Weekly News - Friday 15th January 2021

Remote Learning

Many thanks to all of the parents who are supporting children at home with their remote learning. It is wonderful to hear about how independent the children are becoming as we embark upon our next phase of school closure. We understand the pressures that many of you are under, trying to juggle working from home, and we are incredibly grateful for all that you are doing to support the children's learning. 

In assembly I shared some good tips for the children which you may wish to reiterate them:

- make sure you have an organised workstation 

- know your timetable: have it printed out next to you

- have what you need for the day to hand e.g. pencil case, water bottle and any other resources your teacher has told you that you will require

- communicate: ask for help if you are not sure what is being asked from you but remember the 4B's: brain, book, buddy, boss. In other words, read the instructions again, look at your books to help you (or Google classroom), talk to your friends to clarify and remember that you can also ask your teachers for help.

We published these top tips for parents and top tips for children during our last lockdown and you may wish to look at these again. 

To assist our teachers' wellbeing, we ask parents to follow our school email protocol and avoid sending emails to the teachers between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. We are encouraging all staff to switch off phone notifications and this may be good advice for all parents too. I am sure that many of your companies have similar protocols - it is crucial that we all step away from our devices and give ourselves some time. 

Guess the Place

Today we launched a new weekly 'Guess the Place' challenge in assembly. Each week, a different photo will be placed on the Learning Portal for the children to try and identify. For pupils in Years 1 and Y2 the challenge will be to identify different places in London and for pupils in Years 3 - 6 the challenge will be to identify different places from around the UK. The children will be able to submit their answers on the Learning Portal. Each week in our Friday assemblies the correct answer will be revealed and the next week's photos will be shared. We hope this will be fun for the whole family as we try to 'Guess the Place'!

Writing Challenge

January heralds once again the launch of the Chorleywood Bookshop Children’s Writing Competition and our children will be excited to know that Cressida Cowell, the Children’s Laureate and author of the How to Train Your Dragon and Wizards Of Once series, will be judging the entries in each of the competition’s three categories!

Last year, this competition attracted over 500 entries from primary and secondary schools. The standard is extraordinary across each age category and previous well-known authors who have judged the event are invariably impressed by the standard as well as the variety. 

This year’s theme is Friendship, a theme which should enable all those who take part to focus on positive messages. With challenges targeted to everyone from the youngest children in Reception to the oldest in Key Stage 4, we hope many of our pupils (and perhaps older ex-pupils) will take part.

Full details of the competition and the relevant paperwork are now available on the bookshop's website at https://chilternbookshops.co.uk/schools-2/childrens-creative-writing-comp-2021/

Good luck, everyone. Do let us know how you get on.

Fun Friday

Next Friday, for a bit of fun, we are asking pupils at Upper School to wear a hat or fun headwear creation when they come online for our morning assembly. The children at Lower School might like to wear their hats when they have a Google Meet or perhaps to upload a photograph of themselves in their hats to Tapestry or Google Classroom. We look forward to seeing everyone's fun headwear!

Fitness Challenges

National survey evidence from the last lockdown found that around 36% of children were doing less physical activity than usual, with only 22% getting their recommended daily activity of 60 active minutes and a worrying 9% getting no physical activity.  Regular weekly PE activities continue to be provided in class Google classrooms and on Tapestry for all of our pupils, and we encourage our parents to ensure children continue to develop their skills and remain physically active. However, we are keen to ensure our pupils are keeping as active as possible, so we are also launching some additional easily accessible fitness activities, as follows. Parents can help our pupils get involved with from Monday. 

Activity Calendar

The first one is an 'Activity Calendar' with daily links to physical challenges all our pupils can have a go at whilst at home. It also includes a link to the Youth Sport Trusts Tuesday and Thursday after school club activities. Here is the January calendar.

London Youth Games Virtual Fitness Challenge

The second is an opportunity for our Year 2 - 6 pupils to take part in the London Youth Games Virtual Fitness Challenge. The challenges this term will be based around fitness and personal bests and may be done at home or at school (for those attending) in class or at breaks, to keep all of our young people active with minimal equipment required. 

The challenges are all about participation and will be an opportunity for our pupils to represent the school and Hillingdon Borough and earn valuable points for the Hillingdon team in the London Youth Games competition!

