Hi Everyone, As much of the guidance currently being circulated is quite difficult to understand, I thought I’d share a couple of handy guides that I’ve come across which will hopefully help you to decide whether it is essential to keep your child off school. It goes without saying that if you think your child, or someone in your household, could have covid then please start to self-isolate and get a test booked for the person with symptoms. However, if your child does not have a new, persistent cough OR a temperature OR a change in taste / smell AND feels well enough to attend school, please send them in to school. Our children have missed a huge part of their education already and we really need them in school now so that we can help them to enjoy school again and reach their full potential. Take care, Mrs Dingsdale
Hi Everyone, I hope you’re well and enjoying a lovely start to the weekend. We had a fabulous day in school today which, for children in Years 1 – 6, included a visit from the fire engine and crew from Parr Fire Station. Our huge thanks go to Mr. Dwyer (Poppy’s dad) for making this possible. Each class also enjoyed a bubble party to round off our Aspiration Week and officially welcome the children back to school. Earlier in the week, many classes had virtual visits from a whole host of people who were able to tell the children about their jobs and answer all the children’s questions. Raising our children’s aspirations and helping them to believe in themselves is going to continue to be a priority for us every single day that we’re in school so I’m so glad that we’ve managed to start off the year with such a bang! As you’ve hopefully spotted, from now on, our weekly newsletter will be shared with you via Dojo and our school website. We’ve taken the decision not to send out paper copies in a bid to, once again, reduce the number of things being sent between home and school. I hope that between this, and the class teacher’s regular posts on Dojo, you’re managing to feel included in your child’s learning. Remember that we’d still love for you to help your child at home by listening to them read, supporting with home learning and getting them involved in ‘real life’ learning at home. You can earn your child extra Dojos by sharing images of their home learning in their Dojo portfolio. Have a great weekend! Take care, Mrs Dingsdale
Good Afternoon Everyone. Reception to Year 6 children only - Thank you to those of you who have returned the flu immunisation forms. If you have not yet done so, please can you send it back as soon as possible. Some parents have been asking when this is being done - it is booked for 3rd November.
Hi, I've been asked to share the attached letter on behalf of Sue Forster, Director of Public Health and Jo Davies, Assistant Director Education, Early Help and Children's Health. Thanks, Mrs Dingsdale
Good Morning Everyone, I hope you’re all enjoying a nice cup of tea / coffee. Once again, it was an absolute pleasure to see you and your children this morning. Please can I just bring your attention to the following points:
Private messages on Dojo Lots of us are now using the private messaging system on Dojo which is great. However, we’d just like to make you aware that staff aren’t able to check their messages during the school day as they’re very busy in class with your children. If your message isn’t urgent, rest assured that we will see it later in the day / the next morning. However, if you need to tell us anything urgently (e.g. a change in home time arrangements, medication requirements, lunch time issues, attendance issues) please make sure that you call the office.
Water Bottles We still have lots of children who aren’t bringing a water bottle to school. It’s very important that the children stay hydrated so please ensure your child has a water bottle with them each day.
Play Times I’m sure you can understand that children very much need their play times and fresh air – now more than ever. With this in mind, please ensure that your child has a warm coat with them every day as unless we have an absolute downpour, the children will be playing outside at break times.
Arriving / Leaving School. Please can I remind you that we are trying to keep the amount of people on site to an absolute minimum. Therefore, we must be very strict about only allowing one parent per family on site to drop off / collect children. We also cannot allow our past pupils to visit us at the moment. This makes us very sad but in the current climate, we absolutely must put the safety of our children, staff and parents / carers first.
Hi Everyone It has been brought to our attention that there are some extremely inappropriate videos currently circulating on Tik Tok, that could have a huge impact on your child's well being. Tik Tok are aware of this and doing their best to track down all links to these videos, but it would be advisable to keep the children away from Tik Tok for a few days until they are able to get this situation under control. Thank you for your support in keeping the children safe online.
Update: It appears that these videos are being shared to other social media and websites. We advise supervising your child more carefully on any social media over the next few days.
Hi Everyone, I hope you’re enjoying a lovely weekend. Very typical of the first week back, my little girl has come home on Friday with a cold. I tell you this because I’m certain that this will have happened to many of our children. I’m sure, like me, many of you will worry about whether or not your child should be / will be allowed in school (even though, with the exception of the odd sneeze / runny nose, they seem well). With this in mind, I thought I’d just share some guidance taken from the NHS page. The first section details the symptoms of Covid, whilst the second gives a little more information about what is considered to be a high temperature.
Check if you or your child has coronavirus symptoms Main symptoms The main symptoms of coronavirus are: • a high temperature – this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature) • a new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual) • a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste – this means you've noticed you cannot smell or taste anything, or things smell or taste different to normal Most people with coronavirus have at least 1 of these symptoms.
High temperature in children What is considered a high temperature? Information: A normal temperature in babies and children is about 36.4C, but this can vary slightly from child to child. A high temperature is 38C or more. Checking a high temperature Your child might: • feel hotter than usual to the touch on their forehead, back or tummy • feel sweaty or clammy • have red cheeks
Please remember that if you, your child or anyone else living in your household has any one of these symptoms everyone in the household must self-isolate until the person with symptoms has had a test. If the test is positive, the whole household must continue to self-isolate. If the test is negative, the person with symptoms must continue to self-isolate whilst the rest of the family can return to school / work as normal. Please make sure that you inform us of any results.
