As we come to the end of our first full week back at school, I thought I’d make the very first post to the new ‘Heads Up’ section of our website made especially for myself (Mrs Finley) and Mrs Hodgson (my Co-Headteacher) to be able to communicate with our families through a method other than the sometimes very busy ‘Tranmere Times’.
We were so looking forward to starting back at school and having life somewhat back to normal after the disruption of the last 18 months – it’s been lovely being able to be out on the playground to say good morning to everyone every day and starting to reconnect with all our Tranmere families as well as welcoming our new mums and dads. Our new Reception children have made a great start – it’s like they’ve always been here!
The new morning drop off system after such a long time of staggered starts with you dropping off at the classroom doors rather than lining up on the playground seems to be going well – just a little reminder that although classroom doors will be open from 8.45-8.55, the school day does start at 8.50 so if you could aim to have the children in school for this point that would be great.
Our school term started off really well with two training days for all school staff last Monday and Tuesday where we focused on our plans for improving the school this year – we have 4 key areas we’ll be focusing on:
- Reading, reading and more reading – our children do really well with their reading and after the disruption of the pandemic we want to make sure that everyone is doing as well as they possibly can with this key area.
- Catch-Up – making sure that all the children get the help they need through additional interventions to get their learning back on track after pandemic disruption and remote learning.
- Introducing a new approach towards social and emotional support for the children called Thrive’ – we’re really aware that the retirement of our super Learning Mentor Mrs Martin at the end of the last school year left a gap in our provision and all staff will be receiving Thrive training to make sure we fill the big shoes she left us to step into.
- And finally – as we introduce a newly designed curriculum this year, making sure all our subject leaders have the expertise they need to be our subject ‘experts’ in school.
We’re also focusing on getting all our extra-curricular provision back up and running now that Covid restrictions have been lifted. Our music lead teacher Mrs Holland has been busy making sure that we have a great extra-curricular music offer to kick off the year and the children have enjoyed two great assemblies from ‘Music for Schools’ and Paul from ‘Get Into Guitar’. Children can sign up for keyboard, guitar, woodwind, brass or violin tuition as well as extra curricular singing lessons and our after school music club ‘Groove Generation’ will be starting soon. Miss Gomersall, our PE lead teacher is next so look out for a range of extra curricular sports opportunities in the next few weeks.
Talking about assemblies, we had our very first whole school assemblies with all the children back in the hall this week – it was great to actual see them and not just be a face on Zoom!
I’m going over to Reception to read a story to our new starters just now so wish me luck everyone 🙂 !
Mrs Finley