Croeso yn ôl! We hope everyone had a lovely half term.
Diolch!
Thank you on behalf of River Church Foodbank and the PTFA for your donations before half term. We are very grateful.
Parents' Evenings Monday & Tuesday next week - Reminder to book
We're concerned that a significant number of parents have not yet booked appointments. The booking system is open until 10am on Thursday. If you have any difficulties with the online booking system, please contact Mrs Presley who will be happy to help.
A reminder that each appointment is for 10 minutes only and that if you require longer you need to contact your child's class teacher to arrange to meet on another day. Ahead of parents' evenings we send out a form to ask parents if there is any particular topic they would like to discuss (links below). This enables us to be prepared and supports us in keeping to time.
Links to forms for parents' evenings:
Coch (Mrs Reeve)
Oren (Miss Williams)
Gwyrdd (Miss Wills)
Glas (Miss Rooke)
Porffor (Mr Davies)
We are going to postpone Parents' Evenings for Dosbarth Melyn and will rearrange when Miss Ferguson is able to return. Mrs Greenaway will continue to cover in her absence. In the meantime, if you have any queries that you would have brought up that relate to additional learning provision please email Mrs Tucker (TuckerJ58@sch.caerphilly.gov.uk) who is our ALNCo . If you have any other concerns please email the school address (PontllanfraithPrimary@sch.caerphilly.gov.uk).
Poppy Appeal
Before half term our Children's Ambassador Team from Year 6 represented us at the launch in Blackwood. We are now selling poppies and other items on behalf of the Royal British Legion. Please click here for a list of what's available & prices.
We will be laying a wreath on behalf of the school at the Pontllanfraith service on Saturday afternoon. If you'd like to join us, the service will be at the War Memorial at 1pm.
Antibullying Week - next week
Odd Socks Day is on Tuesday 12th November this year and is designed to be fun! It’s an opportunity to encourage people to express themselves and celebrate their individuality and what makes us all unique. Please wear your wackiest socks to show your support!
Antibullying Week ends with Children in Need on Friday 15th November and we will be collecting donations and having some fun. Children are invited to wear whatever they want: dress down or wear something silly - as long as it's age appropriate (for example, no weapons or characters from films that are 15 or 18+).
Literacy Open Day (Mainstream, Rec - Y6) Friday 22/11/24
In 2022, Estyn asked us to provide greater information to parents about how to support your child's learning. Parent feedback has told us that some parents would welcome the opportunity to come in during the school day to learn more about how we teach and see what the children are doing, whilst others find it hard because of their own work commitments. Some of those, however, if given enough notice, would still be keen to come in. We understand that one size, does not fit all and take on board the comments about sufficient notice.
Last year we held a Numeracy Open Day which was well received by parents and the parent forum asked us to host a Literacy themed open day next.
Please click here for more information and to book your place!
Attendance
Our first round of Callio Attendance Letters went out before half term. Apologies there was an error for some. We will be checking and new letters will be sent over the course of this week to those parents who received the wrong letters.
Callio letters are sent regularly throughout the year and alert you to your child's attendance if it is below 95%. Our website gives some general information about our Attendance Procedures, but as this is the first round of letters this year we have also put together a more detailed information sheet that addresses many of the queries we have had previously. Please see here. Remember, these letters go out without exception and no offence is intended. Please read the information sheet if you have any queries. A separate, personal email will go to those who parents that we wish to meet with.
Our attendance last year was 92.2%, still well below pre-pandemic levels (we were usually around 95%). On our school website we are updating this term's progress every few weeks so that parents can see the percentage of children in each class who fall into red, amber and green Callio categories.
Attendance at the end of week 6 looked like this:
Internet Safety
In line with Curriculum for Wales, children are encouraged to make choices about how and when to use IT to support their learning.
In Pontllanfraith we deliver a program of internet safety lessons across the school.
Unfortunately in recent weeks we have had children in two of our junior classes behave inappropriately online during the school day.
Consequently in assembly yesterday morning we addressed this with an overview video, reminding children that whilst the internet is very useful, they need to use it safely.
We have also decided to bring in use of the Hwb Acceptable Use Agreement and have explained it to the children (Year 3 up). Children were given a copy to bring home yesterday.
Hwb provides a lot of useful information for parents and the link to this is available on our school website: https://hwb.gov.wales/keeping-safe-online
Whilst I am not aware of any current issues, but given it's anti-bullying week next week, now seems like a good moment to remind parents that children should not have unsupervised access to social media. Most social media platforms (e.g. TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram) state their age rating as 13+. What's App is 16+. Since the pandemic we have seen an increase in cyber bullying as a result of children having unsupervised access. Group chats have been the biggest concern and in some cases children have been in chats where other children have added people they do not know.
Christmas
We'll be planning our concerts over the next week and detailed information will follow shortly, including how to book tickets and how many will be available etc.
However, to enable you to plan ahead, we can let you know that concerts will be:
Dosbarth Coch (Nursery & Reception / Y1): Tuesday 10th December in the morning, in the Infant Hall.
Dosbarth Oren (Y1/2): Tuesday 10th December in the afternoon, in the Infant Hall.
Dosbarth Melyn (Y2/3) & Dosbarth Gwyrdd (Y3/4): Thursday 12th December, two performances (one in the morning and another in the afternoon), both in River Church, 10244 Tram Rd, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood NP12 2JF.
Dosbarth Glas (Y3/4) & Dosbarth Porffor (Y5/6): Friday 13th December in the afternoon, two performances (one in the morning and another in the afternoon), both in River Church, 10244 Tram Rd, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood NP12 2JF.
The Pantomime Trip is booked for Tuesday 17th December (Y1-Y6) & Christmas Dinner / Party Day will be Thursday 19th December.
We break up on Friday 20/12/24 at 3:30pm as normal.