in) I want to share some thoughts with you about 'change'.
January 2015 sees me celebrate 34 years in this beloved profession. I remember very clearly my first day as a teacher at Broadwater CE Primary School, in Worthing. Interestingly enough it was the school I had attended as a child for most of my primary school years and so my first full-time employment as a teacher was with the same headteacher who had been there when I was a pupil some 13 years earlier.
On my first day, Mr Tammage told me of all the many changes that had taken place since I had been there as a pupil and how he wished that the pace of change would just slow down so that we could get on with the real job of educating our children!
Over the weekend I was reflecting with some friends how, when I took up my first Headship in 1999 there was no computer for me to use, letters not email were written, the week's post would arrive on a Tuesday morning and I certainly had no 'smart phone' to keep me on the move. Interestingly enough although I now generally like the technology I use, it has forced us all to work much more quickly, responding to requests with greater speed and often being reactive rather than poactive.
The way our schools are now judged has also changed many times. January 2015 also sees the most recent publication of the Ofsted Inspection schedule, a third change since April last year. Another change is expected for September. Keeping pace with all the change is a challenge at times but quite crucial in a world where the judgements made by Ofsted have such a powerful impact on us all. The whole scale change to the National Curriculum has been very challenging too becuse the expectations we now have to have of our children are much higher than before. Combine this with the changes to the test expectations for our current Year 1 and Year 5 pupils and we certainly have to remain forward thinking and ahead of the game.
In all these changes we will aim to keep you as parents fully up to date with what is happening and how you can support your children in an ever changing world where the jobs your children will be end up doing are unlikely to have been invented yet! Food for thought on a Monday morning.
As this year unfolds we will be working closely with Ofsted to ensure that everything we are doing in school is focused on meeting the higher expectations of the new testing framework and we will also give you as parents the opportunity to hear about the actions which will result from those meetings as we being to prepare for the next inspection at St Jude's.

Thoughts on a Hospital Stay and the children at St Jude's

Well, it has been an interesting, challenging and thought provoking few weeks, some of which I feel is worth sharing with you! During my short stay in hospital earlier this month, I met three fascinating people, each of whom taught me something very different but equally important. One  of these people was a  medics, the other two were fellow patients.
The first was a junior doctor who tore onto the ward as if he was just about to miss the closing doors of the underground train. His first words to me, without looking at me at all, were, "We must get these forms filled in quickly, then you will be ready for theatre." I said nothing but waited for him to shuffle his papers for a couple of minutes, talk to himself a little and then look at me; it was here I smiled at him and simply said "Hello". At which point he breathed and said "Well I got that all wrong, didn't?" An interesting conversation resulted as he explained to me the pressure he felt under to achieve and get to the top to be 'just like his brother'. I have to admit that I said very little as this highly charged young man shared is fear of failure. My reply to him was very simple..."You have to be true to yourself and never try to be what others want you to be." That too was when I first consciously thought of the children at school feeling a huge sense of deeply wanting that for them too!
Secondly I met two amazing ladies who would never consider themselves as such, Rosie and Clare. Rosie was an older lady who had been in hospital since August, following several surgical procedures following the loss of her lower leg in the summer. I first spoke to her as she came round the ward offering us cakes she had made as part of her very slow rehabilitation. Since the loss of her leg, this one time headteacher told me how her confidence had completely gone and the most difficult thing she was finding was to work hard to restore the 'tiger that had helped her transform schools'. Daily I saw her struggle to get up, dressed and ready to face the day. Tears of determination could be quietly heard as the once simple things had become a huge challenge. She was having to re-learn things all over again and it was taking genuine determination. So back to school. Often learning new things can be really difficult and as part of our journey to becoming an outstanding school, I want the children to learn to be determined as they try out new things, new learning and new ways of working. Giving up at the first hurdle never really got anyone anywhere!
Clare was waiting for similar surgery to Rosie's, having just two weeks before been told of the need to lose her right leg at the age of 24 and just 3 weeks after her wedding to Rob. "Well life will be a bit different from now", Clare said with an infectious grin. "I am so lucky to have learnt early in my life, to relish, celebrate and enjoy every day and every opportunity I will be given." And 'yes' I would love to see that quality in our children too!
Since being home, getting mobile again is proving to be a real struggle and far from a 'breeze'. My legs appears to be defiant in refusing to follow the instructions from the brain, but I am sure we will get there. There is much to get back to and enjoy in the new year, all of which I will share with you in my next blog, before the end of term which will, I assure you, be entirely school focused!
Many thanks for all your very welcome good wishes
Joy Waelend

All Change!