We obviously want as many children in school as possible but please look after everyone by keeping your child off if you suspect that they might have Covid.
If, like my little girl, your child doesn’t exhibit any of the Covid symptoms then we will welcome them into school on Monday. However, if they do have a runny nose, please make sure they know how to catch their sneezes / wipe their nose and then know to put the tissue in the bin and wash their hands / use hand gel.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend. See you tomorrow, Mrs Dingsdale
Hi Everyone, I hope you’re managing to have a lovely, start to a Sunday morning. Firstly, I want to say a huge thank you to you as parents / carers for helping to make Thursday and Friday such a lovely couple of days; it was so wonderful to have our school family back together again. Your patience, tolerance and understanding has been a huge factor in our ability to get school running smoothly and safely once again. I’d also like to say a special thank you to all those of you who have shared such wonderful words of praise and kindness both in your Dojo messages and when we’ve seen you around school.
I also must thank our amazing staff! Every single member of staff has worked tirelessly to ensure that the children have had a fabulously positive start to the school year. I have been amazed at the ingenious ways that staff have found to create the same level of fun in class with the lowest amount of risk possible.
Last but certainly not least, my biggest thanks goes to our amazing children who have managed to take every change in school in their stride. I have loved seeing the children’s happy, little faces and it has been a joy to see just how happy they are to be back at school.
Moving on to next week, here are a few reminders…you might want to grab a brew before you start reading!!
Hand washing. As I mentioned in my last post, from Monday, we will be trialling the use of hand gel to replace 3 of our hand washing sessions each day. Please remember to let us know if you would prefer your child not to use hand gel.
Lates Today we started to record the children who arrived late in school just as we did before lockdown. We will continue this on Monday. Therefore, please be aware that if your child arrives later than 9am, rather than walking around to their year group door, they will need to queue at the office to receive a late ticket. They will then be sent to class through school.
Arriving at School Please help us to keep everyone safe by making sure that you continue to follow our one way system. We still had several parents going the wrong way on Friday and this caused some upset for other parents. Please also remember that we are only allowing one parent onto the school site for each family. With this in mind, as much as we love to see our past pupils, for the time being, please ask your older children to stay at home / wait for you off the school grounds.
Reading Books On Monday, your child will be sent home with a reading book and a reading record in a plastic wallet (no book bags necessary). Please do your very best to read each night with your child and record it in your child’s reading record. Reading books should then be brought back in each Friday so that dojos can be awarded and books can be quarantined over the weekend.
PE Kits If you’ve not already been told your child’s PE days, your class teacher will be in touch about this next week. Please remember that, on their PE day, children must come to school in their PE kit and will remain in these clothes all day. Children are allowed to wear any warm clothes that are appropriate for P.E, e.g. leggings, t-shirts, tracksuits, trainers etc. Jeans must not be worn.
Aspiration Week Next week in school, children in Years 1 – 6 will be celebrating Aspiration Week. During this week, we will be carrying out lots of activities aimed at promoting our children’s belief in themselves, encouraging them to aim high and start to think about the jobs they’d like as adults. We’d love it if you could spend some time chatting to your children about your job or the job you would like to have. Encouraging our children to aim high is something that we are going to be pushing every single day of the year so if you ever have any ideas to help us with this, please do share them with me / your child’s class teacher.
Enjoy the rest of today and I shall very much look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Take care, Mrs Dingsdale
Hi Everyone, I just wanted to give you a bit of an update from today (Thursday). Firstly, I just want to say a huge thank you to every member of our Allanson Street family. I think we proved today that we absolutely are ‘stronger together’. I am so proud of the way everyone worked together to make today a fabulous first day for the children. As you know our absolute priority is ensuring that our children feel safe, happy and settled back in school and if the smiling faces I saw all around school today are anything to go by then we are certainly on our way to making this a reality. As you know, we have a very thorough risk assessment in place which we will be continually monitoring to ensure we keep everyone safe and school running as well as it possibly can do. After school today, staff came together to review the day and look what improvements could be made. As a result, the following changes will be introduced: • From tomorrow (Friday 4th September), children on packed lunches will eat them in class to reduce the number of children needing to access the dining room and reduce traffic around school. • From Monday (7th September), we will be replacing some hand washing sessions with the use of hand sanitiser. Currently, the children are having to wash their hands at least 6 times a day whilst in school (as they come into school in the morning, before break, after break, before lunch, after lunch, at home time and after any visits to the toilet). As you can imagine, with 30 children and only one sink in each room, this takes up a huge part of our day. Whilst we intend to stick with hand washing as the children come into school, before breaks and lunch times and after visits to the toilet, we will be giving the children hand sanitising gel at all other times. Before introducing this, we will be showing children how to ‘wash’ their hands with the gel so that they effectively kill any germs on their hands and so that they use it safely. If your child has an allergy to hand sanitiser please let us know OR if you’d prefer them to use one from home, please send it to school with them from Monday. I very look forward to seeing you all again in the morning. Take care, Mrs Dingsdale