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Biggin Hill School, Bromley

News

Newsletter 16th December 2022

Posted: Fri 16th Dec 2022

We have had a marvellous ‘all things Christmas’ week in school and have thoroughly enjoyed the performances so far. Next week, we have our final performances to look forward to on Monday and the children have their class Christmas parties on Tuesday, our last day of term.

Last Friday it was a pleasure to welcome you to our amazing Christmas Fair. This event was a joint collaboration between the Friends and staff and we hope that you will agree that it was a great success! There is so much organisation that goes into organising and managing this event and I would like to thank Mrs Gilham, one of our year 1 class teachers, and Mrs Corr, a parent and member of the Friends of BHPS, for taking the lead on arranging this event for our school community to enjoy. Additionally, I would like to thank the many members of the Friends of BHPS and our staff team for helping to run the fair - a great time was had by all!

Thank you to parents and carers for purchasing your child’s christmas craft this week. The children really enjoyed making their festive crafts and they were so pleased to be helping to raise additional funds for the school - thank you for your support!

It has been wonderful to be able to deliver our Christmas programme. The performances so far have been fabulous! We know that it means so much to the children to be able to perform in front of their loved ones - they have rehearsed so hard to ensure they deliver a ‘top notch’ performance full of Christmas cheer for you all!

On Monday, our year 6 children were very lucky to attend a special matinee performance of 'Elf' at Charles Darwin School. Miss O’Mahony and Miss Wigfield have advised us that our year sixes loved the performance and their behaviour was a credit to the school.

Also on Monday, we issued our term dates for 2023/2024. These are also available from main reception and also can be viewed on this website.

On Wednesday, you will also note that we sent a consultation letter to families (R-Y6) regarding both school uniform and the timing of the school day. Our draft school uniform policy can be viewed this website. All information regarding the consultation and how to respond can be found within our letter dated 13th December and email sent the morning of 14th December.

If there is anything you would prefer to discuss with us directly, please do not hesitate to contact us. We wanted to inform you that a few weeks ago we made the difficult decision to rehome the much loved BHPS chickens as we felt it was in their best interests. If we could ask you to please talk to your child/children about this. We would like to thank everyone involved with looking after the chickens with very special thanks to Ms Rudd (a former parent to the school), Mr and Mrs Smithson, Mrs Horgan and Miss Gray who really have given up so much of their time to look after and care for them.

Harrisons Catering were also delighted to serve Christmas lunch to the children on Wednesday - as you can imagine, this is a massive undertaking. My thanks to the Kitchen team and to Ms Dawkins for assisting so efficiently with the planning of the event. Harrisons Catering and Mrs Sargeant were also delighted to announce that Olivia E in 4E class was the winner of the Harrisons Catering colouring competition and is now the proud owner of a Harrisons Catering fluffy teddy!

It has been a very busy period in school and so much work has taken place around ensuring the children are getting the most from their learning. This week we have been holding PPRs (Pupil Progress Reviews) and the outcomes of these reviews will inform planning for the spring term. Observations of teaching and learning this term have been very pleasing; we are seeing such engaging and creative lessons which children are really enjoying. It has been a pleasure to see how hard children are working across the whole school!

Earlier in the week, some of our children created Christmas cards which we will be passing on to the Bromley Loneliness Project. These very special cards were designed by some of our children and will be given to local residents and residents in care homes who will be spending Christmas alone. We hope our cards will bring a smile to their faces and it has highlighted that loneliness is unfortunately a big issue in our local community - we will be considering what more we can do to help in the coming months - all ideas welcome!

A very special ‘thank you’ to all our wonderful volunteers for supporting us across the school - our reading volunteers and our parent representatives play such an important role within the school and we are so grateful to them for their commitment. Finally, an enormous ‘thank you’ to the Friends of BHPS for their tireless work providing wonderful events for the children to enjoy whilst raising much needed funds for the school.

We could not run this amazing school without the wonderful staff team that we have here and we would like to take this opportunity to formally thank them all for their incredible work. We would just like to pass on a special ‘thank you’ to Mr Walpole, our site manager, for clearing the snow from the site - not a pleasant job!

Finally, we had a very special and unexpected visit from Santa today. We would just like to thank him for taking some time out of his very busy schedule and workshop to visit BHPS today!

Today’s newsletter will be the final newsletter for this term. Just as a final reminder, the last day of term and day in school is Tuesday 20th December. On Tuesday, we invite children to wear their uniform with some Christmas accessories and a Christmas jumper. Class Christmas parties will take place on this day throughout the school so please look out for communication directly from teaching staff regarding this.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Our very best wishes,

Mrs Freeman Headteacher and Designated Safeguarding Lead

Mrs Lawrence SENCo, Deputy Headteacher and Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead

 

 

 

 

 

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