Our assemblies today were about anti-bullying week.  Yesterday we started the week in style when we celebrated our differences by wearing odd socks.

Today we talked about what bullying really is and what we can do to tackle it.  We  talked about the ‘STOP’ rule for recognising a problem and then solving it…

 

Bullying is when someone is  hurting or unkind to the same person…

S everal

T imes

O n

P urpose

When that happens we need to…

S tart

T elling 

O ther

P eople

Adults in school will always be ready to listen and help you.

The theme for anti-bullying week this year is ‘Choose Respect’.  Lucky for us, RESPECT is one of our values!  I asked Reception and KS1 how we can show RESPECT to others.  They had some brilliant answers…

• care for others
• use kind words, hands and feet
• say sorry
• play kindly
• play with people who look sad
• don’t fight
• think about others
• take care of people’s things
• listen to each other

Let’s all remember these things and work as a team to make sure everyone feels safe and happy at school so they can do their very best learning.

Have you got any other top tips for each other?  What anti-bullying motto and promises did you and your class come up with this week?

Mr Poyton

There was a lot to remember in our celebration assembly today!

Anti-Bullying Week 2018: Choose Respect

• Next week is National Anti-Bullying Week.  The theme this year is ‘Choose Respect’.
• To kick things off, on Monday, pupils and staff at schools across the country (including Lawford Mead!) will be wearing odd socks to show that we celebrate and value our differences. No donation required.
• There is also an Anti-Bullying writing competition.  You can write whatever you like, a poem, a story…as long as it has an anti-bullying or respect theme. There can be an element of drawing, especially for younger children.  You can hand your entries to Miss Cope, Miss Dearing or a member of School Council.  The deadline is next Friday, November 16th.

Children In Need

• Next Friday is also Children in Need day.
• Wristbands (£1) and bookmarks (10p) will be on sale in the playground during break and lunchtimes throughout the week….until we run out!
• Friday is our spotty/polka dot themed non-uniform day.  Please bring donations of at least 50p.

It’s going to be a fun week. What are you looking forward to most? Thank you to School Council for all they are doing to organise these events.

Remembrance

School Council have also been selling poppies and we were very proud of all the children this morning when we all held a respectful and thoughtful minute’s silence in assembly.

 

Wishing all our families a fantastic weekend,

Mr Poyton

Check out this brilliant poem Jess and Elsie from Year 6 wrote and read out to the whole school in celebration assembly for our reflection time…

 

Reverse your fear

And keep your mind clear.

Never have anything that could interfere.

Make sure your face is decorated with a smile.

No matter what people say

Wear it with style.

Wake up stronger than yesterday.

 

Face your fears and wipe your tears.

Face your fears with things you enjoy.

This might even be playing with your favourite toy.

Remember to always count your friends as a team.

Doing this, you will be able to live your dream.

Confront your fears

Because then they won’t be your fears any more.

In our KS2 assembly today we talked about Halloween and, although not everyone chooses to celebrate it, it is time when people laugh and have fun with ‘scary’ things.  Facing fears with a smile means those fears are not really very scary anymore!

In one of the Harry Potter books, the pupils at Hogwarts learn the ‘Riddikulus’ spell to help them defeat a ‘boggart’.  A boggart is a magical (made up!) creature that takes the shape of your worst fear.  The spell allows you to turn that scary image into something funny, so you are no longer afraid. For Ron Weasley the boggart makes him imagine a giant spider, but the spell lets him imagine the spider in roller skates so he just laughs at it!

At Lawford Mead, our values of PASSION and RESILIENCE are our ‘spells’ against any fears and worries we might have in school.  In assembly, one pupil said she is sometimes scared of getting things wrong in lessons.  We discussed how that is never something we need to be afraid of if we show those values of passion (by remembering to have fun and approach learning with a smile) AND resilience (by remembering that mistakes help us learn and never giving up).

Can you leave a comment below saying what you are sometimes afraid of and what you can do to help you ‘laugh in the face of fear’?

And remember, if you do go ‘trick or treating’, please be SAFE, be KIND and show our values of RESPECT and INTEGRITY.

