Introducing Mrs. Johnson (Video Post)

Mrs. Johnson who will be Year. 2 Class Teacher from January 2013 has recorded a special message for the class. This presentation/talk is the same presentation that Mrs. Johnson gave as part of the interview process. We hope you all enjoy this and welcome your comments welcoming Mrs. Johnson to the Prince of Wales First School. Mr. Spracklen

Olympic and Paralympic values

London 2012 Olympic Committee have sent us seven certificates to present to children displaying exceptional attitudes in one of the seven olympic and paralympic values. It was a great honour to present these to six of our children, including 3 with physical disabilities. I decided to give the certificate about INSPIRATION to Mr Spracklen in recognition of his creative and innovative teaching and leadership! I hope this will be a permanent reminder for him of his time at The Prince of Wales Schoo: "where we are all inspired to learn!"

ICT Awards

Mr Spracklen left us with a parting present today: five class ICT plaques to accompany our half termly certificates for achievement in ICT. Thanks Gary: whenever we present these awards we will think of all the things you have added to the school!

Awards Assembly

This morning we gave out our half termly certificates and cups. These are to say well done to children for their achievement and their effort and progress in English, maths, ICT, PE and the creative arts. We also awarded seven certificates in each class for good citizenship, for being caring, considerate, courteous, communicative, confident, co-operative and conscientious!

Mr. Spracklen says “Good-bye and Thank-you!”

I would love to write to everyone (every member of staff, every pupil, every parent and every member of the POW community) who has made my time at the Prince of Wales First School so special. I would like to thank everyone personally, however, this is simply not possible.

Each of you reading this has made the last three and a half years of my life simply incredible! I have been honored to call myself a teacher at this school which has developed me so much as a teacher, a leader and ultimately as a person. I thank everyone who has engaged in the work I have led from the use of SWGfL Merlin to helping run (and attend) events like the recent Summer Soiree. I thank everyone who has been unfazed by my slightly unorthodox styles of trashing classrooms, building time tunnels and setting off rockets!

Most of all, I thank you parents for trusting me with your amazing children and Mr. Farrington for allowing me the freedom to teach them creatively. I have loved every minute at the Prince of Wales First School. I hope that as I take on my new role on Portland, I can inspire others to teach in the inclusive, engage and inspiring way that is so engrained at the Prince of Wales First School.

In the last few years I have been fortunate enough to be invited to speak at I.C.T Conferences about our work at the Prince of Wales First School. At these conferences I often finish with a quote from the late Steve Job (founder of Apple Computers). I would like to close this short message with that same quote:

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do”

I have loved my time at the Prince of Wales First School and hope that my pupils will all grow up to “love what they do”.

Warmest thanks again.


Mr. Spracklen
Thursday 25th October, 2012

Money raised at Harvest Assemblies

In our school assembly today we presented a cheque for £313.85 to Col. Richard East. This was the money that we had raised in our Harvest Assemblies. Col. East was representing the charity A.B.F "The Soldiers' Charity". He told us how the money would be used to help soldiers to rebuild their lives after returning from fighting in wars. In the photograph you can see Kieran and Beth handing the cheque to Col. East.

Parent teacher consultation evenings

I hope you found it useful to meet your child's classteacher last week. If you could not make either of the two evenings, please make contact to arrange an alternative convenient time with the classteacher. If you also wish to discuss your child's progress with any additional staff involved please discuss this with the classteacher, Mrs Moger (the SENCo) or Mr Farrington.

SCHOOL NURSE TOMORROW

The School Nurse will be running a drop in from 8:45am tomorrow morning (Monday 22nd October). Want to know more about what the School Nurse does please see this useful web link from Dorset HealthCare University NHS Trust: http://www.dorsethealthcare.nhs.uk/services/children-and-families/school-nursing-dorset.htm

POWSA Blog - Non ICT Day

I have this little sister Lola, she is small and very funny.  Next Wednesday (the 24^th of October) will be a non-ICT day.  That means all the children, including Lola and all the teachers cannot use computers or other technology in school! There will be no blogging, no typing, no googling, no surfing. There will certainly be no interactive white boarding, no tweeting, no ipadding, no videoing and certainly no tomatoes! Lola is looking forward to catching out her teachers, if they use some ICT, they have to pay a 50p fine!  Hopefully all the children will help Lola and raise funds for the school. Thank you - Charlie (and the POWSA Committee) - PS donations to POWSA for school equipment will be welcomed (as always!!)

POWSA Blog - Book Fair!

Just a quick reminder that the scholastic book fair starts today.  The books are available to browse by both children and parents after school Wed-Mon and at the parents evening tonight. Why not stock up on a few Christmas presents, or introduce your kids to another fantastic author? Once our target has been reached, the school receive 60% of the profit back to spend on books for school.  This has proven a very profitable venture in the past and we hope to replicate the success again this year!

Harvest collection

Many thanks. Due to your generosity and kindness we have sent £313 to the joint benevolent funds of the armed forces at our harvest celebration and cafe.

Exciting News!

Here is some very exciting news from the team at Mathletics - The world's most powerful online learning resource has arrived on iPad, with the launch today of Mathletics Student - our brand new dedicated iPad app. Even better news is that the app is completely free, all you need is a Mathletics username & password. Mathletics Student has been custom-designed and built by our dedicated team of developers, who even invented some groundbreaking new mobile technology in the process! For the first time, students with an iPad can hold Mathletics in their hands and take it with them anywhere. Curriculum activities are downloaded right into the app* with all points and credits automatically syncing with the student's main desktop account. What's more, all of their results will appear (in real-time!) in your Teacher Centre reports in exactly the same way. PLUS - Mathletics Student also features an exciting update to the famous Live Mathletics game. The hugely popular 60-second mathematical race game returns with a sleek new interface and TEN competition levels - expanded to include word problems, algebra, number patterns and even logarithms! New-look Live Mathletics is also now available in desktop Mathletics too. *Note - not all curriculum activities will be immediately accessible via iPad. The full library of activities covering all ages will be rolled out across the coming months. Mathletics Student coming soon to Android tablets.

Running Blind: Congratulations!

Our film Running Blind has been selected for screening at The Co-operative Film Festival 2012! This will take place in Manchester on Friday 2nd November.  Mr Farrington will be representing the school as he is due in Lancashire to visit his mum!

Training Day

Can I remind all parents that Friday 26th October is a teacher training day and the week after is our autumn half term break.

Harvest celebration

Many thanks for your support at today's harvest celebrations, whether it be our performances this morning or coming along to our harvest cafe this afternoon. Your contributions to our harvest display were superb and I am sure that we will have raised a substantial sum for our chosen charity: the Benevolent Funds for all three armed forces.

Creativity

This week and next in our assemblies we are thinking about creativity and the wonders of creation, not least the amazing talent for learning that our children demonstrate on a daily basis! Today Miss Johnson unwrapped a wonderful gift: the world! and asked the children to think about our responsibilities to look after our environment.

Home Learning diaries

I would like to encourage all parents to get involved with your child's Home Learning Diaries. It is great to hear about the range of activities the children are doing. I hope you all agree how important it is to develop a love of reading through regular sharing of books at home!