The first Fitness Challenge will go live on the LYG website on Monday 18th January and will be posted in the Year 2 - Year 6 PE Google classrooms. The children will have until Thursday evening each week to complete the challenge and add their results to the shared spreadsheet in their PE Google Classroom. These results will then be submitted to London Youth Games and the weekly leader board will be announced in our Monday assemblies. 

We hope lots of our pupils will have a go at the virtual fitness challenge and try to get St. Helen's College and Hillingdon to the top of the leader board each week!

We Like to Move it

Finally, our Year 6 Sports Captains and PE staff put together a fun workout video at the end of last term for us all to get up and move to in January. Have lots of fun joining in with them - see if you can get the whole family up moving and share your videos with us!  Click here for the video.

Blue Peter On YouTube

CBBC have launched Blue Peter on YouTube and we are sure that pupils and parents will be interested in this, for entertainment outside of home-schooling hours now we’re in lockdown.

Blue Peter is the longest running children's TV show in the world and the videos are suitable for 5-11 year olds. There are world record breaking challenges, arts and crafts, environmental videos, cooking and baking how tos, inspirational films, gaming, celebrity appearances, dance routines and music performances. The channel also features ways of getting a Blue Peter badge, behind the scenes footage and extra content about the presenters Adam, Lindsey, Mwaksy, Richie and Henry the Blue Peter dog.

If you are interested, please subscribe to https://www.youtube.com/bluepeter (it’s completely free to subscribe!) and also don’t forget to watch the live programme on CBBC at 5.00 p.m. every week, or on BBC iPlayer.

E-Scooters

We have recently received an email from Hillingdon Council's School Travel and Road Safety team, regarding the increased use of E-Scooters across the borough. The council have received numerous reports of E-Scooters being ridden across the borough on public roads, in parks and even through town centres. 

Please read the E-Scooter guidance document which has been created to inform parents and residents about the use of E-Scooters. We encourage parents to have a look at this document as there are road safety and legal implications associated with the unlawful use of E-Scooters within the borough.

ABRSM Results

Many of our children took ABRSM examinations on their instruments last term, although some were inevitably delayed due to Covid. This list of results is therefore not yet complete, but we did not want to delay any further in sharing with you the results that we have received so far, in order to celebrate these achievements. Very, very well done to all of the children who have been practising so hard to work towards exams, and to those who have already sat their exams and achieved such great results! To those who have exams coming up next week, we wish you the best of luck.

3B
Emily S	Violin	Grade 1	Pass
Raiden B	Guitar	Grade 1	Merit
Viren C	Piano	Grade 1	Pass
3M
Grace O'H	Cello	Grade 1	Awaiting result
Verity S	Violin	Grade 1	Awaiting result
Kal-el M	Piano	Grade 1	Awaiting result
Avantika G	Piano	Grade 2	Awaiting result
Aaran B	Piano	Grade 1	Awaiting result
4L
Arshia S	Piano	Grade 1	Distinction
Arshvir S	Piano	Grade 1	Awaiting result
Minaya W	Piano	Grade 1	Merit
Minaya W	Singing	Grade 1	Distinction
4T
Advik S	Singing	Grade 2	Merit
Advik S	Guitar	Grade 1	Pass
Xavier B	Guitar	Grade 1	Pass
5A
Nirvaan D	Piano	Grade 1	Distinction
Amber P	Violin	Grade 2	Pass
Siyana M	Piano	Grade 1	Distinction
Siyana M	Singing	Grade 3	Merit
Sahib N	Piano	Grade 1	Pass
Luka K	Guitar	Grade 1	Pass
Nya P	Flute	Grade 2	Distinction
Anokhi B	Piano	Grade 1	Distinction
Zach F	Oboe	Grade 2	Distinction
Layla O	Piano	Grade 2	Awaiting result
Leo J	Piano	Grade 1	Merit
Aryan	Piano	Grade 1	Awaiting result
5G
Kiran A	Singing	Grade 2	Pass
	Piano	Grade 1	Pass
Adam O	Piano	Grade 1	Merit
Shruthi T	Sining	Grade 4	Merit
Diyan C	Cello	Grade 1	Awaiting result
Devan S	Piano	Grade 1	Merit
6R
Arjan D	Piano	Grade 2	Pass
Frederika T	Piano	Grade 1	Distinction
Esha C	Singing	Grade 4	Awaiting result
6M
Riya C	Singing	Grade 2	Pass
Manisher L	Piano	Grade 2	Pass
Vidhit N	Piano	Grade 2	Pass