St John Vianney School Newsletter 28.06.2024

Headteacher's Message

Dear Parents and Carers,

I do hope you and your families are keeping well?

There are now only 3 more, very busy weeks left in school. We will be informing our children about their new classes for September next week to help them prepare for changes. If you have any concerns or worries please do let us know.

This week we have again been involved in so many excellent initiatives to help bring pupil learning to life. We had a deep learning day on Wednesday, led by Mr Damant, who organised for a Science dome to be set up in school. Pupils had a great opportunity to understand further the impact we have, as humans, on the environment. Additionally, Mr Harris organised a mock election and I was pleased the candidates representing our ‘parties’ conducted themselves impeccably. A lesson for our current party leaders perhaps to grasp before next Thursday!

Today we have had our leavers’ service and celebration for the pupils, who officially leave SJV at this time. It was a sad occasion in many ways, but certainly a celebration of our pupils’ achievements and successes whilst with us at SJV. So many of our children really leave a legacy at School. We will remember them as we wish them the very best on their next stage of their journey.

We have also this week welcomed into school a second group of new pupils who will join SJV in September 2024, with their parents and carers. The new children have certainly enjoyed their experiences so far at SJV and our new families appear happy with the school choice they have made for their child. We look forward to them joining the SJV School community and wish them well for their time with us.

The collation of our annual reports is now being completed and going through our quality assurance processes. We are planning to send the pupil reports home to you during the week beginning 8th July.

With only 3 weeks left, before we break for the summer holidays, (Friday 19th July at 1.30pm; transport teams have been informed), we are busy preparing for the end of the academic year and the start of the new one, which will begin on Tuesday 3rd September at 9.00am for our pupils. Monday 2nd September is an INSET day for our Staff team.

I hope you have an enjoyable and peaceful weekend with your families.

Best wishes,

Mr A Moloney, Headteacher

Key information and Dates

Dates:

• Thu 11th July - Anglesey Lifeboat Trip.
• Fri 12th July - Sports Afternoon at Longford Park.
• Mon 15th July - Class end of year trips.
• Wed 17th July @ 9:30am - End of Year Mass.
• Fri 19th July at 13:30 - School closes for the Summer Holidays.
• Mon 2nd Sept - INSET day- School is closed for pupils.
• Tue 3rd Sept @ 9:00am - School re-opens for the next academic year.

Stars of the Week

Congratulations to our Stars of the Week!

• Class 1 - Aidan - For more engagement at swimming this week.
• Class 2 - Benjamin - For participating in the activities at the Spiritan Centre and answering lots of questions.
• Class 3 - Adnan - For taking on more responsibilities in class.
• Class 4 - Kayden - Representing the school fantastically at the cricket tournament and putting in maximum effort with his work.
• Class 5 - Zachary - For representing the school at Cricket and working hard in class.
• Class 6 - Cormac - For working really hard during lessons and showing good resilience.
• Class 7 - Miya - For taking herself out of her comfort zone and playing well in the cricket tournament.
• Class 8 - Callum - For being amazing at Graystone Action Sports Centre- and learning a new trick!
• Class 9 - Jake - For being excellent in all areas.
• Class 10 - Nesrine - For fantastic behaviour on trips.
• Class 11 - Reece - For working hard on his communication and trying hard in lessons.
• Class 12 - Allice - For making mature choices and working really well at the Manchester Museum.
• Class 13 - Ben - For having a great week and being an always pupil.

Employees of the Week!

Congratulations to Mr Freshwater and Mrs Wood.

• Mr Freshwater for organising some fantastic events; Graystone Action Sports Centre, which students enjoyed immensely and the Duke of Edinburgh Expedition! It was amazing to see students so proud of themselves for trying new and tricky things, as well as developing their resilience. Well done!
• Mrs Wood has again supported our pupils in producing some fantastic Photography work at GCSE level. She is always ambitious for our pupils and the work presented to our Moderator last week was easily at strong Level 2 pass grades. Well done!

Highlights of the Week

Mock Election

This week, PSHE lessons and assemblies have focused on the upcoming General Election. To develop our understanding of the democratic process we also held a 'Mock Election' in school. Five of our classes formed political parties and created a list of policies, campaign posters and speeches. The party leaders all then had the opportunity to share their vision with the school during assemblies, before canvassing for votes during Thursday break time. On Thursday afternoon our staff and students took their polling cards to the polling station and cast their votes. After a hard fought campaign the red party were our winning party, securing over a third of the 155 votes cast! The students have enjoyed taking part in the process and developing their understanding of the process of a General Election.

Our Catholic School

Our spiritual focus in SJV this week is from Pope Francis:

‘Having faith means keeping your heart turned to God’s love, to his fatherly tenderness, amid the storm. Jesus wanted to teach this to his disciples, and also to us today’

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It’s the end of an era this week for SJV! We have not had this many leavers for years, and it doesn’t get any easier for us as staff to say goodbye to our year 11’s and post 16’s, as they move on from our school community. It’s a bitter sweet moment for us; it’s wonderful to see them ready to leave and to start the next chapter of their lives, but we will miss them also. The leaving service was led by Father Nick, we enjoyed a celebration afterward, it was lovely to celebrate with parents, carers and friends.

The chaplaincy team reflected this week on the leavers' mass and it was wonderful that they were able to help and prepare it with us. They continue to work on our end of year Mass too.

Within RE we continued to look at world-wide religions and all the core beliefs we share amongst the different religions and how much shared common ground we have. The more we understand about each other the closer we will all get.

This week's Wednesday Word is "Faith''.

Mrs Garfin

Poetry Corner

This week at SJV we celebrated God's Creation Day. Class 13 worked with our 'poet in residence' Mr. Lomax, creating some 'call to arms' protest poems about appreciating the beautiful world that we live in. Taking inspiration from the 'Foyle's Young Poetry Prize' winning poem 'Blue Extinction', our young poets wrote these stunning stanzas. We hope that you will be as inspired by this poem as we were! Well done Class 13, amazing work.

Oliver Lomax

Useful Information

Helping children to think about the words they use online.

What are your words worth Activity Pack : This activity pack is designed to prompt young people to think about the words they use online. The activities included will help them to reflect about comments they make on social media or gaming platforms and how those words may impact others. There is also a challenge included to make more #PostivePosts!

Click on the following link to open a directory of useful links and information about facilities, activities and support available to you and your young person: INFORMATION DIRECTORY