Dear Parents and Carers,

We have had a great start to the new term with children and staff refreshed and ready for learning. Many of the classes have started their new book, in year 1 children have been reading Immi, a story about a child who lives in an Igloo, year 3 are reading Jemmy Button and year 4 are reading Anthony Browne’s Into the Forest. There has been some amazing writing produced already, with Year 6 developing bal-anced arguments. There has even been the most incredible discovery in the early years playground of a dinosaur egg! We have also seen some great maths reasoning this week with children explaining their learning and solving problems throughout the school. Please check out our maths tutorials section on our website front page to support you child’s learning.

With the new term underway it is important that your children are ready for learning, please ensure that they are wearing the correct uniform with long hair tied back, that they have their PE kit in school at all times and that reading books and reading records are in school. Please may I remind parents that any routine appointments must be made outside of school hours.

Parents’ evening will take place on Wednesday 27th February with the school closing early at 1.30pm. Please ensure that your child is collected at this time. In exceptional circumstances you may make a re-quest for your child to be supervised until 3.15pm. We ask that you email admin@st-marks.ealing.sch.uk for a form which you will need to complete and return, this is so that we may organise staff cover. Nurse-ry appointments will also take place on the 27th February during the day. Nursery morning and afternoon sessions will continue as normal.

In the past academic year St Mark's PSA, the school's fundraising charity, has raised more than £20,000 which has been used to fund interactive white boards, a lighting rig in the new hall, musical equipment, to subsidise class trips for all years (around £ 3,000) and mini buses to sporting events and last term the PSA funded £5,600 for 15 laptops.

This has made such a difference to the school.

The PSA are looking for between 3-6 people to join the committee. One of these roles will be a Treasurer but there is scope for the new committee to tailor roles to fit the work. Please come along to the AGM to find out more. We are looking for more parents/carers to take up the baton and keep that total moving upwards! The AGM will be held at St Mark’s on Thursday 17th January at 7.30pm

We will be marking safer internet day in February, but as part of our ongoing safeguarding in school the following are things you can do now to keep your child safe online:

check your parental controls on your PC to stop them accessing inappropriate material

have a conversation, discuss sites and apps together, talk about any concerns they may have

talk about personal information and what not to share online Your child may be accessing social networks. Most of these have an age limit of 13+, check the content and age limits of what they are accessing here: https://www.net-aware.org.uk

Is your child playing computer games? check the age limit here: https://www.net-aware.org.uk

The NSPCC website https://www.nspcc.org.uk also provides further resources and links on how to keep your child safe online.

Happy New Year Sophie Liardet Head teacher

Friday 11th January 2019 www.st-marks.ealing.sch.uk @st_marksw7

Nursery All of the children have settled in fantastically to life in Nursery and have come back from the holidays happy to be back. We are so proud of how quickly they have settled and responded to rules and routines – well done! The EYFS children were amazed to come back to St Mark’s to see that four eggs had appeared in our oudoor area! There were lots of brilliant ide-as about where the eggs have come from – such as space, a dinosaur or a bird and thought they may contain a baby bird, baby dinosaur or baby al-ien. There were some fabulous discussions between the children about what animals lay eggs and where they have come from. Later in the week, a news flash appeared saying that a dinosaur had been spotted in the out-door area! When we went to investigate, the children found that one of the eggs had hatched!! The children are so excited to find out that they are dinosaur eggs and that we are learning all about dino-saurs. Nursery and Reception have shared what they already know about dinosaurs. They have had the opportunity to guide their own learning by thinking about some excellent questions they would like to find out the answers to during our topic this half term.

Science Across the school we have been starting our new and exciting

Science topics. Year 1 are learning about materials and are

going to be doing lots of investigations finding out why we

need different materials. Year 2 will be continuing their learn-

ing about survival, looking at the different needs of animals

and humans and how we change from babies to adults. Year

3 are learning about rocks and fossils. They will be looking

closely at the different types of rocks and how they are used.

Year 4 is exploring how to use classification keys to group ani-

mals and thinking about how the environments these animals

live in can change over time. Year 5 is learning about the

properties of different materials and will be conducting practical investigations to separate mixtures using

filtering, sieving and evaporating. Year 6 are learning about electricity. They will be making circuits in dif-

ferent ways and exploring how electricity works.

Diary dates

January

15th Closing date for Nursery and Reception 2019 admission applications

17th PSA AGM in school hall 7.30pm

18th Lovelace Class Assembly

23rd Year 2 trip to RAF Museum

25th Emidy Class Assembly

29th Year 6 WW2 Workshop in school

31st Year 4 Canal visit and workshops in school

February

1st Franklin Class Assembly

1st NSPCC Number day in school

8th Earhart Class Assembly

13th Year 4 trip to The National Gallery

15th Fitzgerald Class Assembly

18th – 22nd Half term holiday

18th – 22nd Fit for Sport Holiday Camp at St Mark’s

27th Parents’ evening – early closure 1.30pm

We are excited to let you know that we have been able to arrange for an au-thor SF Said to visit school and meet KS2 children on 16th January. SF Said will hold workshops with the children during the day where they will have the opportunity to ask him questions about his career and also the writing process.

After school, there will be an opportunity to purchase books and have them signed by him. We are very grateful to St. Mark’s PSA for funding this event and are excited about meeting SF Said.

Ashley at the book launch of The Wonderful World of Wappy! which included a piece written by him. Well done. WAPPY, is an acronym for Writing, Acting and Publishing Project for Youngsters. The project was set up by Grace Akuba in 2008, as a summer holiday project, with funding from Ealing Council. The project has gone from strength to strength since. www.wappy.org.uk