Mr Poyton

We are all feeling a little tired but very proud at Lawford Mead this week, having taken part in our yearly Race For Life event for Cancer Research UK at Chelmsford Sport and Athletic Centre.  Visit our Highlight gallery to see pictures and leave a comment.  If you can and haven’t already, please donate and help us beat our £1,000 target! A HUGE thank you to all who have donated.

In other news, every week in our Friday celebration assembly, we congratulate our ‘Writers of the week’.  You can read their work on each year group blog.  This week our aspiring authors were…

• Henry in Year 1 for using conjunctions to extend his writing
• Isabelle in Year 2 for using phonics to support her writing
• Connor in Year 3 for writing an interesting diary entry
• Callum in Year 4 for a brilliant calligram using personification
• Chloe in Year 5 for varying sentence openers in a description
• Felicity in Year 6 for a detailed biography on Banardo

Have a great weekend and…. KEEEEEP WRITING!

Mr Poyton

 

Congratulations to our remarkable runners from Year 5&6 who did tremendously well in a cross country competition with local schools this week. There was over 100 children in each race and 7 of our 22 runners came in the top 20, each qualifying for a place in the elite Chelmsford Running Club.

We could not be prouder!

Mr Poyton

In our assemblies today we discussed our School Improvement Plan for 2018-19.  Lawford Mead is already BRILLIANT, but our desire to always improve is one of the things that makes us so fantastic!  We work hard at everything of course, but this year we want to put that extra effort into our WRITING and our ATTENDANCE.  I asked the children, from Reception to Year 6, how THEY thought we could reach our target of being even better writers and to beat our 96% attendance target and earn more bronze, silver and gold awards.

The children thought long and hard, shared ideas with their classmates and then hit me with some incredible ideas. …

The children said that to become even better writers they will…

• Look after school pencils!
• Practice their phonics and spellings at home
• Read lots at home to get ideas for writing and discover new words
• Show their best handwriting whenever they write
• Play on the Spelling Shed app, a lot!
• Include more interesting and new vocabulary in their writing
• Listen to each other and ‘magpie’ ideas
• Describe in detail with adjectives
• Focus and put thought and imagination into our writing
• Contribute more ideas in class
• Write about what they love when teachers give them freedom and choice
• Check their writing and challenge themselves to improve it

And to improve attendance the children think we should all…

• Eat more apples!
• Do more exercise
• Get lots of sleep
• Wash our hands
• Wrap up warm in cold weather
• Drink lots of water
• And…no holidays in term time!

Please leave a comment below if you have any more ideas!

Mr Poyton

Our Year 6 School Council roles of Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary and Treasurer were filled this week.  These highly responsible and reliable role models will be the ‘voice’ of our pupils this year, along with the democratically elected school council representatives from Year 2 to 5.  Our School Council will be organising events, making decisions and carrying out research this year.  Each term they will present to trustees and governors to report on what the school council has achieved.

I’m sure you will join me in congratulating all our School Council representatives and giving them all your support this coming year.

Leave a comment below explaining what qualities you think a member of the School Council should have.

Have a great weekend,

Mr Poyton

Welcome back to what promises to be an unforgettable term.  We were delighted to see children return this week, wearing smart uniform (see the fashion models above!) and big smiles.  Children have already been showing passion for learning and we cannot wait to see them make progress, reach their potential and feel very proud during the year ahead.

We look forward to meeting Year 1 to 6 parents at our ‘Meet the teacher’ presentations in a couple of weeks.  Check your emails and the school newsletter for more information.

Remember you can subscribe to this and the year group blogs by submitting your email to the ‘subscribe’ box on each blog page.  I also highly recommend exploring this website, including the following pages…

• About us – Our vision and values
• Parents – Information and advice for families
• Highlights – Photo galleries of activities and events in school
• Newsletters – Weekly news updates

Have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing you all again on Monday for more learning and fun.  Children, can you leave a comment below telling us what you are most excited about this term or what you have enjoyed most during your first days back?

Mr Poyton

Head Of School

Up for a challenge this summer?

We recommend all children in Year 3 to 6 consider entering this Creative Writing Competition and everyone should get involved with the Summer Reading Challenge at their local library!

If you do take part, please bring in a copy of your story or your Reading Challenge certificate into school in September!

Mr P