Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.
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Friday update
Fri 30 Sep 2022Happy Friday all! ( in spite of the weather!).
Week 4 at Dovedale has been a busy one.
We held our school council elections this week. Organised by Miss Nadin all the children had a formal vote for a child who had put themselves forward to be nominated. We look forward to meeting our new school council representatives and the work they will conduct on behalf of the whole student body.
As mentioned previously we are happy to receive good, used school uniform that could be passed onto another child. I currently have some year 5 -6 trousers, age 6-7 plain jumpers, several white polo shirts age 6 -7 and PE trousers age 5 to 6 which have been donated.
If you feel that you could make good use of any of these please email me directly and we can arrange collection. It is a shame to see these go to waste.
A reminder to parents to supervise their children when dropping off and picking up in front of the school.
Parents must not drive in to the staff car park at any time.
We have availability for WRAP club on Friday mornings and during half term holiday club. Contact Berny at the club or the school office to book. For the INSET day on 31st October the club is running from 7.30 to 5.30 and there is availability.
The club will be closed on December 23rd. (School closes for Christmas on the 22nd).
After a conversation with a parent recently I thought I would explain the fines process for unauthorised absences ( holiday requests). If holidays are unauthorised, or if a holiday is known to be taken without application the school may pass the absence to Derbyshire county council. The head teacher determines if a holiday is authorised or not using the policy guidelines. Derbyshire County council use the presented information to decide if a fine will be issued. It is usual for fines to be issued if the Head teacher has determined the break to be unauthorised.
The fine of £60 per parent per child will be issued from Derbyshire County Council. This does not benefit the school in any way and the school receives no funds from this.
The New Reception children had their welcome disco tonight and they were all brilliantly behaved and appeared to have a very good time. Thank you to the PTA for organising this and to the staff who stayed to supervise the children. A good start to the weekend!
Next Friday we are holding a harvest day. Miss Nadin has sent a letter out today with information about this. Children can dress in an autumn colour (red, green, brown, orange, yellow etc.), or as a fruit or vegetable! We then ask if parents are able to donate an item of dried or tinned food we will store and deliver to the local food bank. This donation is completely optional and all children can wear a colour or costume regardless. Children can come in uniform if they do not wish to wear a colour or dress up.
Next week's assemblys will focus on the start of Black History Month.
I hope you all have a great weekend.
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Friday update
Fri 16 Sep 2022Happy Friday everyone!
I hope you have all had a good week.
It has been a busy second week here at Dovedale and our new EYFS children are settling well. They attended their first whole school REACH assembly this morning and managed to sit really well whilst the certificates were handed out. We are seeing lots of smiles and they are growing in confidence every day.
Year 5 had their first swimming lesson this morning which they were all very excited about. We look forward to watching their progress over the term.
As part of our safeguarding updates I would like to tell you about our web filtering service. In school this means that we monitor what the children can access online. This is regularly reviewed and checked to make sure we are keeping our children safe. This is done through Smoothwall.
As parents is it important that you check what your children can access. If you look under the key info tab-safeguarding including internet safety -you will find a link to the parent safe website which gives lots of information about how to add filters and keep ahead of what is happening in the digital and online world. I have also added a link to a scare scam poster which helps parents understand how to talk to their children about 'scares' and 'dares' they may come across on the internet. This is very important as children may be encouraged to carry out tricks or dares which could put them at risk of injury.
I need to remind parents that holiday requests will not be authorised unless they meet the criteria in our absences policy. The reasons for absence must be exceptional. This includes funerals or unavoidable events but does not include family holidays. Although I can often sympathise or empathise with reasons for requests I will not authorise holiday requests.
Please make sure your child is wearing appropriate school uniform. We acknowledge that the rising cost of living is putting great pressure on households and we are not requesting that children have a logo on their uniform. We will put out 'lost' property regularly. If parents wish to donate good quality uniform please place in a bag with the age label and bring to the school office.
If any parent would like us to see if we have spare uniform for their child's size please contact the headteacher via email confidentially and I will look to see if we can support you with this.
For further guidance with uniform requirements please see our prospectus on the website or the uniform tab.
If there are any adults out there who would like to volunteer in school to support in class/hear readers etc we would love to welcome you to school. As with all adults in school you would be required to undertake induction and our usual safeguarding checks but this will be arranged by Mrs Tomlinson. Since covid, for obvious reasons, our volunteer numbers have dwindled so we would love to hear from you if you have an hour or so to spare. Please contact Mrs Tomlinson in the school office.
I hope you all have a lovely weekend.