The title of this post has again been generated by my morning train journey to work. As the guard asked us all to change this morning, I reflected on the further changes that came to us last week in the form of another new inspection framework and another new curriculum. To be honest, neither of these concern or worry me greatly; they are all challenges to be enjoyed and in all things my first concern is "will these changes make things better for the children?" Well, I genuinely think the answer to that is that we need to make them so.
Many of you will have heard of the curriculum which the government are keen to introduce from September 2014. It will, if we let it, remind me of my primary school days during the 1960s. Sitting in rows, learning facts, pages of maths questions, formal English, History from texts books and delivering learning to our children.
Now forgive me if this sounds a little maverick, but this is not the kind of education I could possibly wish on our children. Therefore the trick here is to make certain we are able to please Ofsted by proving we are covering the legalities of the curriculum as set out in law, but doing it in such a way that inspires the generation of children we have in our beloved school; and that is precisely what we are planning to do.
Last week we began the process of designing a brand new curriculum for first teaching in September 2014. This will take a great deal of time to get right and a large team of skilled teachers to do so. Our Inset Days in January will give us some time to focus on this together but a great deal of preparation will need to take place before then in order to ensure we create an outstanding curriculum for our children. As for the new Ofsted framework by which we will next be judged, we will leave that for another blog! In my next blog I will offer you an outline of the new curriculum and the ways in which we are planning to make it very special to our children.

Twitter and Facebook?

Just really quickly to begin........Saturday was wonderful! Thank you so much to all the parents, grandparents, children, staff and friends from the community who came along to school on Saturday to support our first Environment Improvement day of the year. After four hours of work and 100 burgers and sausages later, plus another full skip the improvements are hopefully clear to see and enjoy! We will certainly be holding another such event early in January!

And so to the promised main point of this blog and it is a subject on which I would really value your thoughts. At St Jude's we work really hard to achieve the best possible communication with parents and the wider school community. Internally this is a challenge, with over 50 staff, a number of whom work part time, this is far from easy and it remains the one thing we still struggle a bit with. To counteract this some schools have set up their own staff "Facebook" groups or "Twitter" accounts and this has become their main form of communication. Now this is not something I can ever see us doing at St Jude's, but it has come up many times recently as a question from parents and colleagues who feel the school as a whole should have a Facebook page or Twitter account. I really would be very keen to hear your views, as parents, on this. My perspective as head is that we already do a great deal to communicate widely and increasingly effectively with yourselves as parents and I am uncertain as to what either of these forms of communication would bring to us. Our website is good and, providing it doesn't crash, remains a reliable method of communication. Parentmail is, I think, effective when we need to use it, provided we have the correct contact information for the recipients. We aim to make the newsletter comprehensive and informative and the information that comes from classes is now more consistent. In addition to this we are developing our school intranet for launch after Christmas and the "Meet the Headteacher / School Improvement Team" sessions give you regular opportunity to ask those questions which have been nagging away! As well as all of these methods, Rachael Osborne and I try to accommodate any request for short notice meetings and of course there is the 24 hour email access. So the purpose of this blog today is to actively seek your views on the suggestion that we should set up a whole school "St Jude's CE Primary School" Facebook page or Twitter Account. The question then is, should we do this and if so why should we? Thank you for your help with this!

Another year begins!

I do sincerely hope you all had a wonderful summer break with the children and that the first few days of the new term have been positive for both them and yourselves. For me, personally, it feels almost impossible to consider the fact that September 2013 represents 33 years in this amazing profession and therefore 33 new year starts. I can honestly say I have enjoyed each and every one of the years I have worked in education and yet each one will have been filled with centrally imposed changes which at the time we thought we would struggle to absorb. This year is no different!
We have a brand new Curriculum which we need to begin to get used to ready for the official first teaching in September 2014. You may be aware, through the national news, of the new 'performance related pay' regulations which we now have to make our way through during the coming months as well as yet another new Ofsted framework to become familiar with. These developments will give you an idea of a few of the things which will captivate our time and attention during the coming few months, all the while keeping clear our intention of creating an outstanding place of education and development in which we want each child to flourish.
In addition to these projects, this year will see the start and almost completion of the long awaited building project to improve the Foundation Stage classrooms and the Admin Areas as well as create a new, larger staffroom for all who work at St Jude's. It is undoubtedly going to be a busy year and we want you all to be as involved as you can be. This is why we thought it would be a really good idea to invite you and your children into school on Saturday 21st September, where we will share on a project together for the morning and picnic together at the conclusion of the planned activity.
The idea came about after the Year 3 Garden day last term and we thought it would be a great idea to get together and work on something very special for the school. The plan is that school will be open from 9.30am to 2pm, and together we will spend some time, clearing areas of the school grounds and making them as beautiful as they have the potential to be. Then at the conclusion of the morning we will offer a barbecue lunch or you could bring a picnic and we could share some time together, getting to know each other and developing our sense of community. I really do hope you will be able to join us in a couple of weeks time for this special event.
I am certain we can make this year a very special one for our children and our school community as a whole and I am looking forward to working with you to enable this to become a reality!