Reporting to Parents: are you satisfied with the information you receive about your child's progress?
Thank you to everyone who came to parents' evening this week, it was lovely to have an opportunity to show you the children's progress so far this year. Apologies to those who were meant to come on Tuesday for Dosbarth Melyn - we will contact you next week to rearrange.
We are currently reviewing our end of year report format and designing a digital Pupil Portfolio that will engage the children in their learning journey and serve as a record of their progress.
The portfolio will build up over their time in school and will showcase children's progress and achievements. It will be saved within their Google Drives and access will be be shared between the teacher and child (and therefore parent). It will be recoverable by us in case of accidental deletion!
It being in Google Drive will mean that parents will be able to access it too: we hope that parents might support their children to add any achievements from outside of school too e.g. swimming certificates, badges earned in cubs / brownies etc, Tae-Kwon-Do belts etc.
We will also be adding the National Test reports that we share with parents alongside the summer report. We are considering adding end of year reports: is that something parents would like? It would mean that you have easy access to a digital copy from previous years.
At the same time we have revised our pupil trackers and these will be linked from the portfolio for staff but won't be accessible to children. We appreciate that parents might like to see them but given the risks of those sheets being altered by the children and staff not noticing, it would remain the case that if you do want that information, you can contact the school office for that via a Subject Access Request.
The example portfolio is linked here. It is best viewed on a tablet, chromebook or laptop but can be navigated on a mobile phone.
Our most recent report format is linked here.
We'd really appreciate your thoughts (quick survey linked here - comments are optional - there are Yes / No multiple choice questions too).
ALN Coffee Morning: Tuesday 29/4/25
Mrs Tucker will be holding a coffee morning on Tuesday 29/4/25 (the 2nd day of next term) for children with additional learning needs, starting at 9:15am ie as the children are dropped off. This would be an opportunity for parents of children with ALN to meet each other, to see the provision during the school day and Mrs Tucker would be available to answer any questions parents might have. If you would be interested in attending, please email Mrs Tucker: TuckerJ58@sch.caerphilly.gov.uk If the event is a success we may be able to make a room available for parents to network on a more regular basis if this is something that would be valued.
PTFA End of Term Disco
Please remember that all children must be collected by someone over the age of 16. Children should not attend if they have been absent from school with illness on the day of the disco. Children are not permitted mobile phones during the disco and should not make use of school resources e.g. ipads, toys.
VE Day Celebrations - Friday 2/5/25
At the end of the first we week back we will be marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day. It will be a nonuniform day and children are encouraged to wear red, white & blue (in any combination!).
Summer Term Dates
The website calendar is now up to date as things stand. It's a busy term.
The first week back has an Arts Council For Wales funded workshop for Dosbarth Gwyrdd on Tuesday; Cluster Football on Wednesday & ends with the VE Day celebration.
Swimming starts for Year 3 the second week of term.
Parent Forum meet on Tuesday 6th May at 14:30. If you are interested in joining us please email Mrs Tucker (TuckerJ58@sch.caerphilly.gov.uk). We will be looking at the responses to the Reporting to Parents Survey, our range of school trips and learning experiences, our use of social media and, if it's finished, we will meet in our new outdoor cabin in the forest schools area.
Parents and Children Together (PaCT) Sessions
We are looking forward to welcoming parents of Nursery and Oren into school next week for PaCT sessions. If you haven't seen the information from Mrs Reeve and Miss Williams, please get in touch.
Learning Journeys
We did a survey with parents in January and discussed the format of our Learning Journeys with Parent Forum. Whilst the videos were lovely, teachers were finding them time consuming to produce and some parents were finding the file difficult to access. We wanted to find out if parents valued them.
We received 33 responses to our survey and nearly all were positive. As a compromise, we will be sharing a Slides presentation in Google Classroom with parents at the end of next week instead of the video. The presentations should still capture the majority of the positive aspects that parents commented on such as seeing the progress through the topic across the term, pictures of the children and their work etc.
You will need to login to Google Classroom with your child's Hwb password as you do for homework. If you are not familiar with this there is a video showing you how to do it on the homework section of the school website linked here and you can ask your child's class teacher for their Hwb username and password if they don't know it. Teacher's email addresses are available on the school website under the classes section. Please note that not everything in Google Classroom is homework - we use it during the school day too.
Caerphilly 2K 11/5/25
Sport Caerphilly have contacted schools to encourage participation in this year's 2K run as well as the main 10K. They are offering a £100 prize to the school with the most entrants and sent us a sponsorship form so that we can raise money for the school fund. We'd love to get as many entrants as possible! Entrants must be 7 years or older and it costs £8.50 to enter (plus £1 booking fee) but that includes a medal and t shirt for everyone who finishes. I will be there to run with any children who would like company / support (& I'm hoping to encourage some of the other staff to join me: Mrs Rodway is hoping to join me and Mrs Tucker!). For more information please see https://www.caerphilly10k.co.uk/en/ If you sign up, please put the school name alongside Club / Organisation so that we stand a chance of winning the extra £100. If you'd like a paper copy of the sponsorship form please contact the office and we'll send one home. Please let us know if you enter: we'll arrange a pre run meeting point so that we can all set off together.
School fund is looking lower than we'd like so this is an excellent opportunity for us to build it back up again. School Fund is separate to the school budget. It is used for subsidising school trips, parties, buying gifts for the children etc not school resources.
Parent Governors
We have had no responses to our appeal for Parent Governors. We have extended our appeal until the end of term: form linked here. If you would like to have a conversation about the role please contact the office to arrange to speak with Mrs Taylor. Further information is also available on our school website linked here.