Mr Spanswick's Words Autumn Term Week 5

What a super Harvest Festival!! Thank you so much for the many of you who were able to attend. The boys donned their wellies, they coloured their pictures for the display, they brought their food into school to share, the staff worked tirelessly to prepare their charges with poems and songs...and the Headteacher dressed up as a farmer!! Lots of fun, and hopefully the important message of Harvest came across to all of those present.

In a week which has seen the Art Department take centre stage, our celebratory assembly this morning was led by Mr Goddard. More information and images of our talented artists with their artwork will follow, but I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr Goddard and the ISA Artwork boys for their outstanding efforts at the ISA Regional awards on Tuesday, where we have enjoyed our most successful year ever. With National Poetry Week being very much in our minds, we were dazzled this morning when Leo Robinson, Freddie Duff and Roudra Bhattacharyya shared with us their wonderful pieces of work, created in class about ‘Autumn’. Please have a look at their vivid and imaginative poems in our gallery. I asked Mr Hogg to also read a tongue twisting limerick to the boys, which he did with great aplomb!

Pupil Voice has come to the fore as well, and our class reps have now been chosen, voted for by their peers. All of the boys can start to consider in earnest how they would like to develop the school further, and how they would like to spend some of the PTA’s money! After half term I will be sharing with all of the boys my 2016-2018 School Development Plan on a google document, and they will be able to have a direct input into how we can make our school environment even better.

It was lovely to catch up with so many of you at Parents evening yesterday, and my staff enjoyed the opportunity to chat through how the boys are getting on. Many of you were able to see our new Mezzanine space in action too - we are really delighted with the new opportunities that it brings for the boys.

Leaf Prints Next week is very busy! We have school trips going out, especially our Year 6 boys who will be joining up with their counterparts at the girls school and travelling to Osmington Bay in Dorset for the Field Studies week. This culminates in an exhibition for their parents in our Mezzanine next Friday, which will hopefully display all of their hard work…..and the fun that they will have had. I am away from school for a portion of next week as I am going to embark upon my first ever official inspection of another school which I am looking forward to with both enthusiasm and a bit of dread!

Good luck to all of those boys who are playing in the huge chess tournament held at our school tomorrow. Mr Hogg and I hope to deliver exciting news of the boys achievements next week to you. I have been reading some of the fantastic work of our boys this week, including Henry Paw’s lovely writing in Reception. Do have a look at our picture gallery where you will find some of the boys who have visited me with outstanding academic work, including Max Terry, Oliver Stuchbery, Ollie Dart and Carter Macleod. The work that Zac Burgess, Joshua Notton-Brown and Jake Dries completed was particularly good, and well worthy of the Gold Star award!

A quick plea from our PTA - we still have several places to fill on the bar rota for the fireworks evening on October 15. If you can spare 30 minutes on the night, come and join me to serve some drinks…..it is lots of fun!!

Have a lovely weekend